Truly cultured householders, like the owners of the villa at Boscotrecase just north of Pompeii, preferred original paintings in which the stories of
Alexandrian and Ovidian elegy and the bucolic world of Theocritus' Idylls could be evoked in an altogether more subtle and mysterious manner
(above, p. 357).
The Pentheus Room In The House Of The Vettii at Pompeii (between AD 62 and 79): one of the finest surviving examples of a domestic 'picture-
gallery', with copies of well-known Greek paintings set at the centre of each wall-decoration: the Punishment of Dirce, the Death of Pentheus, and the
infant Heracles strangling the snakes sent by Hera, perhaps the famous work by Zeuxis of Heraclea (c.400 B.C.).
Whether there are deeper meanings to be discerned in ancient wall-decorations is a question which has recently roused controversy. The Swiss scholar
Karl Schefold argues from the Pompeian evidence, not only that painters or their patrons chose subjects which were relevant to the type of room being
decorated, but also that the subjects within a decoration were normally linked in a consistent programme embodying deeply-felt moral or religious
ideas. Thus one decoration will present a hymn to the great deities of love and fertility, Aphrodite and Dionysus; another will contrast the exploits of a
divinely favoured hero with the sufferings of an offender against the gods. Landscape paintings are invariably sacred, still lifes are offerings to the
gods, and so forth. The same idea is explored by Mary Lee Thompson, though with a more pragmatic approach: for her most of the programmes are on
a relatively superficial plane, dealing with a particular hero such as Achilles, a particular locale such as Thebes, and particular conceptual
combinations such as love and water. There is doubtless some truth in all this, for a strong religious element appears in many Roman murals (compare
the cult-objects and sacrificants lurking in the painted architecture), and in some cases a thematic link between balancing paintings is unmistakable.
The left ala of the House of the Menander at Pompeii contains a Trojan cycle in which paintings of the wooden horse and of the death of Laocoon,
both allusions to warnings unheeded by the Trojans, are combined, as in a Greek tragedy, with the ruinous sequel: Priam watching grief-stricken while
Menelaus seizes Helen and Ajax assaults Cassandra. That the Romans often looked for thematic associations is illustrated by a picture gallery
described by Petronius, fictional but perhaps based on fact, in which the story of Ganymede is grouped with those of Hylas and Hyacinthus, all three
illustrating the love of immortals for beautiful youths and the resulting 'apotheosis' of the loved ones. But to try to apply such rules universally, and
above all to look for recondite religious and ethical interpretations, is to expect too grave and profound an outlook in the ancient householder, whereas
Pompeian painting contains much that is clearly humorous and much that appeals directly to the senses. It also leads very quickly to inconsistencies: to
fit his theories Schefold has to argue that Medea is now contrasted with Penelope as a paradigm of false love, now compared with her as a beatified
heroine.