The stories continuous from the boy reading
the liturgy to the figure that you see here.
It is a figure again of a woman, she is holding some kind of a dish.
And she has on that dish probably it's very hard to identify
exactly what's there.
But she has probably some items that have something to do with this cult,
with this mystical marriage of these Pompeian women with Dionysus.
She is dressed and she has a light colored top and a purple, there's a lot
of purple in this scene, a very vividly purple skirt as you can see down here.
She is the first woman of the group to wear a laurel wreath over her head,
as you can see.
And she and all of them, by the way, wear bracelets.
You can bracelets around her lower arms.
Some of them wear these arm bracelets up higher on their arms as we'll also see.
And she's one of the only figures that actually looks out at us, the spectator.
She really is basically confronting us.
We link eyes with her when we look at this particular painting,
and the artist is obviously trying to establish fairly early on,
a connection between the viewer and what is happening in this scene.
The beginning of another scene here with a series of women.
I have a better view of it here, where you can see what's happening next.
Here we have three women who are standing at some kind of a table.
And one of the women,
the woman on the right has a pitcher from which she's pouring some kind of liquid.
Whether it's water or wine or what, we're not absolutely sure.
It might well be wine, given that this is a mystery of Dionysius.
She may be pouring wine.
But whatever it is, it has been interpreted as a purification scene.
In which something, and we can't see what it is, that's underneath
this purple piece of cloth that one of the women is holding up and revealing.
They are purifying that, either an object or a series of objects on this table.
It's a wonderful depiction of these three women,
one woman holding the edge of the table over here and
looking to her compatriot who is pouring the liquid on this side.
And a real tour de force.
It's not so easy to depict a figure from the rear and make it work, but
this artist has done so.
A very monumental woman seated on a wonderful throne here,
with the purple hem as you can see down below.
But look at the way he's depicted her garment, it's tight in some places and
molds her body, and cascades in others.
She's also wearing a scarf that's tied back behind her head and
she too wears a laurel wreath over that scarf.
This woman has a laurel wreath as well.
So, they're purifying as part of this rite, they are purifying.
Three women are participating and purifying this object or objects here.
This woman has her, she's not really looking,
well she isn't looking at what she's doing.
As you can see, she doesn't seem to be watching the purification but
rather is looking at this fellow over here and given what he looks like I guess
that's not surprising, her glance is caught by him.
Now who is he?
He is what we call a Silenus, S-I-L-E-N-U-S, and
a Silenus is an older satyr, S-A-T-Y-R.
Who were the satyrs?
The satyrs were the compatriots of Pan,
P-A-N, compatriots of Pan.
And so a young Satyr grows up into an old Silenus, and you see that Silenus here,
and he's a very interesting figure.
You can see that he's completely naked and
in fact, they're naked men and naked women in this, as we'll see.
But it's interesting to see which ones are and which ones aren't.
He is, and you can see that this great purple mantle that he had
draped around his body has completely or almost completely fallen off.
He is playing a lyre as you can see here and
probably singing along with his lyre play.
And not only has his garment fallen off, but
you can see that he is not, one foot is on the pedestal on which,
well on a base on which the pedestal that supports the lyre is located.
But another leg has slipped off that pedestal.
Why is that?
He's quite tipsy.
We know that the Silenus, the Silenuses and the satyrs did a lot of drinking.
Very serious drinking.
He's clearly imbibed and he is not very much in control of himself any longer so
he's probably pretty oblivious to the fact that his clothing has fallen off and
that he too has slipped off the base as he sings.
So it's not surprising that this woman casts
her glance to the goings on next to her.
Here are the, I mentioned the satyrs, and
we see two of the young satyrs right next to that older man.
The satyrs again are associated with Pan.
And goats are also associated with Pan and
you can see one of them is feeding the goats here.
These young boys and is true of the man too,
I neglected to mentioned it, all have sort of Pan or animal ears.
As you can see very clearly here, the pointed animal ears.
And this one is playing a flute.
So one playing a flute, one feeding the goats,
both of them seated on a kind of rocky area over here.
This figure is of particular interest,
it's a woman clothed with a white garment that is sleeveless,
she has one of these bracelets on the upper part of her arm.
It is clear that she is afraid and she is fleeing from something.
You can see that she holds up her
