Art History ISSN 0141-6790 Vol. 25 No. 1 February 2002 pp. 87±112 Viewing, Desiring, Believing: confronting the divine in a Pompeian house Verity Platt Why did I see the thing? Why did I make my eyes guilty? Why, thoughtlessly, did I harbour knowledge of wrongdoing? Actaeon unwittingly beheld the naked Diana . . .1 (Ovid, Tristia II.103±5) The pleasures of voyeurism are vicariously experienced in a broad range of contexts in Roman art. One thinks of the observers painted within mythological tableaux in the frescoes of Campania, or the frisson created for the viewer of the Warren Cup by the boy's head peering round a door in the background.2 The voyeur within the image reflects the external viewer, so drawing one into the scene there depicted, yet simultaneously emphasizing our distance from and superiority to the thing beheld. We have the power to accept or reject the invitation; to view voyeuristically is to feel that one has a certain control over what is seen.3 However, as Ovid warns us in my epigraph, to view is not always to be a safely objective observer; sometimes, the object which one views can look back, and, caught in the act of observing, the viewer's vicarious position is undermined: we are actively implicated in the events which we behold. Actaeon's fate is not only a result of the fact that he saw what he should not have seen, but that Diana beheld him in the act of viewing. And, as Ovid insinuates with a hint of selfdramatization, myth and reality can mirror each other in disturbing ways.4 As Bartsch's study of theatricality in the age of Nero has demonstrated, the relationship between performer and audience was often subverted in Imperial Roman society, to the extent that `the categories of spectacle and spectator lose all stability.'5 In such a culture, the gaze holds both power and danger for him who beholds, and him who is beheld. The meeting of gazes can be an occasion fraught with anxiety about the confrontation of Self and Other and the potential for the onset of desire, shame, violence and the loss of autonomy.6 In this paper I will explore the way in which the complexities of the gaze are explored by a series of 4th Style mythological paintings in Pompeii II.2.2-5 (called variously the House of Octavius Quartio, or Loreius Tiburtinus).7 Here, issues of desire related to the power of naturalistic art are provocatively intertwined with religious iconography and the dimension of the symbolic in a manner which challenges and problematizes the viewer's response to the images with which he is ß Association of Art Historians 2002. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. 87 CONFRONTING THE DIVINE IN A POMPEIAN HOUSE 26 Plan of the portico area of II.2.2±5 (V. Platt). presented. Architecture and decorative scheme work together so that the implicit dangers of voyeurism are presented as a series of tableaux sited within the world of mythology, which are ultimately made more relevant to the spectator through their juxtaposition with the imagery of cult. This creates a dynamic dialectic between viewer and image which raises interesting questions about the relationship between naturalistic art and religious modes of viewing. My reading of the images engages with the normative, male Roman viewer. Implicit countercultural viewings which take gender and class into account would doubtless function in different ways, but due to lack of space I concentrate on the way in which the images comment on visuality itself through the engagement of potential male heterosexual and homosexual desires. At the back of Pompeii II.2.2±5, overlooking a long euripus (an ornamental water channel) adorned with sacro-idyllic features, a series of mythological paintings are arranged around a raised portico. This colonnaded area itself has a smaller euripus which stretches from a fountain in an aedicula flanked by dining couches (a biclinium) on the east side, to a small room on the west decorated with Isiac images (plate 26). The aedicula is framed by an image of Narcissus entranced by his reflection on the north side, and Thisbe committing suicide over the dying body of Pyramus on the south, while a lion runs into the distance (plate 27). The entrance to the Isiac chamber is framed by the figure of Actaeon attacked by his hounds on the north, and a crouching nude Diana on the south. All three scenes depict a problematic confrontation, a meeting of gazes, between two individuals (in the case of Narcissus, between himself and his reflection), which results in death. The confrontations between self and other, lover and beloved which are presented in the panels of Narcissus and Pyramus and Thisbe, are reflected and magnified at the other end of the portico by the confrontation between Man and God in the larger forms of Diana and Actaeon, each isolated in a long panel flanking the doorway. Together the three scenes 88 ß Association of Art Historians 2002 CONFRONTING THE DIVINE IN A POMPEIAN HOUSE 27 The aedicula at the east end of the portico, framed by the Narcissus panel on the left, and the Pyramus and Thisbe panel on the right. Photograph: Soprintendenza Archaeologia de Pompei. constitute a mythological and visual commentary on the power of the gaze. Moreover, each of these scenes is related to its context in such a way that it draws in the viewer, triangulating the relationship between subject and object so that we, as Ovid, will potentially fall prey to the dangers of viewing itself.8 All three myths can be found in close proximity in Books III±IV of the Metamorphoses.9 As we do not find any visual images of Pyramus and Thisbe prior to the publication of the poem in the early first century AD, it is fair to say that Ovid was probably an inspiration at some stage in the selection and creation of the decorative scheme.10 However, the images show significant departures from the literary text which demonstrate that the artist has not simply created a set of illustrations, but has independently selected and portrayed a set of mythological encounters as a unified group closely tied to their actual context.11 That the painter of these images was conscious, and proud, of his role as their creator is demonstrated by the fact that he has signed his work (the only known example of a painter's signature in Pompeii) with the inscription `LUCIUS PINXIT', on the stone couch below the Pyramus and Thisbe panel (plate 28).12 With the role of the artist thus emphasized, our role as viewer, and the viewing process itself, are thrown into relief. It is almost as if the artist, creating his paintings to be displayed and observed, is viewing us, as ß Association of Art Historians 2002 89 CONFRONTING THE DIVINE IN A POMPEIAN HOUSE 28 Panel depicting the artist's signature Lucius pinxit (`Lucius painted this'), Pompeii II.2.2±5. Photograph: Soprintendenza Archaeologia di Pompei. we view a set of images which are themselves about viewing; thus artist and spectator are implicated in the complex, anxiety-producing dialectic between observer and observed which the images explore. The context of the paintings is one of otium; the extravagant use of water in the euripus, the biclinium and the long, carefully designed garden all evoke an atmosphere of cultured leisure. But the house is also self-consciously sited within the religious and the political spheres. The sacro-idyllic structures of the garden and portico (tempietti, aediculae and nymphaea) and the room decorated with Isiac paintings point to cult and ritual more than is usual in a domestic Roman house.13 The relief carving of a corona civica (the oak-leaf garland which signified imperial religious authority) above the entrance to II.2.4 suggests that the insula was owned by an Augustalis (a priest of the Imperial Cult). This link to the imperial court is perhaps echoed by the Iliadic frieze in the oecus of II.2.2±5, which was a popular decorative feature among municipal elites in the first century 14 AD after it was painted in Nero's Domus Transitoria. The paintings are thus located within a nexus of relationships in Roman society, adorning the domestic space of a family conscious of its cultural, political and religious identities on both a local and national level. The wealthy municipal Roman both controlled and was subject to the gaze of society, was himself both viewer and viewed.15 In a culture as visually aware, and as self-conscious, as that of first-century AD Italy, it is perhaps no surprise to find in the home of a high-profile townsman an emphasis on the potential dangers of such visuality. Unusually for 4th Style Campanian wall-painting, each confrontation is depicted stripped of the voyeuristic subsidiary characters which often crowd mythological narratives as an audience within the frame with which the viewer can identify.16 Moreover, Narcissus is not accompanied by Echo or Cupid, unlike many other Pompeian depictions; Diana has no nymphs to protect her, in contrast to Ovid's account. Each panel, typically of the 4th Style, brings its protagonists to the frontal plane as near-life-size figures rather than dwarfing them within a sacro-idyllic landscape. The panels fill the spaces they adorn and are not accompanied by subsidiary architectural ornament. They are all linked by the motif of water (Narcissus's spring, the meeting place of Pyramus and Thisbe, the pool where Diana bathes), but in each case, the water which defines the place of 90 ß Association of Art Historians 2002 CONFRONTING THE DIVINE IN A POMPEIAN HOUSE confrontation is provided by the euripus on the portico itself, and, with the exception of Narcissus's reflective pool, is not actually portrayed within the painting. In short, there is nothing to distract the viewer from the stark image each painting presents of a static meeting of gazes which coincides with, and even creates, the moment of tragedy. The large figures are not depicted with movement and vitality but instead are frozen in mid-action, projected into the viewer's space with a force which challenges and ultimately implicates us in their fate. The motif of the desirous gaze which brings death is anticipated and framed by a panel on the north wall of the portico, of which only the bottom half remains, depicting Orpheus playing his lyre to a lion. He, too is in the Metamorphoses, where he is depicted in Books X and XI charming the trees and beasts with his songs of the fatal desires of other mythical characters, following his failed trip to the Underworld to rescue Eurydice.17 And Orpheus too is often associated with watery contexts.18 His own enterprise failed, significantly, due to his fatal glance