Newly discovered frescoes in Pompeii showcase a wilder and even debaucherous side of ancient Rome’s women. The frescoes, deemed as a “megalography” given their nearly life-size scale, span three walls of a spacious banquet hall inside a home in Pompeii’s Region IX.
Aside from being an exceptionally rare example of a megalography, the unearthed frescoes are distinct in their depiction of the Dionysiac procession, which celebrates Dionysus, the god of wine, festivities, and ecstasy. Rituals honoring the god have historically been shrouded in mystery, given their strict initiation codes and penalties associated with sharing cult secrets. These frescoes, however, offer a clue into how Dionysiac rituals may have progressed.
Portrayed are several maenads—or female devotees of Dionysus—in a range of roles. They serve both as dancers as well as hunters with slaughtered goats draped across their shoulders or clutching swords and animal innards in their hands. Young satyrs with pointed ears play the double flute while another performs a wine sacrifice, squirting wine behind him from a drinking horn into a shallow bowl. The heart of the composition features a woman grasping a torch, indicating that she is a mortal on the verge of undergoing a Dionysiac initiation rite.
Taken altogether, the scenes are chaotic and, for Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the director of Pompeii Archaeological Park, reveal the “wild and untamable side of women.”
“[It’s] a metaphor for a wild, ecstatic life,” Zuchtriegel tells IFLScience. “In short, the opposite of the ‘pretty’ woman, who emulates Venus, goddess of love and marriage, the woman who looks at herself in the mirror, who ‘makes herself beautiful.’”
Archaeologists have named the residence with these frescoes the Casa del Tiaso (House of Thiasus), a reference to the Dionysiac procession (thiasos). The archaeological team has also determined that the frescoes date between 40 and 30 BCE, meaning that, at the time of the Vesuvius eruption in 79 CE, the compositions were already about 100 years old.
The only other megalography with similar rituals is a frieze in the Villa of Mysteries outside the gates of Pompeii. Casa del Tiaso’s frescoes, though, incorporate a novel theme that, until now, hasn’t yet been recorded in Dionysiac initiation rites: hunting. This hunting imagery is evoked both through the maenad hunters and a second smaller frieze running along the top of the one with the maenads and sartyrs. This smaller composition visualizes a brutal world of animal violence, including a gutted fawn and a wild boar.
“The megalograph in [Casa del Tiaso] provides another glimpse into the rituals of the mysteries of Dionysus,” Alessandro Giuli, the Minister of Culture, shares in a statement. “It is an exceptional historical document and, together with the fresco of the Villa of the Mysteries, constitutes a one-of-a-kind.”
To learn more about this fascinating discovery, visit the Archaeological Park of Pompeii website.
Newly discovered frescoes in Pompeii offer clues into Dionysiac rituals, which have long remained a mystery to archaeologists, historians, and classicists.
The frescoes depict chaotic scenes of ecstatic dancing, hunting, and merriment, all in honor of Dionysus, the god of wine and festivities.
These frescoes are extraordinarily rare in their depiction of Dionysiac rituals, given that they were kept strictly hidden from the uninitiated.
All images via the Archaeological Park of Pompeii Press Office.
Sources: Pompeii, Discovery Of A Room With Frescoes Depicting The Initiation Into The Mysteries And The Dionysiac Procession; Raunchy Paintings Show A Wine-Glugging Cult Of “Wild Women” At Pompeii
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