Dr. Catherine Lomas

Some scholars have suggested that this might be a sort of metaphor of, you know, the dive as a passage from life to afterlife.

But more recent interpretations try

to look at it as a representation of daily life or the life of the deceased.

As I said, something that would refer to his passage from youth to adulthood.

So, as I said, the deceased was surrounded by these figural paintings, and all around him we have a banquet scene, or more precisely, a symposium that unfolded.

So, a banquet to which only men participated.

At the same time, in the early 5th century BC, wall painting was at its height in the Etruscan world, and there are similarities between this tomb and Etruscan painted tombs, which reminds us again of the importance of cultural contacts between the Greeks and other populations living nearby.

I mean, the Greek art here in Pestum is different from, you know, Greek art elsewhere in the Mediterranean.

And the reason is precisely that the population here interacted, and sometimes there were conflicts as well, with different cultures.

I mentioned the Etruscans and then, you know, the Lucanians also lived nearby and other Italic populations.

They created

a very different, a very specific type of art.

And in the banquet scene we can see elements of this multiculturality.

Welcome to our museum storerooms.

Yeah, it's a bit of a hidden treasure.

Our storerooms are about 1400 square meters and you see they're completely packed with these gems.

Yeah, we've got hundreds of painted slabs that come from cemeteries all around the city of Pestum.

And most of them are so-called Lucanian tombs, so they date to the 4th century BC.

I know, that's a demon, right?

It's a demon.