at his beloved which caused her (second) death, and, ultimately, Orpheus's own violent murder at the hands of the women he subsequently spurned. Just like Narcissus, Pyramus, Thisbe and Actaeon, Orpheus made a fatal mistake when he `lovingly directed his gaze' (`flexit amans oculos' Met. X.57), which resulted in the destruction of both himself and his beloved. Orpheus being the artist par excellence, his song in the portico can be read as a symbol for the work of Lucius the painter, an artistic production warning of the dangers of the desirous gaze. Beside him was a (now-lost) panel of Venus standing on a conch shell, a personification of desire itself, forever reborn as our desires shift and change, and forever fired by the amorous gaze.19 Together on the entrance wall of the portico, Venus and Orpheus act as a kind of prologue to the scenes of tragic viewing which take place within. The image of Narcissus is a potent expression of the complex relationship between Self and Other, lover and beloved, viewer and image (plate 29). This is demonstrated not only by Ovid's account of the myth, but also by Philostratus and Callistratus, who both use ecphrasis as a means of exploring the visual paradox inherent in an image which portrays a viewer transfixed by an image.20 The emphasis on reflection, reciprocity and ambiguity we find in the literary accounts is here communicated by the image's complex relationship to its context, through which Narcissus presents a twofold danger to the viewer. The painting's position next to the euripus is a reminder that the viewer might catch sight of himself in the water and lose himself in solipsistic desire. Indeed, the background of the painting, with its combination of architectural detail, pool and leafy locus amoenus, is remarkably similar to the portico's setting between house and garden and there is every possibility that we, too, `drawn by the beauty of the spring and the location', will fall prey to the same fate (Met. III.414).21 Alternatively, the beauty of Narcissus's pale, undulating flesh might draw us into appreciative contemplation of his naked body, whether this be fuelled by voyeuristic desire to possess him or `narcissistic' desire to be `like' him.22 Indeed, it is almost as if Narcissus is inviting us to lose ourselves in the contemplation of his image. Although the painting concentrates on the relationship between the boy and his reflection, excluding Echo and Cupid, Narcissus holds his head erect rather than looking down into the water.23 His gaze is painted as if to look out into the viewer's space, triangulating the relationship, implicating us in his fate ß Association of Art Historians 2002 91 CONFRONTING THE DIVINE IN A POMPEIAN HOUSE 29 Narcissus, Pompeii II.2.2±5. Photograph courtesy of the Deutsches Archaeoligisches Institut. and raising the question of who, in fact, is seduced by whom. Drawn in by the beauty of the image, blinding ourselves to its artificiality and falling prey to the naturalistic deceit wrought by the painter, we too are `seduced by the image of a shape we have seen' (Met. III.416).24 However, when we glance away from the beautiful form of Narcissus to look more closely at the reflection which has so enthralled him, we find an ambiguous kind of image which complicates our reaction to the painting still further. The reflected face of Narcissus does not simply reduplicate his beauty upside-down, but is instead a more sinister, Medusa-like image; whereas Narcissus faces the viewer at a slight angle, his eyes half-closed in an expression of languor, his reflection is a frontal, wide-eyed, almost distorted face with wild hair.25 In his discussion of Lucius's oeuvre L. Richardson jr. assumes the deformities of the reflection are simply an example of bad painting.26 Yet need we be so reductive in our reading of the image? The reflection is almost apotropaic in its grotesqueness, a warning perhaps of the potential danger of beholding oneself too closely; as in The Picture of Dorian Grey, the image presented to us might not be quite what we wish to see.27 The distorted reflection also raises the question of what it is, in fact, that we desire; it is the reflection that has aroused Narcissus's love, but the reflection does not conform to the naturalistic ideal beauty of which Narcissus is 92 ß Association of Art Historians 2002 CONFRONTING THE DIVINE IN A POMPEIAN HOUSE 30 Perseus and Andromeda, Museo Nazionale di Napoli. Photograph courtesy of the Deutsches Archaeologisches Institut. meant to be a supreme example. Instead, it refers to quite a different visual tradition ± that of the schematic, apotropaic Gorgon, an image which through its symbolic representation of `the Other' has a fascinatory effect upon the viewer, which quite literally petrifies us, holds us captive.28 The Gorgon embodies the power of the gaze itself, and, as the myth of Perseus demonstrates, can only be safely viewed as a reflection. The intimate, and potentially dangerous, relationship between the gaze, reflection and desire is explored in Pompeii not only by images of Narcissus, but also by several images which depict Perseus and Andromeda beholding a reflection of Medusa's head in a pool of water, fascinated by the power of the monstrous Other which has brought them together (plate 30).29 Although both images portray the ambiguous power of the Other both to fascinate and destroy, the Perseus and Andromeda scene is almost a reversal of the Narcissan tragedy. The force of the gaze has in fact made ß Association of Art Historians 2002 93 CONFRONTING THE DIVINE IN A POMPEIAN HOUSE possible their union because its potential powers of destruction have been directed against a different representation of the Other in the guise of a sea-monster.30 While the scene perhaps hints at a sinister force at work within the relationship between lover and beloved (the Gorgon is still worryingly present, and powerful), it yet emphasizes the safe `otherness' of reflection, in contrast to the dangers of reality. However, in Narcissus's situation the categories of Self and Other, Reality and Reflection, have become confused; Narcissus has confronted the gaze of the Gorgonian Other within his very Self, and his misunderstanding of its nature will result in his own self-annihilation.31 With his static pose within the artfully created locus amoenus the youth does almost represent a stone image (as if he has been petrified by his Gorgonian reflection), a sculpture within a garden, as Ovid's Narcissus, who seems to be `a statue shaped from Parian marble'.32 The chilling nature of the confrontation of Self and Other may be made more palatable for the viewer by the naturalistic beauty of the image, and the distancing effect achieved by the representation of a possible sculptural image within a painted image. Yet it is this very naturalistic beauty which triangulates the relationship and draws the viewer's own gaze into its dialectic of desire, ultimately leading to our own confrontation of the fascinatory image in the pool. To confront our own `Other', the image implies, all we need do is glance into the euripus while we are dining, but to do so is to risk our own petrification. As an image which explores the potential danger of viewing and desiring the Other, the painting of Narcissus sheds light upon the other images in the portico. Just as Narcissus is drawn into a tragic misunderstanding as a result of the desire which is aroused when he views the Other in the form of his reflection, so Pyramus's desire for Thisbe leads him to misinterpret her bloodied veil, and to commit suicide, thinking that she has been attacked by a lion (plate 31). In each situation, the gaze which has aroused desire has clouded judgement and brought about a tragic meÂconnaissance; both Narcissus and Pyramus have failed to read correctly the signs which characterize their confrontation with the object of their desire, and in each case, their failure to do so results in death.33 Both images explore the complex way in which Self relates to Other, and the idea that the Other we behold and the Other we actually desire are rarely one and the same. While Narcissus illustrates an anxiety that desire for another is always in some form a sublimated kind of autoeroticism, the mutual suicide of Pyramus and Thisbe illustrates a situation in which desire for the other so annihilates our sense of self that we would rather die than live without our beloved. Whereas Narcissus presents us with an image of sameness and hints at the desire aroused by the homosexual gaze, the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe is depicted as the union of physical, heterosexual opposites. Pyramus's dark, masculine, muscular body is contrasted with his beloved's pale, feminine, fleshy curves. Yet while the solipsistic gaze of Narcissus results in paralysis and dematerialization, the heterosexual gaze of Pyramus and Thisbe, which is focused upon a physical other, is portrayed in terms of active violence and bloody death. While Thisbe plunges a dagger into her chest over the bloodied body of her dying beloved, the lion which has interrupted and confused their rendezvous runs off into the 94 ß Association of Art Historians 2002 CONFRONTING THE DIVINE IN A POMPEIAN HOUSE 31 Pyramus and Thisbe, Pompeii II.2.2±5. Photograph courtesy of the Deutsches Archaeologisches Institut. distance. As with Actaeon and Diana, the potentially desirous gaze does not lead to sexual possession, but to death from phallic weapons and encounters with violent beasts; images of the wild and bestial are yoked to the human drama of violence and desire.34 The confrontation between Self and Other which is represented in each image necessarily involves a brush with the world outside our own subjective desires, which breaks through in the form of violence and, ultimately, death.35 Yet despite the imagery of unrestrained bestiality (enhanced by a large paradeisos scene of wild animals round the corner on the west side of the portico), ß Association of Art Historians 2002 95 CONFRONTING THE DIVINE IN A POMPEIAN HOUSE destruction in each image emanates, disturbingly, from the Self. The lion is not directly responsible for the death of Pyramus and Thisbe ± they themselves commit bloody suicide; Narcissus's fate is a direct result of his own selffascination; Actaeon is killed at the hands of his own, tamed hounds. Hunting is a recurring theme in each painting (Narcissus, Pyramus and Actaeon are all depicted with long spears), an erotically charged activity which leads the hero into the ambiguous space of the locus amoenus, where