the bench she is sitting on that could be mistaken as mushrooms. At one side a Silenus (a creature part man and part horse) is playing a lyre. Silenus, the name of the tutor and companion of Bacchus, was also a general term used to describe his mythological species. The third mural shows a satyr playing the panpipes and a nymph suckling a goat in an Arcadian scene. To their right is a figure some have identified as the goddess Aura. Others have identified her as the initiate or bride. In the direction to which she stares in horror, the fourth mural shows a young satyr being offered a bowl of wine by Silenus, while behind him, another satyr holds up a frightening mask which the drinking satyr sees reflected in the bowl (this may parallel the mirror into which young Bacchus stares in the Orphic rites). Next to them sits a goddess, perhaps Ariadne or Semele, with Bacchus lying across her lap. The fifth mural shows a woman carrying a staff and wearing a cap, items often presented after the successful completion of an initiation. She kneels before a priestess and appears to be whipped by a winged female figure. Next to her is a dancing figure (a Maenad or Thyiad) and a gowned figure with a thyrsus (an initiation symbol of Bacchus) made of long stalks of wrapped fennel, with a pine cone on top. In the sixth mural a woman is dressed by an attendant, while a cupid holds a mirror (or portrait) up to her. This scene is often interpreted a bride being readied before her marriage ceremony. To the right of the bride is another image of a cupid staring up at her. In the seventh mural, a matron is shown enthroned and in an elaborate costume. In light of the recent restorations, Elaine K. Gazda has reexamined the figures and their relationship to each other in the frescoes and in life. Gazda argues that the restorations have made possible the identification of the women depicted in the frescoes, not as the same woman repeated throughout an initiation scene, but as portraits of different women with their own individualized features. She identifies the matron in the last mural as the domina of the villa, the bride in the sixth mural as her daughter, the Bacchus as the dominus, and the others as the men and