By The Big Magazine Staff
Archaeologists have made a 'stunning' recovery of a banquet room decorated with beautiful frescoes of mythological characters inspired by the Trojan War in the southern Italy ancient city of Pompeii, which was preserved under a blanket of ash and smoke from Mount Vesuvius volcano eruption in 79 A.D.
The room was a community banquets or dining room according to the Pompeii archaeological park. The walls of the room were painted black to prevent the smoke from oil lamps being seen, explained Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the director of the Pompeii archaeological park.
“People would meet to dine after sunset; the flickering light of the lamps had the effect of making the images appear to move, especially after a few glasses of good Campanian wine,” he said in the same statement Thursday.
The 15-metre-long, six-metre-wide room was found in a former private residence in Via di Nola, which was ancient Pompeii’s longest road, during excavations in the Regio IX area of the site.
Zuchtriegel explained in a statement that the mythological figures had the explicit function of entertaining guests and providing talking points during feasts.
In a different fresco, Apollo is seen making romantic advances towards the priestess Cassandra. In his attempt to win her affection, Apollo gave her the gift of foresight, but after she rejected him, he cursed her so that no one would trust her prophecies. As a result, she was unable to thwart the tragic events of a battle she had prophesied. Following her rape during the fall of Troy, Cassandra was enslaved.
The artworks are “third style”, or ornate style, and dated between 15BC and AD40-50. The ruins of Pompeii were found in the 16th century, and excavation work started in 1748. Pompeii ranks as the world’s second most-visited archaeological site.
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