anything can happen.36 However, the weapons the youths carry help them little against the power of the gaze itself to entrap and ultimately destroy them. In each situation, death results from what each character has seen. Ovid's account of Pyramus and Thisbe repeatedly refers to their love as `hidden'.37 Yet when they finally arrange to meet, the lovers only behold each other in death. As in Ovid's text (but uniquely in Pompeian portrayals of the myth), Pyramus has not quite passed away; `at the sound of Thisbe's name Pyramus raised his eyes which were heavy with death' (Met. IV.146±7).38 Thus at the moment of self-destruction, the lovers' gazes finally meet in tragic recognition of their error. The consummation of their desire is denied and re-presented as suicide through (phallic?) stabbing; the object of the gaze and the object of desire coincide only at the moment of self-destruction.39 As with the image of Narcissus, the relationship between lover and beloved in the painting of Pyramus and Thisbe is triangulated with the viewer. The baroque combination of desire, nudity and violence creates an arresting, heady image, and we are drawn into the desirous gaze which is held within the painting. The two images function as a kind of diptych on either side of the biclinium; they offer an erotic choice to the diner within the ambiguous space of the constructed locus amoenus, which is constructed as a point within the triangulation of the homosexual or heterosexual gaze. The viewer can narcissistically identify with, or sexually desire, either the hard masculinity of Pyramus, the soft feminine curves of Thisbe, or the mediating figure of the effeminate Narcissus, who is both lover and beloved, active and passive, self and other.40 Yet each erotic option lures the viewer into its dialectic of desire only to reveal the dangers of such confrontation. The distinction between active and passive, viewer and viewed, is broken down, as even the tough masculinity of Pyramus is shown to be mastered and penetrated by the desirous gaze in the form of the violent suicide which has lacerated his naked body. Thus whatever form of viewing we choose, we too will be potentially drawn into the dialectic of desire, will be, as is Narcissus, seized by the image of a form beheld. While the two smaller images of Narcissus, Pyramus and Thisbe locate the dangers of confronting the Other in the power of the romantic gaze, the potential violence and tragedy they explore is reflected and magnified in the confrontation between man and god represented by Actaeon's fatal epiphany of the naked Diana (plates 32 and 33). To behold a divine being is to confront the Other in its most potent form. If to view something is to have a certain mastery over it, then Actaeon's visual possession of Diana is an example of the gaze at its most transgressive, particularly as his voyeurism is tinged with eroticism. This particular visual representation of the Actaeon myth emphasizes the transgressive, violent power of the gaze more potently than any other example in Pompeii. It is only in Roman art of the Imperial period that Diana is actually 96 ß Association of Art Historians 2002 CONFRONTING THE DIVINE IN A POMPEIAN HOUSE 32 (left) Diana, from the portico of Pompeii II.2.2±5. Photograph: Soprintendenza Archaeologia de Pompei. 33 (right) Actaeon, from the portico of Pompeii II.2.2±5. Photograph: Soprintendenza Archaeologia de Pompei. depicted nude; most earlier versions of the myth concentrate on the moment of punishment and depict Artemis/Diana as clothed.41 However, although most painted examples in Pompeii portray a nude Diana open to visual possession by the viewer, they depict Actaeon's face appearing over a crag at the rear of the image.42 Thus the viewer is given a privileged, and by implication, less transgressive view into the goddess' space, while the transgressive viewer within the myth is reduced to peering into the scene from an inferior position within the painting. Most 3rd Style representations locate the myth in a sacro-idyllic landscape with very small figures, and often two tableaux ± vision and punishment ± within the same pastoral frame.43 As E.W. Leach has demonstrated, the variety of different forms of the Actaeon myth in art and literature `shows it to have been an inherently flexible one with a high potential for incorporating moral ambiguity and an unusual susceptibility to ß Association of Art Historians 2002 97 CONFRONTING THE DIVINE IN A POMPEIAN HOUSE individual interpretation'.44 Lucius, our painter in Pompeii II.2.2±5, has selected and rejected various elements to create a unique tableau which absorbs and comments upon the dangers of the gaze in relation to the other panels in the portico, emphasizing the paintings' status as a unified group with a particular message for the viewer. The house actually has two representations of the myth (dating to the same period and possibly both by Lucius). These form a unique pair in that each depicts the goddess and the mortal in separate panels flanking an architectural feature; the portico tableau is placed on either side of a doorway, and the second tableau is placed on either side of a fountain within a small nymphaeum in the garden below. Each is positioned close to water in an artificial locus amoenus, which brings the setting of the painting, with its motif of bathing, into the viewer's own space. Myth and reality are potentially confused, the artist's ingenuity here reflecting and subverting the glorious paradox of Ovid's description of Diana's grotto, where `nature has emulated art with her own genius.' (Met. III.158±9) Each tableau depicts Actaeon as a balanced opposite of the goddess, of equal stature, with no other figures except his hounds, and on the same frontal plane of the painting. We may contrast this with an example from the House of the Orchard (Pompeii I.9.5), which depicts Diana within an extensive landscape (plate 34). Although she bathes with her back to the viewer, she actually faces Actaeon as he is attacked by his hounds in the background, while in the foreground a voyeur figure within an architectural structure leans on a pillar and surveys the tableau unharmed. The viewer of the painting, within the architectural space of the house itself, is thus identified with the voyeur, rather than with Actaeon, and the transgression is safely confined to the mythological figures. The painting holds a certain frisson in that Diana has the potential to turn and meet the gaze of the voyeur (and thus the viewer), so condemning us to the same fate as Actaeon. But crucially, the narrative of the painting is suspended so that she does not do so, holding the viewer in the suspended safety of vicarious transgression and confirming our (temporary) ocular possession of the scene. As John Ellis has written with regards to cinema, voyeurism `demands that these things take place for the spectator, are offered or dedicated to the spectator, and in that sense implies a consent by the representation (and the figures in it) to the act of being watched'.46 Thus the voyeur sanctions the viewing of the naked goddess. However, in our portico, there is no voyeur within the image to justify our transgressive view, no receding plane within the picture from where Actaeon plays Peeping Tom, and no large landscape to diminish the force of the individual figures. Each is presented in almost lifesize proportion, facing the viewer on a frontal plane, demanding our attention. In contrast to the two smaller paintings, where the dialectics of the desirous gaze are held within the image, the static, frontal poses of Diana and Actaeon demand the viewer's direct engagement. Actaeon is not depicted mid-metamorphosis, with antlers, but as a fully human being, already attacked by his hounds at the very moment that he beholds the goddess. The encounter is made more immediate, emphasizing the power of the gaze itself, and the violence which immediately ensues. 98 ß Association of Art Historians 2002 CONFRONTING THE DIVINE IN A POMPEIAN HOUSE 34 Diana and Actaeon, from the House of the Orchard, Pompeii I.9.5. Photograph courtesy of the Deutsches Archaeologisches Institut. The meÂconnaissance of the story is thus displaced from the hounds, which fail to recognize their master, to the actual transgressive moment of confrontation. Actaeon's stature emphasizes Diana's identity as a passive female figure open to the possessive gaze of the viewer. Yet the absence of a safe voyeur to justify the viewer's gaze means that we have only Actaeon with whom to identify, heightening our own unease and sense of danger in beholding the naked goddess. Moreover, in order to pass through the door which the figures on the portico frame, we must pass between Actaeon and Diana, so placing ourselves in the position of Actaeon and repeating his error. The danger that we, too, will become transgressive voyeurs, is enhanced by the ß Association of Art Historians 2002 99 CONFRONTING THE DIVINE IN A POMPEIAN HOUSE 35 The `Crouching Venus', MuseÂe du Louvre. Photograph courtesy of the Bridgeman Art Library. way in which Diana herself is represented. Facing the viewer, she bends down in a pose remarkably similar to the sculptural type of the `Crouching Venus', her sinuous curves drawing the viewer's eye into the most intimate parts of her body (plate 35).47 Rather than looking at Actaeon, she looks out of the painting into the viewer's space, while gesturing towards Actaeon as his hounds devour him. Thus we find that the goddess is communicating with us, demanding that we look at her, whilst simultaneously demonstrating what will happen to us if we do look at her. She is portrayed according to the visual language of the goddess of desire herself, a naturalistic form of representation which demands to be viewed and gains its power from its hold over the viewer. Thus, although as a naked, vulnerable form she is open to our visual possession, she also controls with disturbing power the way in which we view her, luring our gaze into a dangerous epiphanic confrontation.48 As the image of Narcissus has warned us, naturalistic representation, which seeks to replicate its prototype, can be deceptive and dangerous. If it is the aim of naturalistic art to replicate `the Real', and if the representation of Diana is employing a recognized example of naturalistic art (the `Crouching Venus'), then simply by looking at the painting, our gaze has tricked us into a transgressive viewing of the divine. It is a visual pun akin to the epigram about the Knidian Aphrodite where the goddess asks, `Where did Praxiteles see me