DESCRIPTION:

The decoration of the Western portico of the atrium, which visitors crossed to enter the largest and most important room of the house, the triclinium (dining room and reception area), differs from that of the other three porticos. Here, instead of hunting scenes, there are mythological scenes: three with love stories and one, the largest, with the myth of Icarius.

The Pyramos and Thisbe mosaic

The first panel on the left presents the love story between Pyramus and Thisbe, a story analogous to the modern story of Romeo and Juliet. The two young people lived in neighbouring houses in Babylon. They were madly in love, but because they came from rival families, they communicated secretly through a crack in the wall that separated their houses. The mosaic depicts their last tragic meeting. Thisbe arrived first and while she was waiting for her lover, a lioness appeared. Thisbe, frightened, ran to hide in a cave, dropping her veil, which the lioness grabbed. Arriving at the scene, Pyramus saw the lioness with her veil torn, and thinking that the wild animal had devoured his beloved, he committed suicide. When Thisbe came out of the cave, she saw the dead body of Pyramus and committed suicide as well. Here the mosaicist depicted by mistake a leopard instead of the lioness of the myth, and under the name of Pyramus, the river god who bears the same name instead of the young man of the story.