The central subject is Ganymede borne heavenward to be Jupiter’s cup bearer. The hero with the lion’s skin is Hercules rescuing Hesione. The woman with the statuette is Helen with the Palladium, the ancient image on which Troy’s safety depended; the wise Ulysses stands before her. Or it might be Iphigenia, in faraway Tauris, about to bear past the Thracian King Thoas the statuette of Artemis which will release her brother Orestes from torment by the Furies. In the next panel, if the young man is carrying a branch, he is Orpheus bringing Eurydice back from Hades; if he is carrying a shepherd’s crook, he is Paris kidnaping Helen. The veiled female is of course Medea getting the Golden Fleece for Jason. The common theme is deliverance. Ganymede, liberated from earthly ties, is borne on wings to the bliss of Heaven. Hercules can free Hesione because, according to some versions of the myth, he has been initiated into the mysteries. The statue, whether of Athena or of Artemis, guarantees the safety of the city or person who possesses it. Helen, in some accounts, can read the future and assuage men’s pain; or, if the theme is Orpheus and Eurydice we may recall that in an early version of the myth the ending was happy. Jason and Medea are freed from fear of the dragon through rites of magic initiation. [Illustration: FIG. 7.10 Rome, subterranean basilica at Porta Maggiore, apse. (Fototeca)] Does the great scene in the apse (Fig. 7.10) harmonize with the interpretation? In it, on the right, a graceful veiled woman, holding the lyre of a poetess, descends a cliff into the sea. She is pushed by a baby winged figure standing behind her. Beneath, waist deep in the water, a figure with a cloak outspread stands ready to receive her and escort her to the opposite shore. There, on another cliff, stands an imposing naked male figure, in his left hand a bow, his right outstretched in blessing. Behind him sits a young man thoughtfully supporting his head on his hand. Below in the sea yet another figure holds an oar and blows a horn in greeting. Any Roman intellectual would recognize the scene: it is Sappho, encouraged by Cupid, received by Tritons, blessed by Apollo, making the lover’s leap to join her beloved Phaon for eternity. This is not suicide, but liberation from earthly love into an eternity of perfect harmony of the senses with the sublime and the supernatural. The scene is consistent with the others, and provides a further clue to the interpretation of the whole, for Pliny the Elder, in his encyclopaedic _Natural History_, says that the myth of Sappho and Phaon was made much of by a sect called neo-Pythagoreans, inspired by the number-mysticism, and the belief in immortality, of their founder, Pythagoras of Samos, who flourished in the late sixth century B.C. These beliefs were refined in the Hellenistic Age, and taken up by heterodox Roman intellectuals.