naked . . . ?'49 100 ß Association of Art Historians 2002 CONFRONTING THE DIVINE IN A POMPEIAN HOUSE Lucius thus emphasizes the power of the artist himself to capture and in some sense `create' the divine, but in doing so, exposes us to the dangers inherent in such forms of representation. As if to emphasize the power of naturalistic deception, the pale, curvy nudity of Diana herself not only refers to the Crouching Venus but is also remarkably similar to that of Narcissus at the other end of the portico. For Narcissus, as for Actaeon, the lure of the naturalistic body resulted in death. The viewer's potential transgression in viewing the goddess is made yet more immediate by the fact that Diana and Actaeon are depicted on separate panels. The first goddess passed by the viewer upon entering the portico would have been Venus on her conch shell. Being conscious of Venus and thus open to the dialectics of the desirous gaze, why should he not also assume the `Crouching Venus' figure portrayed on her own in the panel to his right to be the goddess of love too? It is only by viewing and identifying Actaeon and his hounds that the viewer can then identify the crouching nude as Diana. Yet by then he has already committed himself to a transgressive viewing, because he has confused the goddess with the erotic realm of her divine opposite. Just as Hippolytus, that other young hunter in an erotic dilemma, the viewer is forced to make a decision between the two goddesses. But even in recognizing that dilemma, the viewer has already violated Diana's body with his gaze, and so repeated Actaeon's error. In attempting to identify the goddess and reading her through the Actaeon myth, the viewer finds himself playing the same guessing game as Pyramus and Narcissus, both of whom misread the signs of erotic confrontation and died as a result. By stylistically mirroring Venus and yet gesturing directly to Actaeon, Diana confuses the signs of our own confrontation with her so that the meÂconnaissance experienced by Narcissus and Pyramus is displaced onto the viewer and implicates us even more directly in Actaeon's fate. From voyeur to devotee: confronting the divine We have seen how the paintings within the portico implicate the viewer in their potentially dangerous dialectics through the power of naturalistic representation to encourage self-identification with, or desire for, the characters they depict. Naturalistic art suggests a contiguity between the world of the spectator and that of the painting, whilst simultaneously keeping the viewer firmly in the position of the voyeur, so that we observe, rather than partake directly in the events portrayed.50 However, the Diana and Actaeon tableau, with its emphasis on the transgressive confrontation of the divine, introduces a further element into the viewing process. The stark frontality of the naked goddess, combined with her direct gaze into the viewer's space, harnesses the visual power of the religious, cult-associated image. Forced to interact directly with the goddess as he passes her in order to enter the room at the end of the portico, the viewer moves from the detached position of the voyeur to the engaged role of devotee. This transition is confirmed and reinforced by the images which are subsequently revealed in the room he has entered ± a panel depicting a priest of Isis, and a niche which may have held a cult image of the goddess (plate 36). We are transported from the ß Association of Art Historians 2002 101 CONFRONTING THE DIVINE IN A POMPEIAN HOUSE 36 Isiac priest, from the portico chamber of Pompeii II.2.2±5. Photograph: Soprintendenza Archaeologicia di Pompei. naturalistic representation of mythological narrative to a series of images associated with cult and ritual, which, as we shall see, engage the viewer through a different set of communicative strategies, profoundly affecting the way in which we might retrospectively view the images in the portico. The roles of voyeur and devotee are challenged and subverted, with particular reference to the Actaeon myth, in the tale of another Lucius, Apuleius's Golden Ass, where a sculptural representation of Diana and Actaeon acts as `a calculated premonition of what will actually happen to Lucius'.51 In beholding the statue of the goddess in the house of Byrrhena, indulging his gaze and actually re-enacting Actaeon's fatal epiphanic confrontation, Lucius commits one of the several visual errors which lead to his own metamorphosis. As the viewer in Pompeii II.2.5, or indeed, the reader of The Golden Ass might easily do, Lucius assumes that he is in control of the gaze, without relating the dangers inherent in the image to his own situation; we can apply Byrrhena's ambiguous comment, `everything you see here belongs to you' to the viewing of our own painting (Golden Ass, II.5).52 Significantly, the Actaeon myth's association with Narcissus is hinted at in the Apuleian ecphrasis by the fact that the voyeuristic figure of Actaeon, a sculpture set into the wall of a grotto behind Diana, is revealed by his reflection in a pool.53 An actual visual example of the reflected Actaeon is also found on a mosaic from Timgad in North Africa, which simply depicts Diana bathing, and the reflection of Actaeon's face in the water.54 In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Actaeon realizes he has been transformed into a stag when he sees his antlered reflection in a stream.55 102 ß Association of Art Historians 2002 CONFRONTING THE DIVINE IN A POMPEIAN HOUSE As Narcissus, his transformation is a result of the fact that he has been `seized by the image of a form beheld', although in this case the image by which he has been seduced and destroyed is not his own reflection but the ultimate imago of the divine itself. The motif of reflection, particularly in The Golden Ass, hints at the possible duplication of Actaeon's fate in the person of the viewer. In Pompeii II.2.5, where the Narcissus image has already hinted at the fact that we can catch sight of ourselves in the euripus, the possibility that myth can become reality is repeatedly impressed upon the viewer. Lucius the painter has trapped us, as Apuleius's Lucius, in a dialectic between seeing and being seen, wherein the most dangerous element is the power of our own gaze to ensnare us in a cycle of desire which ultimately leads to the fascinatory power of the apotropaic Gorgon or the sensuous Diana, resulting in petrifaction or metamorphosis. As if to reinforce the danger, a sculpture of a hound devouring a hare was positioned by the euripus on the portico ± a reflection of Actaeon's metamorphosis, or an ominous prefigurement of our own?56 But just as the viewer's confrontation of Diana in the portico leads him, paradoxically, to the Isiac chamber, so the image of Diana and Actaeon in Book II of The Golden Ass, in prefiguring Lucius's transformation due to his insatiable curiosity, also hints at his eventual salvation in the form of Isis. The potential syncretism between Isis and Diana we find in Pompeii II.2.5 is also revealed in the epiphanic scene of The Golden Ass, where Isis reveals herself as the `unified aspect of all gods and goddesses', including `Diana of Dictynna' (XI.5).57 Whereas Lucius views the image of Diana at the beginning of his adventures with little comprehension of the image's signification, his eventual epiphanic confrontation with Isis in her true form is presented as a moment of revelation and salvation leading to his eventual readmission into society as an Isiac initiate.58 A retrospective reading of the novel suggests that the Diana image complicit in his fate in Book II was, perhaps, Isis-Fortuna in another form.59 In the portico images of Pompeii II.2.2±5 we have a narrative of transgressive viewing (Narcissus, Pyramus and Thisbe, Actaeon and Diana) followed by Isiac salvation, which is similar to that employed by Apuleius in The Golden Ass. Having passed through the doorway of the portico, and having momentarily taken the place of Actaeon, re-enacting his epiphanic confrontation with Diana, the viewer then passes into the Isiac chamber. The bald priest in his white robes stands within a simple panel, holding a sistrum (sacred rattle) and patera (libation dish), next to the niche which may once have held a statuette of Isis herself.60 Thus we are immediately confronted with the images of salvation which frame the final book of The Golden Ass ± the redemptive appearance of the goddess, and the narrator's own self-representation as a bald priest of Isis and Osiris.61 Could Pompeii II.2.2±5 have actually been a location for Isiac cult practice? Matteo Delle Corte certainly argued that this was the case, on the evidence of the priest-panel, the discovery of a number of lamps with Egyptian symbols in an adjacent room, and the sacro-idyllic character of the garden. He further argued that a large number of amphorae set into the ground in the garden were for holding the holy water of the Nile needed for Isiac ritual.62 While the amphorae could simply have been an alternative form of wine storage, and there is no other ß Association of Art Historians 2002 103 CONFRONTING THE DIVINE IN A POMPEIAN HOUSE evidence for actual cult activity, the decorative scheme of the Isiac chamber and garden does have a remarkably `religious' character. Whether the images played a part in actual ritual within the house, whether they are pious reminders of Isiac ideals, or whether they are sophisticated games with religious iconography, they do allude to cultic experience in a manner which is significant for the way in which we read them.63 If Spinazzola was right in assuming that the niche in the west wall of the chamber once held a votive image of Isis, then the way in which we view not only the priest, but the images in the portico, is profoundly affected. For it is precisely when the viewer enters the chamber, as he passes between Diana and Actaeon and undergoes a potentially transgressive viewing of the naked goddess in the painting, that he comes face to face with a three-dimensional goddess who exists in his own space. The force of this frontality, and shift in visual effect, has been anticipated on the portico by the frontal, implicative gazes of the Gorgon and Diana, but the shift to the visual language of cult and worship is dramatic, and dynamically different. From narrative scenes with powerfully illusionistic, largescale figures which fill their spaces and interact with a landscaped setting which echoes the setting of the portico itself, we move to a clear, simple space, in which the small-scale, frontal figure of the