A 'new' Villa of the Mysteries has
emerged from the excavations at the Pompeii archaeological site,
officials said on Wednesday.
The newly found residence has a large banquet hall frescoed with
a cycle of paintings depicting initiation into the Dionysian
Mysteries.
The site's well-preserved, world famous Villa of the Mysteries
takes its name from a depiction of the same initiation of a
bride into a Greco-Roman mystery cult.
Excavated in recent weeks in the central area of Pompeii, the
new room shows this frieze at almost life size, or a
'megalography', just as in the Villa of the Mysteries, which was
discovered over 100 years ago.
The large fresco sheds new light on the Dionysian Mysteries in
the classical world.
Archaeologists have christened the dwelling with the frieze
'House of Thiasus', referring to the retinue of Dionysus, the
God of wine-making.
The fresco decorates the three walls of the room that do not
look out onto the garden and shows Dionysus's followers,
dancers, female huntresses and satyrs with pointed ears.
At the centre is a mortal woman who, through the ritual, is
about to be initiated into the mysteries of Dionysus.
"For the ancients, the Dionysus followers expressed the wild,
indomitable side of women; the opposite of the 'pretty woman',
who emulates Venus, the goddess of love and marriage, the woman
who looks at herself in the mirror, who 'makes herself
beautiful'," said Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the director of the
archaeological park.
"Both the frieze of the house of Thiasus and that of the
Mysteries show the woman suspended, as if oscillating between
these two extremes, these two ways of being female in those
times".
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