Leo X's pet elephant Hanno, 1514/16, after a lost drawing by Raffael

Under his pontificate, Latin Christianity assumed a pagan, Greco-Roman character, which, passing from art into manners, gives to this epoch a strange complexion. Crimes for the moment disappeared, to give place to vices; but to charming vices, vices in good taste, such as those indulged in by Alcibiades and sung by Catullus. - Alexandre Dumas

David Hume, while claiming that Leo was too intelligent to believe in Catholic doctrine, conceded that he was "one of the most illustrious princes that ever sat on the papal throne. Humane, beneficent, generous, affable; the patron of every art, and friend of every virtue".

Martin Luther himself testified:

Indeed, the published opinion of so many great men and the repute of your blameless life are too widely famed and too much reverenced throughout the world to be assailed by any man, of however great name, or by any arts. I am not so foolish to attack one whom everybody praises ...

'Sir,' saith the hermit to Messire Gawain, 'The damsel will say her pleasure. May God defend King Arthur, for his father made me knight. Now am I priest, and in this hermitage ever sithence that I came hither have I served King Fisherman by the will of Our Lord and His commandment, and all they that serve him do well partake of his reward, for the place of his most holy service is a refuge so sweet that unto him that hath been there a year, it seemeth to have been but a month for the holiness of the place and of himself, and for the sweetness of his castle wherein have I oftentimes done service in the chapel where the Holy Graal appeareth. Therefore is it that I and all that serve him are so youthful of seeming.' 'Sir,' saith Messire Gawain, 'By what way may a man go to his castle?' 'Sir,' saith the hermit, 'None may teach you the way, save the will of God lead you therein. And would you fain go thither?' 'Sir,' saith Messire Gawain, 'It is the most wish that I have.' 'Sir,' saith the hermit, 'Now God give you grace and courage to the question that the others to whom the Graal hath appeared would ask not, whereof have many mischances sithence befallen much people.' ~ The High History of the Holy Graal

When Parsifal has overcome Klingsor’s knights and put them to flight, he strays into the Flowermaiden garden. Klingsor calls on the seductive sorceress Kundry to seek young Parsifal out and seduce him. Parsifal then finds himself in a beautiful garden, full of flowers, and surrounded by the beautiful and seductive Flowermaidens. They call him and entwine their bodies around him in their efforts to seduce him, but he resists their temptations and remains chaste.

Rochegrosse shows this event in an unusual mixture of styles, with which he felt he expressed the central idea of the scene, that of Parsifal resisting temptation by being “obsessed with the ideal”. There are elements of symbolism in pictorial elements, but the whole painting is realist, with some Impressionist effects in the garden and landscape.
From eclecticlight.co

Christianity is too often considered to have caused the death of Rome when in reality it was responsible for doubling its lifespan—and this isn't referring to the Eastern Roman Empire, but the Holy Roman Empire. The ideal of Rome, the one which functioned as a sacred center towards which many iterations of the empire (some simultaneously) oriented and structured themselves, was practically seamlessly adopted by the Goths who invaded the Western Empire and the later Merovingian Franks and then the Carolingians who created the Holy Roman Empire in that sacred image of Rome. It is the very preservation of the essential Romanity which afforded the Middle Ages their greatness, and Christianity was central to this phenomenon. Christianity converted the Germanic tribes into Roman Empires.

The philosophy I speak of is not the one which takes the citizen out of public life and the gods out of the world we live in, and hands morality over to pleasure, but the philosophy which thinks nothing good unless it is honorable, which is incapable of being enticed astray by the rewards of men or fortune, and the very pricelessness of which lies in the fact that it cannot be bought at any price.

Seneca, Letter 90

There is a misconception that so-called Dionysian art is truer art since its supposed irrationality imparts a 'life-affirming' character to the art which is seen as an inherently good thing. If you refer back to our post on the Titanic/Olympian duality, you might see how it is unwise to focus on only one side of such an illusory division in which both sides are pointing to the same transcendent ideal.

"All art is in its origin essentially symbolical and ritual, and only through a late degeneration, indeed a very recent degeneration, has it lost its sacred character so as to become at last the purely profane 'recreation' to which it has been reduced among our contemporaries."

~René Guénon

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.

Marcus Aurelius

An Athenian prayer: "Rain, Zeus, please. Rain on the farmland and the fields of the Athenians." That's how to pray, simply and in a spirit of self-reliance; otherwise, one shouldn't pray at all.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.7

Sailing as a Heroic Symbol, written by Julius C. Evola.

