Time Capsule: Sunken Ancient Roman City Of Baiae With All Its Streets Imperial Villas And Statues

MessageToEagle.com - Ancient sunken city of Baiae is located just 30 minutes northwest of Naples. Baiae was one of the most important cities of Ancient Rome and Roman seaside resort, overlooking the Bay of Naples. It was a place where rich Romans and emperors spent their leisure time in their luxurious villas clustered in terraces all around the bay near Naples.
A city of Baiae - named after Baios, Odysseus' helmsman - was connected to the Roman Empire’s biggest naval base, Portus Julius, home port of the western Imperial Fleet of ancient Rome.



Click on image to enlargeSubmerged remains of Emperor Claudius' nymphaeum (as found on display in the Phlegraean Fields' Archaeological Museum in the Aragonese Castle in Baia).

Over several centuries, Baiae was Naples Bay city, even more famous than Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Capri.
However, it was also city of scandals, corruptions and hedonistic temptations, according to ancient records.
A major philosophical figure of the Roman Imperial Period, Seneca, called Baiae a “resort of vice,” while Ovid, a Roman poet referred to it as a “favorable place for love-making.”
Famous for its prestigious baths and thermal springs, the ancient city of Baiae was a fashionable bathing and recreation area of the rich and famous individuals of the ancient times.
Emperors Caligula, Nero, Hadrian and Gaius Julius Caesar once owned elegant summer villas in Baiae. Cicero, a Roman philosopher, politician, lawyer, orator, political theorist, consul and constitutionalist entertained them during Saturnalia feasts - a holiday established in honor of Saturn.


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Today Baiae - built during the time of Emperor Claudius - is not a playground of the Roman emperors anymore.
Floors of black and white mosaic attest to a long forgotten villas, remains of ancient amphorae were once held in emperors' hands - now are scattered across the ocean floor.
Baiae lies submerged in just a few feet of water, with all streets, imperial luxury villas and statues.



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Due to high amounts of volcanic activities around Baiae, over a course of 2000 years, the ground level of Baiae kept rising and falling, which ultimately led Baiae and its port to collapse into the ocean.
The underwater environment takes us back into the past allowing us to view the reconstruction of the marble statues, the main street Herclanea and the surrounding thermal bath complex.



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The first recovery of archaeological finds related to Baiae took place in the 1920s when, during the construction works pertaining to the widening of the docks at Port Venero, sculptures, architectonic elements and water systems with imperial insignias came to light.
One of Baiae's greater discoveries was a nymphaeum found in one of the sunken buildings. It belonged to Claudius (10 BC – AD 54), a Roman emperor from 41 to 54 (the first Roman Emperor to be born outside Italy).



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Because he was afflicted with a limp and slight deafness due to sickness at a young age, his family ostracized him and excluded him from public office until his consulship, shared with his nephew Caligula in 37.
In the 1940s, aerial photographs taken by pilot Raimondo Baucher, provided evidence of the submerged archaeological area of Portus Julius in the shallow waters directly in front of Lake Lucrine.



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Unfortunately, despite interest raised by these discoveries, the first underwater survey of Baiae did not take place until the 1960s. The surveys conducted between 1959 and 1960 contributed to the first map of the sunken city.
Interesting were also finds in the vicinity of Punta Epitaffio at a depth of approximately 6 metres; a paved road flanked with buildings and statues continuing towards the sea, remains of other Baiae's structures reaching out into the sea by means of cemented jetties, now known to have belonged to the marine quarter of the Pisonian villa.
Additionally, approximately 400 metres from the present coast, numerous concrete pillars were discovered; pillars which confirmed the location of the ancient coastline.
The programme of surveying the area was unfortunately soon interrupted due to a lack of funds.

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Ancient Confession Found: 'We Invented Jesus Christ'

Biblical scholars will be appearing at the 'Covert Messiah' Conference at Conway Hall in London on the 19th of October to present this controversial discovery to the British public.

Jesus Christ: completely constructed from other stories for an ancient Roman propaganda campaign?

