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In recent months, excavations in Pompeii’s Insula 10, Regio IX, have uncovered several sections of a grand domus, including a black-walled dining room decorated with scenes from the Trojan War (CWA 125), a lararium or household shrine room (CWA 126), and a private bath complex (CWA 130). The latest find is the most spectacular yet: a large banqueting hall decorated with a frieze depicting Dionysus’ retinue or thiasus, which has given the domus the provisional name ‘the House of the Thiasus’.
Excavations revealed that 18th-century excavators had tunnelled into this room and removed most of its marble and its central mosaic, but they appear to have left its impressive wall paintings untouched. The painted frieze covers three walls – the fourth opens out on to a garden – and is a megalography, meaning that the figures depicted are almost life-sized. Executed in the Second Style, it has been dated to 40-30 BC, making it around a century old by the time Vesuvius erupted in AD 79.
Painted columns divide the frieze into 17 panels, each depicting a member of Dionysus’ entourage. The figures, shown standing on pedestals, alternate between bacchantes (female followers of the god of wine) and satyrs. Some are shown hunting or holding the remains of slaughtered animals, while others are playing instruments, dancing, or pouring wine. In the central panel, a woman in a green dress looks directly out at the viewer, the only figure in the composition to do so. She is accompanied by an old Silenus holding a torch, marking her out as an initiate, a mortal woman who is about to be inducted into the cult of Dionysus. Above the main figures is another, smaller frieze depicting an array of living and dead animals, reinforcing the importance of the theme of the hunt.
There is still considerable mystery surrounding the ancient cult of Dionysus – members were forbidden to share its secrets with the uninitiated, and depictions of its rituals are rare in the Classical world. Only one other comparable example is known in Pompeii, unearthed in 1909 in the Villa of the Mysteries, outside the city’s gates. Interpretations of this Dionysian scene remain much debated, and the discovery of a new frieze exploring similar themes will doubtless prove an invaluable addition to these conversations.
Archaeological investigations in the House of the Thiasus are nearing completion, but this remarkable revelation near the end of the project has surprised and excited researchers, and represents an important contribution to studies of an aspect of Roman life that remains enigmatic to this day.
Text: Amy Brunskill / Images: courtesy of the MIC – Archaeological Park of Pompeii
