Bringing Roman Light to Life | Hacker News Reader

Bringing Roman Light to Life

journals.uchicago.edu

74 pointsHooke14 comments

Amazing to see a curator attempt to give us an impression how lighting "felt" in antiquity.

Today, we too often see light as mere utilitarian anathema to "darkness" - which breeds evil, is to be banned to the shadows, or better yet eradicated altogether. As a consequence, we spill light everywhere. We kill the dark as if it's a disease, and deprive ourselves of a cosmic experience - the night sky, the magic experience of dusk and dawn, the conscious intake of bright summer sunlight as well as brief-if-invigorating winter sun. We turn night into day and forgot how, if at all, we can cherish and celebrate the difference.

Before, this was reversed. Night-time lighting served as an ornament, a celebration or display of art, or at least very consciously used to "spot" - light a path, show a door, paint with shadows. Make light a celebration in solstice bonfires, use candles as little boosters on christmas promising a nicer/warmer/brighter season just round the corner. Light was pleasure, luxury, promise, comfort.

Much of lighting today is needless and useless throwaway trash. It's used like painting the entire world flourescent green. Just with light. Not unimpressive as a technical feat. To me, just wrong, emotionally. If god had wanted us to live in permanent daylight, life would have been created on a planet rotation-bound to its star ...

I guarantee if the romans had access to high-powered electric lighting, they'd have put it _everywhere_.

It isn't that hard to imagine strips of LEDs on tons of their structures. Completely agree that they'd likely have used them if they could

We forget how terrifying darkness was in the past. We are not afraid today because we have a host of resources that will come to our rescue. We walk along a dark path in full knowledge that should we slip and break a leg, it won't be a big deal. We will miss a day or tow of work but can be expect to be up an running marathons within a couple months. But for a Roman, a broken leg was a life-altering and often deadly event. So that forest path lit only by starlight may seem romantic today but for most of human history was something to be diligently avoided.

You won't break a leg just from slipping and falling.

But people DO break legs from doing exactly that? Falling is one of the most common causes of tibia fractures and patella fractures.

Lol says you. I've broken two feet and an ankle. That's three separate injuries on three separate occasions.

None of them were when I was doing something actually dangerous. The ankle was in a Walmart parking lot. The first foot was on the steps of a hotel.

Admittedly I'm a big dude so these injuries might not have happened to a smaller person. But people get fragile as they age anyway, and lots of old people have broken hips from tripping and falling.

The risk of injury as such has little to do with how strongly lit the path is; people break their legs at daytime hikes alright.

Does it help recovery/discovery ? Maybe, but again that more depends how busy the road is; your "lonely forest path" may or may not have other hikers. In Roman times, with a population density far below today's, just as likely noone may pass you by, daylight or no. And today, your mobile phone's emergency call is more likely to get you help than those passing you on the road at speed ...

Anyway, yes there is a safety, and more so, a comfort effect in lighting. We are, though, physically capable of night time vision as well; moonlight levels serve us once we're dark-adapted. Any "need" to light the night up to full color vision is "emotional" only.

I merely try to express that the "cheapening" of lighting and its overly pervasive use has both taken the awe and the celebration out of it. More conscious (non-)use is worth a thought, occasionally.

>If god had wanted us to live in permanent daylight, life would have been created on a planet rotation-bound to its star...

Keep that notion in mind next time you get badly sick and seek medical treatment.

A great display and certainly contextualising but I can't help thinking 3d game engines do a better job of immersive experience with smoke and gloom.

Adequate lighting to read didactic panels undermines the prime objective here.

In modern times, we don't really think about lights or having to keep a supply of a light source on hand. But when ever I see period pieces showing candles used as light sources, it makes me think about how important keeping candles in stock was and were they only something the rich could have.

The idea of pretty much not doing anything after dark except from sleeping sometimes seems very attractive. Sure, fireplaces could provide some light, but it's just one of those can't quite grok life where a light source at night would be so just not so readily available.

Candles were the big flashlights of the time. Most people having to work in the dark would have used something like an oil lamp if stationary, or a rushlight if they needed to carry a light with them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rushlight

But they're not very bright. How much can you really do if you have to squint to make out anything more than the sentences immediately adjacent to the candle?

> Clearly, Roman lamps have lost their agency, presented as objects in museums or in photographs—a problem addressed by encouraging visitors to handle replicas of lamps and to light them virtually

I was disappointed to see so many photos of lamps behind glass, presented in a museum. Where are the visitors handling replicas or screenshots of lamps lit in a virtual environment?

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