Pompeii, a large frescoed banquet hall with megalography dedicated to the procession of Dionysus emerged

More than a century after the discovery of the Villa of the Mysteries, during recent excavations conducted in the central area of the Pompeii Archaeological Park, in insula 10 of Regio IX, a large banquet hall decorated with a monumental frieze with almost life-size figures, or a "megalography“ (from the Greek megálos ”large“ and graphía ”painting"), emerged. The frieze, which decorates three walls of the room while the fourth faced a garden, depicts a lively Dionysian procession.

The scene depicts the procession of Dionysus, god of wine: Bacchae, painted either as dancers or as proud hunters, carry a slaughtered kid on their shoulders or with a sword and animal entrails in their hands. Young satyrs with characteristic pointed ears play the double flute, while another pours wine backward from a potentory horn into a patera, acrobatically performing a ritual libation. In the center of the composition, a woman accompanied by an old Silenus holding a flashlight stands out: she is an initianda, that is, a mortal woman about to be initiated into the mysteries of Dionysus through a nocturnal ritual. A fascinating element of the frieze is that all the figures are depicted on pedestals, as if they were statues, and yet, thanks to the dynamic gestures, skin tones, and rendering of textiles, they appear incredibly alive and in motion.

Archaeologists have named this dwelling the House of Thiasos, in reference to the festive procession of the god Dionysus. In antiquity, several cults, including the Dionysian cult, were reserved exclusively for those facing an initiation, as suggested by the Pompeii frieze. These cults were known as “mystery” cults precisely because their teachings were accessible only to initiates. They often promised worshippers a destiny of happiness both in life and in the afterlife.

The fresco found is attributable to the II Style of Pompeian painting, datable to the first century B.C., and more precisely between the years 40 and 30 B.C. At the time of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, the frieze was thus already a century old.
The only other known example of a megalography depicting Dionysian mystery rites is the famous frieze of the Villa of the Mysteries, located just outside Pompeii and also decorated in the II Style. However, the new frieze brings an additional element to the depiction of Dionysian rituals: hunting. The hunting theme is evoked not only by the bacchae portrayed as hunters, but also by a second, smaller frieze that runs above the main scene. Various animals, both living and dead, are depicted here: a fawn, a freshly quartered boar, roosters, various birds, as well as fish and shellfish.

“A hundred years from now, today’s day will be experienced as historic, because historic is the discovery we show,” said Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli. “The megalography found in insula 10 of Regio IX opens another glimpse into the rituals of the mysteries of Dionysus. It is an exceptional historical document and, together with that of the Villa of the Mysteries, they constitute a one-of-a-kind, making Pompeii an extraordinary testimony to a largely unknown aspect of Mediterranean classical life. All of this makes the resumption of excavation activities in Pompeii important and valuable, which the government wholeheartedly supports and for which it recently allocated 33 million euros for excavation, planned maintenance, restoration and enhancement works at this site and in the surrounding area. We are living an important moment for Italian and world archaeology, which has also registered a strong increase in visitors, starting with this Archaeological Park: more than 4 million 87 thousand admissions in 2023 and 4 million 177 thousand in 2024.”

“The hunt for the Bacchae of Dionysus,” explained Pompeii Archaeological Park Director Gabriel Zuchtriegel, co-author of an initial study of the new find published in theE-Journal of the Pompeii Excavations, "starting with Euripides’ Bacchae of 405 B.C., one of the most beloved tragedies of antiquity, becomes a metaphor for an unrestrained, ecstatic life that aims at ’something different, something great and something visible,’ as the chorus in Euripides’ text puts it. For the ancients, the bacchante expressed the wild and untamable side of woman; the woman who abandons her children, home and city, who steps out of the male order, to dance free, go hunting and eat raw meat in the mountains and forests; in short, the opposite of the ’pretty’ woman, who emulates Venus, goddess of love and marriage, the woman who looks at herself in the mirror, who ’makes herself beautiful. Both the frieze of the House of Thiassus and that of the Mysteries show woman as suspended, as oscillating between these two extremes, two modes of female being in those times. They are frescoes with a deeply religious meaning, but here they had the function of adorning spaces for banquets and feasts ... a bit like when we find a copy of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam on a wall of an Italian restaurant in New York, to create some atmosphere. Behind these marvelous paintings, with their play with illusion and reality, we can see signs of a religious crisis that was sweeping the ancient world, but we can also grasp in them the grandeur of a ritual that goes back to an archaic world, at least as far as the second millennium B.C., to the Dionysus of the Mycenaean and Cretan peoples, who was also called Zagreus, lord of the wild animals."

The Dionysian Thiasos environment will be visible to the public as of now as part of the site visits. Every day from Monday to Friday at 11 a.m. (with prior reservation at 327 2716666) it will be possible to enter in two groups of 15 people, accompanied by site staff who will explain the main findings and environments that have emerged and the methodology of excavation. To access the visits it will be necessary to have a regular ticket to the archaeological park.

Tonight on Raiuno at 9:30 p.m. Alberto Angela will dedicate an in-depth strip precisely to these latest discoveries in the Pompeii Archaeological Park.

Pompeii, a large frescoed banquet hall with megalography dedicated to the procession of Dionysus emerged

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