[Jesus Christ] may be the only fictional character in literature whose entire life story can be traced to other sources.

London (PRWEB UK) 8 October 2013

American Biblical scholar Joseph Atwill will be appearing before the British public for the first time in London on the 19th of October to present a controversial new discovery: ancient confessions recently uncovered now prove, according to Atwill, that the New Testament was written by first-century Roman aristocrats and that they fabricated the entire story of Jesus Christ. His presentation will be part of a one-day symposium entitled "Covert Messiah" at Conway Hall in Holborn (full details can be found athttp://www.covertmessiah.com).

Although to many scholars his theory seems outlandish, and is sure to upset some believers, Atwill regards his evidence as conclusive and is confident its acceptance is only a matter of time. "I present my work with some ambivalence, as I do not want to directly cause Christians any harm," he acknowledges, "but this is important for our culture. Alert citizens need to know the truth about our past so we can understand how and why governments create false histories and false gods. They often do it to obtain a social order that is against the best interests of the common people."

Atwill asserts that Christianity did not really begin as a religion, but a sophisticated government project, a kind of propaganda exercise used to pacify the subjects of the Roman Empire. "Jewish sects in Palestine at the time, who were waiting for a prophesied warrior Messiah, were a constant source of violent insurrection during the first century," he explains. "When the Romans had exhausted conventional means of quashing rebellion, they switched to psychological warfare. They surmised that the way to stop the spread of zealous Jewish missionary activity was to create a competing belief system. That's when the 'peaceful' Messiah story was invented. Instead of inspiring warfare, this Messiah urged turn-the-other-cheek pacifism and encouraged Jews to 'give onto Caesar' and pay their taxes to Rome."

Was Jesus based on a real person from history? "The short answer is no," Atwill insists, "in fact he may be the only fictional character in literature whose entire life story can be traced to other sources. Once those sources are all laid bare, there's simply nothing left."

Atwill's most intriguing discovery came to him while he was studying "Wars of the Jews" by Josephus [the only surviving first-person historical account of first-century Judea] alongside the New Testament. "I started to notice a sequence of parallels between the two texts," he recounts. "Although it's been recognised by Christian scholars for centuries that the prophesies of Jesus appear to be fulfilled by what Josephus wrote about in the First Jewish-Roman war, I was seeing dozens more. What seems to have eluded many scholars is that the sequence of events and locations of Jesus ministry are more or less the same as the sequence of events and locations of the military campaign of [Emperor] Titus Flavius as described by Josephus. This is clear evidence of a deliberately constructed pattern. The biography of Jesus is actually constructed, tip to stern, on prior stories, but especially on the biography of a Roman Caesar."

How could this go unnoticed in the most scrutinised books of all time? "Many of the parallels are conceptual or poetic, so they aren't all immediately obvious. After all, the authors did not want the average believer to see what they were doing, but they did want the alert reader to see it. An educated Roman in the ruling class would probably have recognised the literary game being played." Atwill maintains he can demonstrate that "the Roman Caesars left us a kind of puzzle literature that was meant to be solved by future generations, and the solution to that puzzle is 'We invented Jesus Christ, and we're proud of it.'"

Is this the beginning of the end of Christianity? "Probably not," grants Atwill, "but what my work has done is give permission to many of those ready to leave the religion to make a clean break. We've got the evidence now to show exactly where the story of Jesus came from. Although Christianity can be a comfort to some, it can also be very damaging and repressive, an insidious form of mind control that has led to blind acceptance of serfdom, poverty, and war throughout history. To this day, especially in the United States, it is used to create support for war in the Middle East."

Atwill encourages skeptics to challenge him at Conway Hall, where after the presentations there is likely to be a lively Q&A session. Joining Mr.Atwill will be fellow scholar Kenneth Humphreys, author of the book "Jesus Never Existed."

Further information can be found at http://www.covertmessiah.com.

About Joseph Atwill: Joseph Atwill is the author of the best-selling book "Caesar's Messiah" and its upcoming sequel "The Single Strand."

Source: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/10/prweb11201273.htm