Back to section: Grapes and wine in Pompeii

Pastiche with grapevine tendrils

First half of the 1st century A.D.
Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale
Inv. 9266

 

Every detail evokes the Dionysian world: the vine heavy with bunches of grapes, the goat (preferred victim for sacrifice to the god, punished because it liked to feed on young grapevines) and the panther, an animal linked to him by their common eastern origins.

APPROFONDIMENTI

The dining room

Participating in the banquet, held in the triclinium, were three to nine diners, who occupied three couches arranged in the form of a horseshoe: the summus, the medius and the imus. The highest-ranking guest was given the place at the lower end of the medius, called the locus praetorius, while the host occupied the first place on the imus. The arrangement of the tables depended on that of the couches; if they were pushed together, the table was in the middle; if separated, there was a larger central table and two smaller ones beside the couches.