therkalexander: Last Days of Pompeii part 1 I went to the...

Last Days of Pompeii part 1

I went to the Last Days of Pompeii exhibit at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco yesterday. Dionysos (Bacchus) greets you at the entrance.

This is a home water basin and two clay amphora. My hand is there for scale, almost but not quite touching the glass.

A fresco featuring oh so many birds and the heads of Ariadne and Dionysos watching over the festivities of the dining hall. A blurb about how the romans ate and the differences between their socialization and the way the Greeks socialized at meals.

A shrine for household gods.

A mural of Bacchus with a calm Vesuvius looming in the background, a portent of things to come.

A chicken eating a pomegranate!

This doesn’t have anything to do with Hades and Persephone or their worship in this particular instance, but I love the image because of the through-line with similar themes throughout southern Italy.

This was a mural typical in Roman banquet halls where they would show the main dish nibbling at the foods in which it was going to be cooked. Like an illustrated recipe. In this case it’s cockatrice in pomegranate sauce.