fuckindiva:Villa of the Mysteries’ Frescoes - The Villa of the Mysteries (Villa dei Misteri) is a we

fuckindiva:Villa of the Mysteries’ Frescoes - The Villa of the Mysteries (Villa dei Misteri) is a well-preserved suburban ancient Roman villa on the outskirts of Pompeii, famous for the series of exquisite frescos in one room, which are usually thought to show the initiation of a young woman into a Greco-Roman mystery cult (probably into the cult of Bacchus, women and satyrs are featured prominently). These are now among the best known of the relatively rare survivals of Ancient Roman painting. There are many different interpretations of the frescoes, but they are commonly believed to depict a religious rite. Another common theory is that the frescoes depict a bride initiating into the Bacchic Mysteries in preparation for marriage. x “It was a special meeting room, with wall containing paintings which suggest an initiation ceremony into the cult of Dionysus, by a would be bride of the God. The ceremony is intricately depicted, yet some things are hidden from us. A near naked child reads the holy word, the Logos, while the female priestesses attend and bring cake offerings.Some things are hidden from our eyes, such as perhaps the sacred symbolic phallus of the popular fertility god, which gets unveiled. The purification ceremony continues around the walls of the room, and includes ritual whipping, as well as the emerging bride, now purified and ready to take her place with the followers of the god. In the center of the back wall of the room, an apparently inebriated Dionysus reclines in the lap of what may be Ariadne, the bride he once rescued when she had been abandoned by the greek hero Theseus on the cycladic island of Naxos. The scene is second style, dates somewhere around 40, 30 BCE. The wall has been broken up as a flat surface, and the action now takes place on a stage. The sparse style of the figural detailing suggests artistic influence from the Hellenistic Greek world, at the end of the second and into the first century BCE.” - David Soren -- source link

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