priest hovers within a large expanse of white. As a contemporary figure concerned with the paraphernalia of cult ritual, he is more closely associated with the viewer's world than the mythological characters on the portico, yet he is also distanced by scale and setting. The threedimensionality of the (possible) statuette of Isis, and the priest's ceremonial garb evoke the reality of cult practice and the directness of the confrontation which takes place between a devotee and a cult image. Yet the miniature scale and stark backdrop mark them as different from the naturalistic images in the portico, and site them within a cult-associated visuality which, separated from the social concerns of everyday life, `constructs a ritual barrier to the identifications and objectifications of the screen of discourse, and posits a sacred possibility for vision'.64 So how does the gaze function within this new visual framework? All the panels in the portico have warned the viewer of the perils of the gaze, and the Diana panel in particular has warned of the dangers of coming face to face with a goddess. What, then, is the implication when the illusionistic screen of mythological narrative is removed, and the voyeur is forced to confront Diana± Isis as embodied in a statue which looks back? Is this also transgressive? Perhaps an answer lies in the presence of the priest in the adjoining panel. As with the image of Orpheus in the portico, the priest acts as a frame, or filter, through which we might read the other images in the chamber. The priest is a viewer who has seen the goddess (as part of his initiation into her cult), confronted the Other, and survived. His gaze has not trapped him in an inescapable dialectic of desire, but has enabled him to pass to a higher level of knowledge unharmed. Hence his portrayal as a transcendent figure who does not operate within a narrative but exists symbolically and stylistically independent of the network of gazes operating in the portico. He is a viewer who knows how to read the signs which characterize such confrontations; he has experienced and transcended the meÂconnaissance which trapped and destroyed Narcissus, Pyramus and Actaeon. 104 ß Association of Art Historians 2002 CONFRONTING THE DIVINE IN A POMPEIAN HOUSE The priest's status as a privileged initiate, or mystes, is anticipated by Orpheus, who in undergoing great suffering achieved profound mystic knowledge.65 This association with mystery religion is further echoed by tondoes painted within the Isiac chamber, which depict ecstatic satyrs and maenads. As a single figure who is not directly involved in a narrative, facing the viewer and holding out the instruments of ritual practice, the priest presents a safe and final resting place for the viewer's gaze which is free from the perils of viewing which are addressed outside. He is an exegeÂteÂs, or guide, who presents us with a paradigm of safe viewing, who mediates on our behalf with the goddess herself.66 Moreover, the fact that an inscription beneath his feet identifies the priest himself as Roman (possibly even a family member) proves to the viewer that such salvation is possible within Pompeian society itself. While the paintings in the portico implicate the viewer in their dilemmas through mythological narrative, the image of the priest suggests that their dialectic can potentially be solved through living activities of ritual and cult practice which structure experience and understanding.67 However, the visuality of naturalism and the visuality of the symbolic are not as mutually distinct from each other as this reading might suggest. The structural relationship between the images in the portico and the Isiac chamber may be more complex, and offer more room for doubt, than a salvific model in which the sacred counteracts the naturalistic to offer a safe resting-place to the desirous gaze. The figure of Isis, whether in the form of a statuette, or as alluded to by the Isiac priest, is not as separate from the figures in the portico as the shift in style and mode of viewing in the chamber might imply. According to the syncretism of Isis with native Roman goddesses in the form of Isis Panthea (Universal Goddess) through local cult, the ambiguous, and potentially dangerous representations of Venus and Diana in the portico might readily be associated with the image of Isis within. That Diana was associated with Isis±Fortuna by Isiac worshippers in first century AD Campania is demonstrated by a votive image of Isis Panthea which survives from Herculaneum.68 Here, Isis in her Hellenic form, in a long chiton and himation, holds the rudder of fortune and the cornucopia of plenty (the standard attributes of Isis±Fortuna), yet also has the wings of Nike, and Diana's quiver slung over her back. An inscription, also from Herculaneum, is addressed to Isidi Lunae Dianae (`To Isis ± the Moon ± Diana').69 That Isis was also associated with Venus is testified by a painting of an Isiac procession in the House of the Wedding of Hercules (Pompeii VII.9.47), where a statue of Venus Pompeiana accompanied by Eros is represented within the facËade of the Isiac temple.70 This association of Isis with the Venus and Diana of the portico is not necessarily reassuring for the viewer. The gaze's implicit (sexual) power over the Other (embodied by Venus) and yet its potential to transgress and destroy (embodied by Diana), are revealed to be aspects of the same ultimate force. Once the paintings in the portico have lured the viewer into the perils of sight (tragic meÂconnaissance and transgressive desire), he enters the Isiac chamber only to be made conscious of the gaze of Isis as the ultimate embodiment of the Other, according to which we construct our identities and engage with the world of language and signification.71 Isis as Panthea does not only proffer the possibility ß Association of Art Historians 2002 105 CONFRONTING THE DIVINE IN A POMPEIAN HOUSE of salvation, but through her association with Venus and Diana also embodies those forces of desire which draw us into the dangerous dialectics which destroyed Narcissus, Pyramus, Thisbe and Actaeon. Her presence does not, then, necessarily guarantee that the viewer is safe from the perils of the gaze. Knowledge that the roles played by Venus and Diana in the portico are simply sides of the same coin does not alter their impact: one invites the erotic glance, one punishes it, yet both are paradoxically aspects of the same divinity. How, then, are we to negotiate her power? The three-dimensional materiality of Isis's image within the niche, and the contemporary status of her priest, do not necessarily counteract the dangerous dialectics of the gaze as represented in the portico. In fact, they draw us into a direct confrontation which operates within a different mode of visuality, yet alludes to the same powers. The visuality of naturalism, which drew the viewer into its illusionistic trap through the representations of Narcissus, Pyramus and Thisbe, Actaeon and Diana, is revealed not to be separate from, or counter to, the visuality of the sacred, but simply to be another facet of its power, as embodied by the goddess Isis. Thus the line between detached voyeurism and direct involvement with an image is broken down. For the viewer is firstly forced to confront explicitly the implications of the various mythological narratives presented to him, in a way which breaks through the illusionistic veil of naturalistic representation. But then having passed through to the direct confrontation which characterizes a more involved, religious mode of viewing, he is forced to evaluate the way in which he views a cult-related image and relate it to the naturalistic images he has observed in the portico, to ask `which image embodies Isis herself?' The issues of naturalistic viewing are applied to a sacred viewing within the Isiac chamber, just as issues of the sacred and symbolic are retrospectively applied to the naturalistic images of Diana and Aphrodite, and, by extension, the other paintings in the portico. Moreover, although the image of the priest and possible statuette of Isis in the chamber may be interpreted as potentially salvific, the viewer needs must return to the portico in order to get anywhere else within the house. Here he risks again becoming entwined in the dialectics of the panel paintings. Although he has been given a model of potentially `safe' viewing in the form of the priest, there is nothing to stop him replicating the three models of dangerous, or transgressive, viewing which are represented in the portico. Thus we need not interpret the presence of Isis as a salvific solution to the scopic traps of naturalism. Rather, she may, as an all-embracing embodiment of the Other, testify to that paranoid consciousness of the general gaze which seems to imbue Roman society of the Imperial era. The confrontations explored in Pompeii II.2.2±5 bring together the gazes of Self and Other, lover and beloved, man and god, in a manner which demonstrates a great concern with the nature of visuality, the perils of seeing and being seen. Erotic desire and religious anxiety are yoked together in each image in a manner which represents the Other at its most beguiling, and yet its most dangerous, repeating the dangers of viewing in the form of different erotic possibilities which testify, as the continually reborn Venus, to the ever-shifting nature of the ensnaring gaze. That all is potentially directed, observed, and given meaning by the all-embracing Isis testifies to the fact that the 106 ß Association of Art Historians 2002 CONFRONTING THE DIVINE IN A POMPEIAN HOUSE viewer is always caught in the dialectics of the gaze, a force to which the symbolic and the naturalistic are equally subject. Verity Platt Christ Church Oxford University Notes I am greatly indebted to both Jas' Elsner and Robin Osborne for their comments and suggestions during the writing of this paper. Thanks also to Katharina Lorenz for her assistance in acquiring photographs, and to Philip Grant, Aimee Lawrance and John Miles, who accompanied me to Pompeii on the trip which first inspired me to write about the House of Loreius Tiburtinus (hereafter Pompeii II.2.2±5). Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders of the images used, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked I will be pleased to make necessary arrangements at the first opportunity. 1 `Cur aliquid vidi? Cur noxia lumina feci? Cur imprudenti cognita culpa mihi? Inscius Actaeon vidit sine veste Dianam . . .' 