black backdrop; Conservation Status: After Treatment

Drinking Contest of Herakles and Dionysos

Dateearly 2nd century CE

Mediummarble, limestone, and glass tesserae

Dimensionsobject: 184 x 186.4 x 7.6 cm (72 7/16 x 73 3/8 x 3 in.)
framed: 185.4 × 188 × 8.9 cm (73 × 74 × 3 1/2 in.)

ClassificationsMosaics

Credit LineExcavation of Antioch and Vicinity funded by the bequests of the Reverend Dr. Austin S. Garver and Sarah C. Garver

Terms

Object number1933.36

DescriptionThis was the first panel that the guests saw upon entering the dining room of the Atrium house. It was originally flanked by two Dionysiac panels, one with a dancing satyr (Kondoleon catalogue no. 57), the other with a dancing maenad (Kondoleon catalogue no. 56). The scene is of the rarely depicted Drinking Contest between Herakles and Dionysos, which is well suited to the reception function of the room (*1). In the center of the panel is Dionysos, in a light tone of flesh, who turns over his empty cup to show he has won. The triumphant god rests on his elbow propped upon cushions and reclines on a long green cushion (with many, now lost, glass highlights). In contrast, Herakles, depicted in ruddy brownish red tones of flesh, seems tipsy as he leans backwards on his knees, grabs at the drapery around his legs, and lifts the wine cup to his lips. The composition captures the essence of the struggle between mortal and immortal, the elegant repose of the god and the unbalanced human.

At the left side of the scene, in keeping with the flanking panels of Dionysiac celebrants, a young woman plays the double flutes in the ears of Herakles. A young boy, an Eros-type figure, rushes with outstretched hand toward Dionysos as if to point out the winner. A Silenos with white hair and beard sits behind Dionysos and raises his right arm in a triumphant gesture.

The five figures are convincingly arranged from foreground to background within an interior space characterized by graded areas of light and dark tesserae. The darkest area, almost all of it black, is in the right background behind the seated Silenos. The lighter areas (white and off-white, pale yellows, and grays) are in the foreground and left side of the panel. An array of drinking vessels, including the krater for mixing wine and water, a rhyton, and several drinking cups, are spread out across the middle foreground where they each cast a shadow. Large sections of glass tesserae expand the palette to include red, orange, yellow, and a range of blues and greens (both translucent and opaque). The painterly effects of shadows and spatial recession, not especially well suited to a floor composition, indicate that this mosaic may ultimately derive from a lost painting of an earlier date.

The borders framing the three panels at the entrance to the room are from outside in, a band of wave crest (red on white), a meander (black on yellow), a narrow band of stepped triangles (dark red on white), and a two-strand braid (gray and pink). The multiplication of borders enhances the effect of a framed floor painting. (Kondoleon, 2000)

*1. Only three other Drinking Contest mosaics are inventories in Auge and Linant de Bellefonds 1986, 524, nos. 104-6.

Label TextThroughout much of the 1930s, the Worcester Art Museum joined three others in excavating Antioch, one of the four great cities of the late Roman Empire. First a mobilization point for Roman military campaigns against the Parthians, it had prospered under Julius Caesar and Augustus and grown into a cultural and political center, flourishing until an earthquake devastated the city in A.D. 526. Among the greatest treasures unearthed at Antioch were numerous mosaics from public and private buildings. This pavement, reflecting the realistic space of late Hellenistic painting, was one of five that decorated the floor of a triclinium, or dining room, of an elegant villa from the first Roman period of the city. Fittingly, it depicts a mythical symposium, or drinking contest, with Dionysos, the god of wine, reclining at the center. Crowned with vine leaves in his luxuriant curls, the pale god displays the empty cup that he has drunk dry. A ruddy Heracles is on his knees, challenging Dionysos. Silenus, on one side, and Ampelus (a child personifying the vine), on the other, give the victory to the god, while a slave girl at the left plays the double flute.ProvenanceExcavation of Antioch and Vicinity, July 29, 1933

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