Un puteale con soggetti dionisiaci dal teatro di Spoleto

Abstract

During the excavation of the Roman theatre of Spoletium were brought to light, among the marbles belonging to the decoration of the scaenae frons, also some fragments of a puteal of the third quarter of the Ist century B.C., whose decoration can be partially reconstructed. The frieze is composed by Dionysos and a Maenad pouring vine on an altar, by other figures of Satyrs and Maenads and by the god Pan. The libation scene finds a striking comparison on an altar from Puteoli, but it’s unusual in the classicistic repertoire of the workshops of the Late Republican and Early Imperial age; it has however a long tradition in classical Athens, because of its religious and cultic meanings, that are examined together with the problem of the circulation of models in the ‘neoattic’ workshops.