2 For instance, the women observing the courtship of Mars and Venus in the House of M. Lucretius Fronto (Pompeii V.4.a), the townspeople crowding round Theseus and the dead Minotaur in the House of Gavius Rufus (VII.2.16), or the women watching the fall of Icarus in the House of the Priest Amandus (I.7.7). For a discussion of onlookers in Pompeian wall-painting, see D. Michel, `Bermerkungen uÈber Zuschauerfiguren in pompejanischen sogenannten Tafelbildern', La regione sotterata dal Vesuvio: Studie e prospettive (Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Nov. 11±15, 1979), Naples, 1982, pp. 537±98. For the Warren Cup, see J.R. Clarke, `The Warren Cup and the Context for Representations of Male-to-Male Lovemaking in Augustan and Early Julio-Claudian Art', Art Bulletin 75 (1993), pp. 275±94; Looking at Lovemaking, Berkeley and London, 1998, pp. 61±78; J. Pollini, `The Warren Cup: Homoerotic Love and Symposial Rhetoric in Silver', Art Bulletin 81 (1999), pp. 21±52. 3 `The spectatorial role of a boy voyeur [on the Warren cup] intellectually connects the viewer of the scyphus with its engraved imagery, while giving him a sense of power over the spectacle that he beholds', Pollini, op. cit. (note 2), p. 39. For a study of voyeuristic power in the cinema, see J. Ellis, Visible Fictions, New York, 1992, pp. 45ff. 4 Arguably, the boy-spectator on the Warren cup is also a potential participant in the action; both Clarke and Pollini suggest that he may be the next partner for the older lover portrayed on side B. Petronius also explores the way in which the voyeur is implicated in the actions he observes, in the Quartilla episode of the Satyrica (16±26), where the categories of spectator and performer in pornographic entertainment are broken down ß Association of Art Historians 2002 into general orgiastic chaos. Moreover, whereas Ovid links myth to reality through simile and exemplum, Petronius blurs the distinction between myth and reality to an even greater extent in the self-presentation of his protagonist Encolpius (see G.B. Conte, The Hidden Author: An Interpretation of Petronius' Satyricon, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1996). 5 S. Bartsch, Actors in the Audience: Theatricality and Doublespeak from Nero to Hadrian, Harvard, 1994, p. 11. For further explorations of theatricality in Roman society, see B. Bergmann, `The Roman House as Memory Theatre: The House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii', Art Bulletin, June 1994, vol. 76, no. 2, pp. 199±218; B. Bergmann (ed.), The Art of Ancient Spectacle, Yale, 1999; C. Edwards, `Beware of Imitations: theatre and the subversion of Imperial identity', J. Elsner and J.Masters (eds), Reflections of Nero: culture, history and representation, London, 1994, pp. 81±97; C.P. Jones, `Dinner Theatre', in W.J. Slater (ed.), Dining in a Classical Context, Michigan, 1991, pp. 185±98; A.O. Koloski-Ostrow, `Violent stages in two Pompeian houses: Imperial taste, aristocratic response, and messages of male control', in Naked Truths, (eds A.O. Koloski-Ostrow and C.L. Lyons), London, 1997, pp. 243±66. 6 In reading the images I discuss in this paper as a confrontation between Self and Other, I apply art-historical methods inspired by Lacanian theory of the Gaze and the psychological relationship between subject and object laid down in The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (ed. J-A. Miller, trans. A. Sheridan, New York, 1977). The relationship of the self-emanating glance to the autonomous, externalized gaze of the world beyond creates a bipolar scopic field in which the subject's consciousness is created and defined by his status as the `speculum mundi' (p. 72); `In the scopic field, the gaze is outside, I am looked at, that is 107 CONFRONTING THE DIVINE IN A POMPEIAN HOUSE 7 8 9 10 11 to say, I am a picture.' (p. 106) The confrontation of the Self with an Other which embodies the externalized gaze by which he defines himself ± the meeting of glance and gaze ± is thus an occasion fraught with anxiety for the subject. It is such a confrontation which, I will argue, is explored by the paintings in the portico of Pompeii II.2.2±5. The name Octavius Quartio comes from a bronze seal discovered in one of the cubicula of the house, and is associated with the owner of the house by Spinazzola (Pompei alla luce degli scavi nuovi vol.I, Rome, 1953, pp. 369ff.); Loreius Tiburtinus, the name favoured by Della Corte, is based on fifteen electoral inscriptions on the house walls facing the Via Abbondanza, so, he argues, associating the house with the Tiburtini, one of the oldest and most wealthy families in Pompeii (M. Della Corte, Una famiglia dei Sacerdoti d'Iside: M.M. Lorei Tiburtini, Pompeii, 1930; Pompeii: The New Excavations (Houses and Inhabitants), Pompei, 1943, pp. 92±9, no. 493; Les nouvelles fouilles et l'amphitheÂaÃtre, Pompeii, 1944, p. 91). There is no firm evidence to link either name with the owner of the house. For further information and bibliography, see K. Schefold, Die WaÈnde Pompeiis, Berlin, 1957, p. 52, V. Tran Tam Tinh, Essai sur Le Culte D'Isis a PompeÂi, Paris, 1965, pp. 43±5, G. Pugliese Carratelli & I. Baldassarre (eds), Pompei: Pitture e Mosaici, vol. 3, Rome, 1991: pp. 100ff., and P. Zanker, Pompeii: Public and Private Life, London, 1998, pp. 145±56. For a discussion of the triangulation which occurs between lover, beloved and spectator in romantic art, see M. Bettini, Portrait of the Lover, Berkeley, 1999. Actaeon: Met. III.138-252; Narcissus: Met. III.339±510; Pyramus and Thisbe: Met. IV.55±166. Pyramus and Thisbe first appear in Western literature as a tale told by one of the Minyeides in the Metamorphoses, perhaps inspired, as others in Book IV, by a story in Eastern literature. Although Pyramus is also part of a visual tradition in Asia Minor as a Cilician river god, he first appears with Thisbe, as in the the Ovidian narrative, on wall-paintings of the 3rd and 4th Styles in Pompeii (the House of Venus in a Bikini ± I.11.6; the House of M. Lucretius Fronto ± V.4.a; IX.5.14). For a more detailed discussion, see LIMC: Pyramus. Diana is not accompanied by the nymphs who protect her in Ovid's account, and Narcissus is alone, unlike many other depictions of the myth in wall-painting, the majority of which depict him accompanied by Echo or Cupid. The painter has chosen to concentrate on each confrontation in isolation. For Narcissus with Cupid see LIMC ± Narkissos 27±44. For Narcissus and Echo see LIMC ± Narkissos 45±55; of the Campanian wall-paintings listed in the LIMC, sixteen depict 108 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Narcissus accompanied by Cupid, Echo, or Nymphs and eight depict him alone. CIL.IV.7535. For a discussion of Lucius and other paintings ascribed to him, see L. Richardson, jr., A Catalog of Identifiable Figure Painters of Ancient Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae, Baltimore and London, 2000, pp. 147±53. The author identifies Lucius as primarily a painter of large hunting scenes (plus a few mythological panels), but does not rate him as an artist, going so far as to comment on the paintings in the portico, `It is hard to imagine why anyone would want to claim responsibility for such incompetence' (p. 147). For a more detailed discussion of the garden, see W.F. Jashemski, The Gardens of Pompeii, Herculaneum and the Villas Destroyed by Vesuvius II, New Rochelle, NY, 1993, pp. 73±82. Isiac images are found in several domestic settings in Pompeii (see Tran Tam Tinh, 1964, op. cit. [note 7], passim). However, these are usually small votive statuettes, or painted details within more general decorative schemes, perhaps a 3rd Style trend taking its lead from Imperial fashions. As Galinsky's analysis of Augustus' Isiac decorative schemes on the Palatine shows, the depiction of ritual objects within such schemes need not signify the actual cult practice of those that commissioned them. See Galinsky, Augustan Culture, Princeton, 1995, pp. 184±90, and M. De Vos, L'egittomania in pitture e mosaici romano-campani della prima etaÁ imperiale, Leiden, 1980. See L. Richardson, A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome, Baltimore and London, 1992, pp. 138±9. Nero's dining pavilion incorporated small suites of rooms, one of which was decorated with `small scenes from the Homeric cycle very delicately executed within a rich framework' of marble revetments (p. 138). In the House of Loreius Tiburtinus, a similar frieze depicting scenes from the Iliad is positioned beneath a large frieze depicting the Trojan exploits of Hercules, above a dado frieze of trompe l'oeil multi-coloured marbles. See the bibliography referred to in n.4. For the role of onlookers, see Michel (1982) op. cit. (note 2); for Cupid, Echo and Nymphs in Narcissus images, see n. 10. Met. X.1±XI.84. For a discussion of the portrayal of Orpheus in Ovid's Metamorphoses and Virgil's 4th Georgic, see W.S. Anderson, `The Orpheus of Virgil and Ovid: flebile nescio quid', in Orpheus, The Metamorphoses of a Myth, (ed. J. Warden), Toronto 1982, pp. 25±50. For a review of Orpheus' representation in art, particularly as a paradigm of the artist and lover, and evocation against the evil eye, see I.J. Jesnick, The Image of Orpheus in Roman Mosaic, BAR International Series 671, 1997. Orpheus's severed head famously floated down the river Hebrus and over to the island of Lesbos ß Association of Art Historians 2002 CONFRONTING THE DIVINE IN A POMPEIAN HOUSE 19 20 21 22 (Virgil, Georgics IV.523±27, Ovid, Metamorphoses XI.1±66). Visual representations often site the musician near to water, most famously, perhaps, for Romans, the monument near the Suburra referred to by Martial, which seems to have taken the form of an elaborate nymphaeum surrounded by sculptures of Orpheus and the animals: `Orpheus, sprinkled with water droplets commands a trickling theatre of entranced savage beasts' (Ep.X.20.6). For a more detailed discussion of Orpheus in watery contexts, see Jesnick, 1997, op. cit. (note 17), pp. 14ff. C.M. Havelock (The Aphrodite of Knidos and Her Successors: A Historical Review of the Female Nude in Greek Art, Michigan, 1995), discusses the importance of ritual bathing to the worship of Venus, emphasizing the fact that `Water and bathing refreshed and regenerated the goddess of sex.' (p. 24) The ever-repeated motif of Venus's birth emphasizes her role as an evershifting arouser and potential facilitator of eros. As such, she personifies what Lacan terms the `objet a', the object-causing-desire which mediates between the self and its actual object of desire. Just as Venus, the objet a is forever shifting and