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8.3 The God of Wine and His Brides
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From the course by Yale University
Roman Architecture
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Exploring Special Subjects on Pompeian Walls
Painted renditions of special subjects inserted into Second through Fourth Style Roman wall paintings. These include mythological, landscape, genre, still life, and history painting, as well as painted portraiture. Highlights include the Dionysiac Mysteries paintings and the Riot in the Amphitheater, both from residences in Pompeii.
Meet the Instructors
Diana E.E. KleinerDunham Professor of History of Art and Classics at Yale University
History Of Art
The center, this, we're now on the back wall.
We've turned the corner.
It's the back wall, the wall that you face
when you come into the room and look ahead.
And we see that the scene that follows the silenus and
the satyrs with the mask is the scene that you see here.
And it is the most important scene in the painting, because it is
a scene that represents Dionysus himself, this man with whom all of these
Pompeian women are anxious to be initiated into his rites and to enter
into mystical marriage with him. Here he is, and he is wasted, clearly.
I mean, look at him.
You know, despite the fact that he's about to enter into marriage
with all these attractive young women, I mean, he's completely out of it.
He is lying in the lap of Ariadne, his mortal lover.
You see her here.
and, look at his eyes.
They're sort of rolled up, into the top of his head.
He is, he is, he couldn't possibly support himself without Ariadne's help.
His arms are, are, are outstretched behind him.
In fact, she has to put her arm around his chest in order to protect him, and I
think it's interesting to see the way in which
women are, are represented as protective beings in these paintings.
The, the woman ear,
earlier on who puts her hand around the boy who's reading from the liturgy,
and now Ariadne, who drapes her arm
around around Dionysus, Dionysus, the god of wine.
You can see again that he had a mantle and
that's about it on, but that is slipping off and
you can also see that he's so drunk that although
he's kept one sandal on, he's lost the other sandal.
You can see his bare foot over here. You're looking at the
bottom of the foot.
That sandal is gone, and if you look for it, you can find it.
Here it is.
It has fallen off, and it is located closer to Ariadne.
Look also at the staff that Dionysus usually carries.
The thyrsus of Dionysus,
it's there, and it helps to identify him, as does the ivy wreath that he wears,
that he typically wears.
Note the yellow ribbon that is tied around the thyrsus, but it
does, you know, one wonders how that thyrsus is being supported, because
you can see it's, I guess it's just leaning slightly against the
chair on which Dionysus sits, but one wonders how it is being supported.
But it crosses his body here and is
meant again as an identifying attribute for the god
of wine.
The fact that we see Dionysus in this state and also
on the lap of Ariadne is interesting, especially the lap of Ariadne.
Because again, she was his mortal, she herself was a mortal, his mortal lover.
And I think one of the ways of
interpreting this as, that, a scene like this,
seeing that Dionysus could unite with a mortal
woman gave hope to the women of Pompeii
who were hoping to be initiated into this mystical religion
and to embark on a mystical marriage with Dionysus, this gave them hope that if
another mortal woman was allowed to enter into a relationship with Dionysus, then
they too would be able to follow in their, in, in Ariadne's footsteps.
And so this is a very important message, I think, of hope to
those women who were hoping to become
initiatives, initiates, initiates of this particular cult.
The next scene that we see is also
a very interesting scene, and a very important one.
It's the one that comes right to the right of the scene of Dionysus and Ariadne.
And we see here the discovery of the most important cult object in
this scene, which is the phallus. We see a woman kneeling she is
she, her arms are wonderfully depicted as they seem to
barely touch whatever it is that lies beneath this purple cloth.
We see down below a basket that is certainly the basket in which the phallus,
the secret ritual, the most important, but secret
ritual item in the Dionysiac, religion was kept.
And there's been a lot of speculation what was behind the purple cloth.
Is it an erect phallus?
Very possibly, that's exactly what it is.
It would have been kept again, in this basket, that was underneath here.
