A Study of a Dionysiac Sarcophagus :: Art

A Study of a Dionysiac Sarcophagus In the Los Angeles County Art Museum A man dies. He winds his way down into the underworld to reach the banks of the river Acheron where he meets the ferryman Charon. He takes a coin from his mouth to pay the toll across. On the opposite bank he is greeted by a Maenad or perhaps Bacchus himself who offers him a kylix of wine. Drinking deep, the man is transformed and resurrected from death to a higher plane. Instead of living a miserable dream in the underworld he receives redemption from his god Dionysos, the Savior. In Roman imperial times there was a great resurgence of the "Mystery" cults of Greece fueled by the hope of a life after death. In funerary monuments there can be seen the tenets of the religion as well as how it views the afterlife. Within the Los Angeles County Art Museum stands such a vessel created to facilitate this journey to eternal bliss. A gift from William Randolph Hearst, the piece is a sarcophagus from the Severan period of the Roman empire near the end of the second century detailing a procession of Dionysos, the god of wine, and his followers. Such a procession could be from Dionysos's messianic journeys or from his triumphal return from spreading the wine cult. Originally in the mausoleum of a wealthy family in Rome, the sarcophagus was in later times used as a planter for a flower bed(Matz, 3). This "misuse" of the piece explains the deterioration of the marble which necessitated extensive restoration in the 17th century(4). It is tub shaped with dimensions of 2.1 meters long and 1 meter wide, standing 0.6 meters from the ground. The shape is similar to tubs used for trampling grapes which had spouts ornamented with lions' heads to vent the wine(3). Being shaped like a wine vat makes the sarcopagi a transformative force in its own right by symbolically turning the person interned within into wine ! bringing hi m closer to the god. Unlike other sarcophagi of the period the back of this piece has not been left unhewn, but instead a strigal pattern of repeating "S" shapes has been carved, suggesting that the piece may have stood in the center of the mausoleum. Unlike other more famous and elaborate Dionysiac sarcophagi, such as the Seasons sarcophagi and the Triumph of Dionysos in Baltimore which portray specific pivotal events in the mythos of Dionysos, this piece gives us instead a somewhat generic slice of Bacchic life(Matz, 5).