A new Villa of the Mysteries resurfaces in Pompeii

A "new" Villa of the Mysteries emerges from the excavations of Pompeii where a large banquet hall frescoed with a cycle of paintings that tell the story of the initiation to the Dionysian mysteries has come to light. Excavated in recent weeks in the central area of ​​Pompeii, the hall brings this frieze back to almost life-size, or a "megalography", just like in the Villa of the Mysteries and more than 100 years after its discovery, the large fresco sheds new light on the mysteries of Dionysus in the classical world. Archaeologists have in fact named the house with the frieze "house of the Thiasos", in reference to the procession of Dionysus. (continued)

The fresco decorates this large room on all three sides that do not overlook the garden and represents in almost life-size the procession of Dionysus, with the bacchantes, dancers and huntresses and with the young satyrs with pointed ears. At the center of the representation appears a 'nizianda, that is to say a mortal woman who, through a nocturnal ritual, is about to be initiated into the mysteries of Dionysus, the god who dies and is reborn, promising the same to his followers. "For the ancients, the bacchante expressed the wild and untamable side of women; 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 the Thiasos and that of the Mysteries show women as suspended, as if oscillating between these two extremes, two ways of being female at that time" explains the director of the archaeological park Gabriel Zuchtriegel