Who is the subject of this painting? Hint: Look for a divine face in the clouds.

Click on the photo or photo credit for the answer.

See more on the topic.

Wordless Wednesday and About.com's Wordless Wednesday

Subhamoy Das, About.com's Guide to Hinduism, sent out a newsletter with links to connections between Hinduism and Christmas. What do you think? Do the articles show legitimate connections?

• The Christ-Krishna Connection

  ...The birth of both Jesus of Nazareth and Krishna of Dwarka and their God-designed missions were foretold

  Both were divinely saved from death pronouncements

  Christ is often depicted as a shepherd; Krishna was a cowherd...

• Jesus Lived & Died in India

  Subhrajit Mitra's "The Unknown Story of the Messiah" [a docu-feature] lives off the popular alternative theory that Jesus had travelled to India after crucifixion, along with Mother Mary, studied Hinduism and Buddhism, and died in Kashmir where he was entombed....

• Christianity's Similarities with Hinduism

  ...Jesus sometimes wore an orange robe, the Hindu symbol of renunciation of the world, which was not a usual practice in Judaism.... Bells too, which cannot be found today in Synagogues, the surviving form of Judaism, are used in church-and we all know their importance in Buddhism and Hinduism for thousands of years, even up to the present day.

Or How Did the Peacock Get Its Tail?

Last week's Myth Monday gave the basics on the legends about the founding of Rome. One of the people closely associated with Rome's founding was the hero Aeneas.

Today's installment continues with the topic, tying the Italic people back to Argos, in the Peloponnese.

Read more...

On this day in Ancient History, the Saturnalia festival continued for the Romans, with merriment, gambling, and role reversals. This is also one of the days in which the Roman chthonic goddess Ops was honored with a festival named for her. Ops was the goddess of abundance, who came to be associated with Rhea/Gaia (Earth mother-titan), Demeter/Ceres (grain goddess), and her daughter Kore/Persephone/Proserpina. She was often paired with the god Consus at whose festival, in the early legends of Rome, the Sabine women were seized by the lusty young bachelors of the recently-founded city of Rome. She was also paired with Saturn perhaps because of their festivals' overlap.

• Rhea
• Ceres/Demeter
• Consualia

"This day in ancient history" caveat: please see Unreliability of Dates.