"Agarttha, it is said, was not in fact always underground, and will not always remain so. According to Ossendowski’s report, a time will come when ‘the peoples of Agharti will come up from their subterranean caverns to the surface of the earth.’" - René Guénon, "King of the World"

¹ Now hear, O son of Prtha [Arjuna], how by practicing yoga in full consciousness of Me, with mind attached to Me, you can know Me in full, free from doubt.
² I shall now declare unto you in full this knowledge both phenomenal and noumenal, by knowing which there shall remain nothing further to be known.
³ Out of many thousands among men, one may endeavor for perfection, and of those who have achieved perfection, hardly one knows Me in truth.
⁴ Earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intelligence and false ego—altogether these eight comprise My separated material energies.
⁵ Besides this inferior nature, O mighty-armed Arjuna, there is a superior energy of Mine, which are all living entities who are struggling with material nature and are sustaining the universe.
⁶ Of all that is material and all that is spiritual in this world, know for certain that I am both its origin and dissolution.
⁷ O conquerer of wealth [Arjuna], there is no Truth superior to Me. Everything rests upon Me, as pearls are strung on a thread.

- Bhagavad Gita Chapter 7

"Mind is the highest exercise of our cognitive power by which we are able to know purely intelligible things: that is, realities that cannot be known by the senses directly. It is through mind that one can even come to knowledge of God. When the mind is directed toward God as its object it is called "intellect" and the truth discovered is called wisdom. Directed toward anything less than God, it is called "reason" and the truth discovered is called science."

~ 𝑶𝒏 𝑪𝒉𝒓𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑫𝒐𝒄𝒕𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒆, 𝒃𝒚 𝑺𝒕. 𝑨𝒖𝒈𝒖𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝑯𝒊𝒑𝒑𝒐

¹ Arjuna said: O Janardana, O Kesava, why do You urge me to engage in this ghastly warfare, if You think that intelligence is better than fruitive work?

² My intelligence is bewildered by Your equivocal instructions. Therefore, please tell me decisively what is most beneficial for me.

³ The Blessed Lord said: O sinless Arjuna, I have already explained that there are two classes of men who realize the Self. Some are inclined to understand Him by empirical, philosophical speculation, and others are inclined to know Him by devotional work.

⁴ Not by merely abstaining from work can one achieve freedom from reaction, nor by renunciation alone can one attain perfection.

⁵ All men are forced to act helplessly according to the impulses born of the modes of material nature; therefore no one can refrain from doing something, not even for a moment.

⁶ One who restrains the senses and organs of action, but whose mind dwells on sense objects, certainly deludes himself and is called a pretender.

⁷ On the other hand, he who controls the senses by the mind and engages his active organs in works of devotion, without attachment, is by far superior.

⁸ Perform your prescribed duty, for action is better than inaction. A man cannot even maintain his physical body without work.

- Bhagavad Gita Chapter 3

[Enter POSEIDON]
POSEIDON: Lo! From the depths of salt Aegean floods I, Poseidon, come, where choirs of Nereids trip in the mazes of the graceful dance; for since the day that Phoebus and myself with measurement exact set towers of stone about this land of Troy and ringed it round, never from my heart hath passed away a kindly feeling for my Phrygian town, which now is smouldering and o'erthrown, a prey to Argive prowess. For, from his home beneath Parnassus, Phocian Epeus, aided by the craft of Pallas, framed a horse to bear within its womb an armed host, and sent it within the battlements, fraught with death; whence in days to come men shall tell of 'the wooden horse,' with its hidden load of warriors. Groves forsaken stand and temples of the gods run down with blood, and at the altar's very base, before the god who watched his home, lies Priam dead. ... Farewell, O city prosperous once! farewell, ye ramparts of hewn stone! had not Pallas, daughter of Zeus, decreed thy ruin, thou wert standing firmly still.
[Enter ATHENA]
ATHENA: May I address the mighty god whom Heaven reveres and who to my own sire is very nigh in blood, laying aside our former enmity?
POSEIDON: Thou mayst; for o'er the soul the ties of kin exert no feeble spell, great queen Athena.
...
ATHENA: I wish to give my former foes, the Trojans, joy, and on the Achaean host impose a return that they will rue.
POSEIDON: Why leap'st thou thus from mood to mood? Thy love and hate both go too far, on whomsoever centred.
ATHENA: Dost not know the insult done to me and to the shrine I love?
POSEIDON: Surely, in the hour that Aias tore Cassandra thence.
ATHENA: Yea, and the Achaeans did naught, said naught to him.
...
ATHENA: When they have set sail from Ilium for their homes. On them will Zeus also send his rain and fearful hail, and inky tempests from the sky; yea, and he promises to grant me his levin-bolts to hurl on the Achaeans and fire their ships. And do thou, for thy part, make the Aegean strait to roar with mighty billows and whirlpools, and fill Euboea's hollow bay with corpses, that Achaeans may learn henceforth to reverence my temples and regard all other deities.
POSEIDON: So shall it be, for the boon thou cravest needs but few words. I will vex the broad Aegean sea; and the beach of Myconus and the reefs round Delos, Scyros and Lemnos too, and the cliffs of Caphareus shall be strown with many a corpse. Mount thou to Olympus, and taking from thy father's hand his lightning bolts, keep careful watch against the hour when Argos' host lets slip its cables. A fool is he who sacks the towns of men, with shrines and tombs, the dead man's hallowed home, for at the last he makes a desert round himself, and dies.

- Prologue to Trojan Women, Euripides