Although the speculation has been so wild
that we even have a scholar who has written an article suggesting that the
profile of this particular obje, this particular cloth here, is so similar to
the profile of Mount Vesuvius that what we have here is a reference instead
to Mount Vesuvius and to the fact that this scene takes place in Pompeii.
It's a very intriguing idea, I think it's, I can't imagine that it's correct.
But nonetheless it gives you some sense
of the kind of scholarship and some of the speculation there has been about
what is actually going on here. But it seems to be the the
covering in this particular case, and possibly about to reveal
the secret, the most important secret item in this cult.
Over here we see another fascinating figure.
We've gotten to another corner and we
can see that she straddles the empty red space in that corner.
A figure of a woman who is winged; the
only winged figure that we see in these scenes.
You can see her large stretched, outstretched wings behind her.
She is naked from the waist up.
She's wearing a fantastic skirt. I love this skirt.
With with, she has with purple around the waist and purple at the hem and then a,
a wonderful, it flips out, it's brown, and it flips out, and
it matches these great tall boots brown boots that she also wears.
And she's sort of on her tippy-toes as she as she herself
puts up one of her hands, perhaps again to ward something off.
We don't know what.
But with the other hand, what's most important,
she has her hand behind her back, and she's
about to bring a whip, which you can see, down on the back of one of the initiates.
And as we look across the corner, again the artist masterfully
taking the corner into consideration in his design vis-a-vis the content.
And the execution we see the way in which
that whip is about to come down on the back
of one of these initiates, who's kneeling and has her
head in the lap of a woman who protects her.
Here is the scene.
So again we see the figure, the winged figure with the whip.
We see the object of the whipping this initiate here, she is kneeling.
She is in the lap in part of a woman who seems to protect her.
Or try to protect her.
The woman who is trying to protect her, her eyes
are very wide, she is staring up at the winged figure.
Imploringly, it seems almost imploring her,
please, you know, enough, enough, please stop.
And she is, she is very nurturing, to the young girl who is
undergoing this initiation as she pats her on the head as you can see here.
An incredible view of this woman.
The way in which the upper part of her body is exposed for the whipping.
The rest of it covered in a voluminous purple mantle as you can see here.
Also figures to her right a naked woman who is
who, who is placed in front of interestingly, a woman,
a very heavily clothed woman in a dark garment, which
only serves to accentuate the lightness of this women's flesh.
This, this sort of contrast or tension between clothed and unclothed
also seems to play a very important part in this particular painting.
But this woman is incredible.
Again, the artist has, has enjoyed trying to represent figures
from the rear as well as the from the front.
And you see he has also shown her on her tippy-toes as she
is, she, well, she has cymbals above her head and she's crashing those cymbals.
Then she is dancing on her tip, on her tiptoes down here.
But it's an incredible feat, because she also has this
this gold mantel that is over her shoulder and between her legs and somehow she's
keeping this mantel balanced as she is dancing and as she is playing her music.
And then there's another one of, another thyrsus of Dionysus that
seems to be located, that is located between these two women.
And one wonders again how in the world that
thyrsus is being held up as this woman is participating
in this in this dance and music making over here at the right.
To get back to this figure, I just want to show you a detail, because I think in this
detail, you really get, almost more than anywhere else in
this painted frieze, the extraordinary talent of this particular artist.
I mean, here, here the artist gets these hands really right.
You can see this, the limp hand
of the woman being whipped almost says it all.
It's an incredible detail.
As does, the more nurturing hand of the woman who is trying to protect her.
And I think you can get a sense of what she must be
going through by the way in which the artist has represented her face.
He has cast her eye.
Her eyes are, this is one of the only closed eyes,
if, it may be the only closed eye in the scene.
Her eye is closed or almost closed, and
it is, it is sunken, they seems to be sunken in a darkness here.
That gives you some sense of the pain, that this woman must be going through.
Pain that she obviously feels, however is worth it.
And look also at the way in which the hair
has been depicted here, you really get the sense of
sweat-drenched hair of this woman, again, who's going through what
is almost certainly the most difficult moment in her life,
but one that she hopes is going to to be well worth it at the end of the day.
It's an incredible detail I think.
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