unfulfilled as with the satisfaction of each particular desire, we immediately desire something else; `Desire is fundamentally caught up in the dialectical movement of one signifier to the next, and is diametrically opposed to fixation. It does not seek satisfaction, but rather its own continuation and furtherance: more desire, greater desire!' (B. Fink, The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance, Princeton, 1995, p. 90). Philostratus, Imagines I.23; Callistratus, Descriptiones V. For an analysis of these texts, see J. Elsner, `Naturalism and the Erotics of the Gaze: Intimations of Narcissus', in Sexuality in Ancient Art, ed. N. Kampen, pp. 247±61 and, for a broader analysis of Narcissus in Pompeii, see J. Elsner, `Caught in the Ocular: Visualising Narcissus in the Roman World', in Reflections of Narcissus, (ed. L. Spaas), Oxford Berghahn 2000, pp. 89±110. For a discussion of the Narcissus myth in relation to Classical philosophy and optical theory, see S. Bartsch, `The Philosopher as Narcissus: Vision, Sexuality, and Selfknowledge in Classical Antiquity', in Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance, ed. R.S. Nelson, Cambridge, 2000, pp. 70±99. `faciemque loci fontemque secutus'. The forces of the voyeuristic and scopophilic gaze are applied most effectively to erotic painting in Pompeii by D. Fredrick, `Beyond the Atrium to Ariadne: Erotic Painting and Visual Pleasure in the Roman House', Classical Antiquity, vol. 14, 1995, pp. 266±88, following the Lacanian-inspired film theory of Laura Mulvey presented in `Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema', Screen, 16.3 (1975), pp. 6±18, ß Association of Art Historians 2002 23 24 25 26 27 reprinted in C. Penley (ed.), Feminism and Film Theory, New York, 1988. Most Campanian wall-paintings listed in LIMC ± Narkissos, depict the youth looking down at his reflection or gazing into the distance, with the exception of our example from Pompeii II.2.2±5 (Narkissos 3), a panel in Pompeii V.2.1, and a panel in the Museo Nazionale in Naples (inv. 9388), which depict Narcissus looking up and out into the viewer's space (Elsner, 2000, op. cit. [note 20], p. 102; Balenseifen, K.32, 5; 32, 7: 32, 42). Ovid's phrase `visae correptus imagine formae' brilliantly captures the conceit of an image which has a tangible power over the viewer. While `correptus imagine' means in the specific context `seduced by a reflection', it also literally means `seized by an image', so suggesting the potential violence of a situation in which the object beheld has direct, physical control over the beholder. The power of Narcissus himself to seduce or `seize' the viewer is powerfully communicated by Ovid when he actually breaks off his impersonal narrative to address the boy in the second person (`credule . . . :' Met. III.432±436), a motif which is picked up by Philostratus in his ecphrasis of an image of Narcissus in Imagines I.23.3 (se mentoi . . .). As Elsner, 2000, op. cit. (note 20), p. 101, writes, `Narcissus perishes in part because the sovereignty of subjecthood in looking out and controlling the world of the seen becomes inverted in a kind of paranoic catastrophe in which the seen looks back and controls as an object the viewer who looks out at it.' As suggested by Elsner, ibid., p. 103. Richardson, op. cit. (note 12), p. 147: Pyramus and Thisbe are, he writes, `dreadfully badly drawn . . . Narcissus is a little better, but not a great deal better, his gaze abstracted and directed upward, while his foreshortened reflection in the pool before him is more Medusa-like than seductive.' Lacan himself, in his discussion of the relationship between the eye and the gaze, emphasizes the fact that `what I look at is never what I wish to see' (Sheridan 1977, op. cit. [note 6], p. 103). The way in which we view the supposed object of our desire is distorted by the very fact that we desire it; the `real' object is concealed by the desired, fantasized image we project onto it. The Gorgonian reflection of Narcissus raises several questions; does it represent Narcissus's fantasized projection of self, or does it reveal the `real' Narcissus behind his skin-deep beauty? Or does it represent the viewer's own projection, emphasizing the difference between an image and its reflection in a way which undermines our confidence in the viewing process itself? For discussion of the difference between image and reflection in the context of ancient viewing, see J. Henderson, `Footnote: Representation in the Villa of 109 CONFRONTING THE DIVINE IN A POMPEIAN HOUSE 28 29 30 31 32 33 Mysteries,' in J. Elsner (ed.), Art and Text in Roman Culture, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 259±60, and Bartsch, 2000, op. cit. (note 20), pp. 73ff. Philostratus, too, implicitly refers to the Gorgon at I.23.4, where he describes his eye as `charopon . . . kai gorgon' (`shining and spirited'), implying a concentration of gaze which is almost terrifying in its feverish intensity. For this observation I am indebted to Jas' Elsner, in a discussion following the presentation of his paper on Narcissus at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, June 2000 (for details of publication, see note 13). He tells me that the `gorgon' in Philostratus's text was pointed out to him by Sandrine Dubel. L. Balenseifen, Speigelbild in der antiken Kunst, TuÈbingen, 1990, K.35±2, 4, 8 & 11. The confrontation of Other with Other (Gorgon and sea monster) demonstrates the logic of apotropaism, by which an image metonymically representing evil is directed against evil itself in order to divert, or cancel out, its powers. See S.R. Wilk, Medusa: Solving the Mystery of the Gorgon, Oxford, 2000, pp. 145±181. Psychoanalytical interpretations of the Gorgon relate its apotropaic power to the threat of castration and fear of female sexual potency (see Freud, `Das Medusenhaupt: The Medusa's Head,' trans. J. Strachey, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 18:105±6, London, 1961, discussed by Wilk, pp. 87±104). Arguably, Narcissus's selfinfatuation can be interpreted as a retreat into sameness in order to avoid the sexual power of the Other (as Ovid suggests by entwining the myth with that of Echo); but as the distinction between Self and Other is elided, Narcissus ends up confronting in his reflection the very sexual powers from which he is seeking to escape. Met. III.419: `e Pario formatum marmore signum.' Callistratus literally concretizes this motif; his Narcissus is actually a sculpture painted within a picture, already petrified by the paralysing effect of his own desire. My use of `meÂconnaissance' here is taken from Lacan's use of the term in his outline of the `Mirror Stage theory' in which the `misunderstanding' is that of the child who fails to realize that his reflection is not a unified `Other', and thereafter defines himself through, and desires, a fantasy (the objet a), which he imagines will complete his own sense of lack (J. Lacan, `The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I', in Ecrits: A Selection, trans. A. Sheridan, New York, 1977; also `Of the Gaze as Objet Petit a,' in The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, trans. A. Sheridan, New York 1977). The misreading of signs which characterizes the romantic confrontation in the cases of Narcissus, Pyramus and Thisbe demonstrates the confusion of the Mirror Stage as the lovers fail to distinguish between what they behold, and what they in fact desire. 110 34 35 36 37 38 Narcissuss's and Pyramus's desire for the objet a, the specular double which will fulfil their own fundamental lack, confuses their gaze to the extent that each actually perceives the opposite of what he is looking for. Thus Narcissus mistakes a reflection (the division of self), for a distinct subject (the doubling of self), and Pyramus misreads a sign for Thisbe's presence (her veil) as signifying her destruction. The association here between romantic love and graphic violence reflects Ovidian language (where sexual penetration is compared to wounding in the story of Tereus and Philomela, Met.VI.527± 30), and also anticipates the macabre fantasies of the Second Sophistic, particularly the images of sex and violence which imbue Achilles Tatius's Leucippe and Clitophon (see J.J. Winkler, `The Education of Chloe, Hidden Injuries of Sex', in The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece, New York, 1990, pp. 101±26; H. Elsom, `Callirhoe: Displaying the Phallic Woman', in A. Richlin (ed.), Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome, New York and Oxford 1992, pp. 212±30; and S. Goldhill, Foucault's Virginity, Cambridge, 1996). The failure of the world of language and signification (Lacan's `Symbolic' realm) which characterizes the fate of Pyramus and Thisbe causes the emergence of the `Real,' in the form of brute physicality and the biological events of violent wounding and death. Narcissus, however, ceases to exist because he is trapped in the world of the `Imaginary', identifying with an image of sameness to the extent that he fails to submit himself to the Other (the process of `Alienation', a necessary stage in psychological development, through which the individual become a subject within the `Symbolic' realm). See Fink, 1995, op. cit. (note 19), pp. 50±55 and D. Evans, An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, London and New York, 1996, pp. 9, 82±4, 159±61, 201±3. For an exploration of the erotically charged hunter motif, see A. Schnapp, Le chasseur et la citeÂ: Chasse et eÂrotique dans la GreÁce ancienne, Paris, 1997, pp. 247±57, 318±54. `quoque magis tegitur, tectus magis aestuat ignis' (IV.64). `nunc tegis unius, mox es tectura duorum' (IV.159). Ad nomen Thisbes oculos a morte gravatos Pyramus erexit. Could Ovid's use of the verb erigere here have phallic connotations? Certainly the penetrative qualities of vision were linked to a certain extent in the ancient world with the phallic drive (see Bartsch, 2000, op. cit. [note 20], p. 75). The erotic power of the gaze in both Ovid's text and the Pompeian painting is thus linked to the phallic qualities of the weapons with which Pyramus and Thisbe paradoxically, and fatally, achieve the consummation of their desire. ß Association of Art Historians 2002 CONFRONTING THE DIVINE IN A POMPEIAN HOUSE 39 For Lacan, the object-cause of desire is always missed, no matter what we do to attain it; it is the act of desiring in itself which is important. Desire is related to the drive, defined in terms of the demands of the Other according to which we identify ourselves and construct our fantasies. For Pyramus and Thisbe, once the Other by which they have identified themselves is perceived to be dead, the feeling of lack is such that their desire is transferred to a desire for death. For Lacan, `every drive is virtually a Death Drive' because it is defined in terms of the symbolic world of language and signification which, because it exists independently of the individual self, cannot but emphasize our own mortality (Ecrits, op. cit. [note 33], 1966, p. 848). Narcissus, Pyramus and Thisbe have failed to read correctly the signs of the symbolic world and it is meaningless to them; since the objet a can no longer be perceived as existing in this world, they can but turn to death. Interestingly, Lacan refers to death as representation itself; all drives lead to the death drive because they are `organized by representation, and representation implies the death of the thing' (M-H. Brousse, `The Drive (II)', R. Feldstein, B. Fink and M. Jaanus (eds), Reading Seminar XI: Lacan's Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, New York, 1995, p. 114). Narcissus, then, dies when he confronts representation in the form of his reflected self. Wilks adds a yet more macabre note to the myth with his suggestion that the Gorgoneion (which Narcissus seems to confront in our painting) is actually a representation of death itself, based on the facial characteristics of a swollen corpse (pp. 109±17). 