Archaeologists Found a Life-Size Fresco of a Mysterious Cult in Pompeii

Yahoo

04-03-2025

A nearly life-size fresco just discovered in Pompeii depicts the initiation rituals of the mystery cult of Dionysus, the god of wine and ecstasy.
The fresco was over 100 years old when the eruption of Mount Vesuvius destroyed the city.
In the room next door, archaeologists found a black reception area decorated with scenes from the Trojan War.
To say there's a lot of wine flowing across the nearly life-size fresco recently discovered in Italy's ash-buried Pompeii would be an understatement. And it should come as no shock that the beverage plays a major role in the artwork, as it's an ode to Dionysus, the god of wine and ecstasy.
But Dionysus is associated with more than just wine. He's also closely tied to an eponymous mystery cult, referred to as such because only those initiated into it knew the secrets.
When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D., it poured ash over Pompeii, freezing it in time. This unique preservation has made the city into a treasure trove of archaeological discoveries from the era. The fresco—found covering three walls of a banquet room in a residence dubbed 'Casa del Thiasus,' according to a statement from the Pompeii Sites organization—was roughly 100 years old when Vesuvius destroyed the city. Dated to between 40 and 30 B.C. at the time of the eruption, it depicts the initiation ritual necessitated to enter the cult, a process known as the Mysteries of Dionysus.
'Behind these magnificent paintings, which play with illusion and reality, we can observe the signs of a religious crisis that was affecting the ancient world,' said Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii and co-author of an initial study on the new discovery, according to a statement, 'but we can also grasp the grandeur of a ritual that dates back to an archaic world, at least until the second millennium B.C., to the god Dionysus worshipped by the Mycenaeans and the Cretans, who was also known as Zagreus, lord of wild animals.'
The painted scenes atop a red background show maenads, the female followers of Dionysus, as dancers and hunters with slaughtered goat kids on their bare shoulders and swords and goat intestines in their hands. Drunken woodland gods, called satyrs, play double flutes, while another sacrifices wine by squirting it into a bowl. At the center of the art is a clothed woman with an old Silenus (a god of wine-making and drunkenness and tutor to Dionysus) holding a torch. She appears as a mortal woman about to be initiated into the Mysteries of Dionysus through a nighttime ritual. The scene also features live and sacrificed animals, including a fawn and a boar, showing a mix of revelry and sacrifice.
'The question is, what do you want to be in life,' Zuchtriegel said at an unveiling of the site, according to Reuters, 'the hunter or the prey?'
Alessandro Giuli, Italy's Minister of Culture, said in a statement that the artwork provides an 'exceptional historical document and, together with the fresco of the Villa of the Mysteries [a similar painting discovered in Pompeii over 100 years ago] constitutes a one-of-a-kind, making Pompeii an extraordinary testimony to an aspect of life in classical Mediterranean life that is largely unknown.'
Zuchtriegel said that the Casa del Thiasus painting shows the 'wild, untameable side of women; the woman who abandons her children, the house and the city, who breaks free from male order to dance freely, go hunting and eat raw meat in the mountains and the woods; in other words, the direct opposite of the 'nice' woman who emulates Venus, the goddess of love and marriage, the woman who looks at herself in the mirror and 'dolls herself up.'''Both the frieze in the House of Thiasus and in the Villa of the Mysteries show a woman as suspended, as oscillating between these two extremes, two forms of the female being at the time,' Zuchtriegel continued, adding that while the painting has profound religious meaning, it was also designed to decorate a banqueting area and offer atmosphere for a feast 'rather like when we find a copy of Michelangelo's Creation of Adam on the wall of an Italian restaurant in New York.'
During the excavation, the team found a black reception room decorated with scenes from the Trojan War leading to the banquet hall. The frescoes were on three of the banquet hall's walls, with the fourth side of the room open to a garden. Nearby, the team located a shrine to the four seasons and a large bath complex.
The site is now open to visitors. Cult membership is not included in the price of admission.
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