The new archaeological findings show that Pompeii still keeps innumerable treasures of incalculable value to understand life in ancient times. The last one that has been discovered is a large -dimensional fresco paint, executed almost at a natural size, and dedicated to Dionisio, the Greek god of wine and madness. Has appeared in a huge banquet room of a domus in the area where a new batch of excavations is currently being carried out. The drawings occupy the three walls of the stay (the fourth was open to the garden) and represent scenes of those known as Dionysian mysterieswhich were practices and rituals, generally reserved for initiated, to worship this enigmatic Greek divinity and in which dance and music are protagonists.
Very few wall paintings of this type are preserved, called Megalographies for its large size. The best known are in the town of the Mysteries of Pompeya, discovered a century ago and that precisely takes its name from the theme of the frescoes of its walls, also dedicated to the cult of Dionisio.
The new paintings, discovered in the Banquet Room that has been excavated in recent weeks, belong to the known as second Pompeyan style and are dated in the 1st century, specifically between the 40s and 30 AC this means that at the time of the eruption of Vesuvio, who buried Pompeii in 79 dc under tons of lapilli and ash and froze it over time, the fresh Dionisiac already had a century old.
In the images, in an excellent state of conservation, a procession appears in honor of Dionisio in which bacantes “Worshipers of the god Dionisio, also known as Bacchus,” are represented as dancers and also as fierce hunter, with a kid sacrificed on the shoulders or with a sword and the bowels of an animal in the hands. There are also young satyrs (faunos) of pointed ears that touch the flute or make a sacrifice spilling wine in honor of divinity (libation) with acrobatic positions. Some pour a jet of wine into a horn used to drink or in a glass. In the center of the composition there is a woman who holds an old torch. It is one initiationthat is, a mortal woman who, through a night ritual, is about to be initiated in the mysteries of Dionysus, the God who dies and rebors, and who promises the same to her flock.
The director of the Pompeya Archaeological Park, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, explained that from the work The bacontes From Euripides of the year 405 AC, one of the most popular and appreciated tragedies of antiquity, the hunt of dionysus bacantes “becomes a metaphor of an unbridled and ecstatic life, which aspires to ‘something different, something big and something visible “As the Euripides text choir says.” And he has pointed out: “In ancient times, the bacante expressed the wild and indomitable side of women; The woman who leaves her children, her home and her city, who leaves the male order, to dance freely, go hunting and eat raw meat in the mountains and forests; In short, the opposite of the ‘beautiful’ woman, who represents Venus, goddess of love and marriage, the woman who looks in the mirror, which makes her beautiful ‘. ” For Zuchtriegel, the paintings in Pompeii “show women as suspended, as oscillating between these two extremes, two ways of being a woman at that time.”
The director recalls that these Dionysian paintings have a deep religious meaning, although they were destined to decorate spaces for banquets and parties. “A little like when we find a copy of The creation of Adamby Miguel Ángel on the wall of an Italian restaurant in New York, to create atmosphere, ”he said. And he recalled the antiquatic and enigmatic cult of the figure of Dionisio: “Behind these wonderful paintings, with its game of illusion and reality, we can see the signs of a religious crisis that hit the ancient world, but we can also capture the greatness of A rituality that dates back to an archaic world, at least to the II Millennium AC, to the Dionysus of the Mycenaean and Cretan peoples, which was also called Zagreus, lord of wild animals. ”
Pompeya archaeologists highlight a curious detail of all the figures of the painting: they are represented on pedestals, as if they were statues, while, at the same time, their movements, complexion and clothing make them look very alive. Experts have baptized the domus that houses these paintings like the House of the Tíasoin reference to the delegation of Greek mythology that in the state of ecstasy venerates the god Dionisio. In ancient times there were a series of mysteric cults, including those dedicated to Dionisio, who could only access those who performed an initiation ritual, as represented in the Pompeii mural, to become the few who knew their secrets, of There the name of Dionysian mysteries. Archaeologists explain in a note that these rites were often linked to the promise of a new blissful life, both in this world, as in the hereafter.
An important novelty that this mural contributes, comparing it with that of the Villa de los Místerios, is that it adds another issue to the imaginary of the initiatory rituals in the cult of Dionisio: hunting. In this case, the issue is evoked not only by the hunter baconuts, but also by a second paint, smaller, that runs above the bacchants and satyrs in which live and dead animals are represented, including a cervatillo and a Just Eviscerated Jabali, roosters, various birds and also fish and mollusks.
Experts and authorities have celebrated this extraordinary discovery. “Within 100 years, today it will be remembered as historical, because it is the discovery we are showing is historical and exceptional, unique in its kind,” said the Minister of Culture, Alessandro Giuli. And he has highlighted the value of Pompeya, which last year received more than 4 million visitors, such as “an extraordinary testimony of an aspect in a large unknown part of the classic Mediterranean life.”