40 For a discussion of masculinity and effeminacy in Roman culture, see Clarke, 1998, op. cit. (note 2), Pollini, 1999, op. cit. (note 2), and C.A. Williams, Roman Homosexuality, New York and Oxford, 1999, pp. 125±59. 41 For example, the Pan Painter's name vase, where the emphasis is on the clothed Artemis's violent revenge. The first literary account of the myth which identifies Actaeon's error to be his sight of the goddess bathing is Callimachus' 5th Hymn. Thereafter the motif of nudity and implied eroticism is used by Apollodorus (III.4.4), Ovid (Met. III.138±252; Tristia II.103±8), Seneca (Oedipus 751±63), Statius (Thebais III.201±5) and Apuleius (The Golden Ass II.4). The earliest surviving representation of the myth with a nude Diana is a chalcedony gem dated to the first century BC (Berlin Staatl. Museen FG 6435). Third Style landscape representations can be found in Pompeii IX.1.22 (the House of M. Epidius Sabinus) and IX.2.16 (the House of T.D. Panthera). See LIMC: Aktaion. 42 See Pompeii VI.13.19, VI.16.7 (the House of the Gilded Cupids) and IX.7.16 (the House of Fabius Rufus). 43 See Pompeii I.9.5 (the house of the Orchard); ß Association of Art Historians 2002 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 VII.7.19; VII.15.2 (the House of the Sailor); IX.1.22 (the House of Epidius Sabinus). E.W. Leach, `Metamorphoses of the Actaeon Myth in Campanian Painting', Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archaeologischen Instituts Roemische Abteilung, Band 88, 1981, pp. 307±27. Simulaverat artem ingenio natura suo. J. Ellis, 1992, op. cit. (note 3), p. 45, quoted by Pollini, 1999, op. cit. (note 2), p. 39. For examples of the `Crouching Venus', see M.D. Brinkerhoff, Hellenistic Statues of Aphrodite: Studies in the History of their Stylistic Development, New York, 1978, pp. 35±55, and W. Neumer-Pfau, Studien zur Ikonographie und gesellschaftlichen Funktion hellenistischer Aphrodite, Bonn, 1982, pp. 213±14. This paradox between the vulnerability of a nude image to the spectator's possessive glance, and yet the image's power to manipulate the way in which we view it, is famously captured by Praxiteles's Knidian Aphrodite. For a discussion of this image and the influence and power of the Knidia, see Havelock, 1995, op. cit. (note 19), passim; A. Stewart, Art, Desire and the Body, Berkeley 1997, pp. 96±105; R. Osborne, Archaic and Classical Greek Art, Oxford, 1998, pp. 230±5. For the female nude in general, see K. Clark, The Nude. A Study in Ideal Form, Princeton 1956; J. Berger, Ways of Seeing, London 1972; L. Nead, The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity and Sexuality, London, 1992; A.O. Koloski-Ostrow and C.L. Lyons (eds), Naked Truths: Women, Sexuality and Gender in Classical Art and Archaeology, London and New York, 1997. An epigram ascribed to Plato Junior and dated by D.L. Page to the first century AD, possibly contemporaneous with our paintings (Further Greek Epigrams, Cambridge, 1981, p. 82), discussed by Havelock, 1995, op. cit. (note 19), pp. 22±3, 62±3, 121. I use here the distinction between naturalistic and ritual-based visuality in the ancient world which is set out and discussed by Jas' Elsner in `Between Mimesis and Divine Power: Visuality in the Greco-Roman World', in R. Nelson (ed.), Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance, Cambridge, 2000, pp. 45±69. J.J. Winkler, Auctor and Actor: A Narratological Reading of Apuleius' The Golden Ass, Berkeley, 1985, p. 168. The literature on Apuleius is vast and wide-ranging: for a recent study with an excellent bibliography, see S. Harrison, Apuleius, Oxford, 2000, pp. 210±59. Also C.C. Schlam, The Metamorphoses of Apuleius: On Making an Ass of Oneself, Chapel Hill, 1992 and G.L. Schmeling (ed.), The Novel in the Ancient World (Mnemosyne Suppl. 159), Leiden, 1996. While The Golden Ass is dated to a later period (the second Century AD) than the 4th Style in Pompeii (50±79AD), the comparison is, I think, justified, owing not only to Apuleius's frequent 111 CONFRONTING THE DIVINE IN A POMPEIAN HOUSE 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 intertextual references to Ovid (who has inspired this Pompeian decorative scheme), but also to the common sophistication and self-consciousness with regards to the viewing of images which we find in Roman culture from the Late Republic to the Second Sophistic (see Elsner, 2000 op. cit. [note 50]. For Ovid in Apuleius see M. Bandini, `Il modello della metamorfosi ovidiana nel romanzo di Apuleio', Maia 38, 1986, pp. 33±9. Tua sunt, cuncta quae vides. For a more detailed discussion of the Actaeon image in The Golden Ass, see R.G. Peden, `The Statues in Apuleius' Metamorphoses II.4', in Phoenix 39, 1985, pp. 380±3 and N. Slater, `Passion and Petrifaction: The Gaze in Apuleius', Classical Philology 93, 1998, pp. 18±48. Balenseifen, 1990, op. cit. (note 29), K.46, pl. 41. Also LIMC ± Aktaion 117. Met. III.200-1: `But when he saw his face and horns in water, he would have said ``Unhappy me,'' but no words came' (ut vero vultus et cornua vidit in unda, / `me miserum' dicturus erat: vox nulla secuta est). For a list of the sculptures in the portico and garden, see Tram Tan Tinh, 1964, op. cit. (note 7), pp. 44±5. Deorum dearumque facies uniformis . . . Dictynnam Dianam. Although subsequent events suggest that the epiphany is not the `ultimate experience' that it is presented as, but merely another stage in events which dupe the naõÈve hero. See Winkler, 1985, op. cit. (note 51), p. 124: `My ultimate assessment of the Golden Ass is that it is a philosophical comedy about religious knowledge. The effect of its hermeneutical playfulness, including the final book, is to raise the question whether there is a higher order that can integrate conflicting individual judgements.' Also Harrison, op. cit. (note 51), pp. 238ff., who argues that the Isiac passages in the novel are `used for cultural and intellectual display and satirical entertainment rather than to assert any ideological or personal commitment'. See Peden, 1985, op. cit. (note 53), passim. As suggested by Spinazzola (Pompei alla luce degli scavi nuovi, vol.1, p. 383, figs. 432ff.) and repeated by Zanke, 1997, op. cit. (note 7). The Golden Ass XI.30: `Then, once more shaving my head completely, neither covering up nor hiding my baldness, but displaying it wherever I went, I joyfully carried out the duties of that ancient priesthood, founded in the days of Sulla.' (Rursus denique quaqua raso capillo collegii vetustissimi et sub illis Sullae temporibus conditi munia, non obumbrato vel obtecto calvitio, sed quoquoversus obvio, gaudens obibam) 112 62 See Della Corte, 1930, op. cit. (note 7), Tran Tan Tinh, 1964, op. cit. (note 7), p. 45, Jashemski, op. cit. (note 13), p. 238. 63 A problem of interpretation familiar from the frieze cycle in the Villa of the Mysteries. For two very contrasting interpretations, see R.A.S. Seaford, `The Mysteries of Dionysos at Pompei' in H.W. Stubbs (ed.), Pegasus. Classical Essays from the University of Exeter, Exeter, 1981, pp. 52±68 and J. Henderson, 1996 (see n. 7). 64 Elsner, 2000, op. cit. (note 50), p. 62. 65 Lucius comments in The Golden Ass XI.23 that during his initiation into the cult of Isis he `came to the boundary of death and trod the threshold of Proserpina' (Accessi confinium mortis et calcato Proserpinae limine), just as Orpheus was regarded as having mystic knowledge after he travelled to Hades to rescue Eurydice. 66 Opinion differs as to the actual lettering of the inscription and the identity of the priest himself. Spinazzola reads the inscription as the name Amilius Faventinus Tiburtinus, whom he suggests was a priest from the Tiber region who had at some point conducted an Isiac ritual in the chamber (p. 369). Tran Tam Tinh, 1964, op. cit. (note 7), follows Della Corte, 1943, op. cit. (note 7), p. 94 in reading the inscription as Amplus Alumnus Tiburs ± `Tiburs, the magnificent propagator [of the cult of Isis in Pompeii]', whom he claims was an Isiac priest and ancestor of the Loreius Tiburtinus who he claims owned the house itself (see n. 7). 67 The presence of the priest's name sites him within the `Symbolic' order which had been rejected and denied by Narcissus and Pyramus (see n. 35), thus potentially restoring our faith in the signified world of language and social practice. 68 The image comes from La Casa a Gratticio (Insula III.14), and is held in the Antiquarium at Herculaneum (inv. 344). For a discussion of this and other Isis images from Campania, see V. Tran Tam Tinh, op. cit. (note 7); 1964; Le Culte des DiviniteÂs Oreintales a Herculanum, Leiden, 1971, Fig. 13±14; Le Culte des DiviniteÂs Orientales en Campanie, Leiden, 1972. 69 CIL III.771 / SIRIS 690 (discussed by Tran Tam Tinh, 1971, op. cit. [note 7]). An inscription from Capua dedicated by the Roman senator Arrius Balbinus is addressed to Isis, `una quae est omnia dea' (`The one goddess who is all goddesses') ± CIL X.3800, Tran Tam Tinh p. 17. 70 See Tran Tam Tinh, 1964, op. cit. (note 7), cat. 24, pl. XI. 1±2. 71 In this sense, the goddess functions as Lacan's `Name-of-the-Father', who represents the Symbolic realm. ß Association of Art Historians 2002