Allô Chatrath

Display window of a roadside restaurant in Palermo, Italy

Visiting the Museum, I was attracted by a beautifully crafted head. It looked like that of a young lady.   The explanatory board put up by the museum authorities read: 'Head of Dionysus, M.C. inv. 1129; Pentelic marble, Roman eclectic work inspired by Hellenistic models. From the Horti Lamiani, found in the area near the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele 1882.' Dionysus   was the Greek god of the grape harvest wine making and wine, of ritual madness fertility Romans. He is also known as Bacchus by the Romans. It seems that the earliest cult images of Dionysus show a mature male, bearded and robed. He holds a fennel  staff, tipped with a pine-cone and known as a thyrsus .  Later images show him as a beardless, sensuous, naked or half-naked androgynous youth: the literature describes him as womanly or "man-womanish he may have been worshipped as early as c. 1500–1100 BC by Greeks. Unfortunately very few of the exhibits in this museum had explanatory panels.  Portrayal o...