Family cults flourished in Pompeii more than the official religion, to judge by the fact that nearly every house and workshop has its private shrine, usually housing busts of ancestors (for in this the Romans were downright Japanese), and adorned with a picture of a snake, representing the family’s Genius, or guardian spirit. Sometimes, as in the House of the Cryptoporticus, there is a handsomely decorated private shrine to one of the Olympian deities, in this case Diana. The trades had their patron saints: Mercury (god also of thieves) for commerce; Minerva, who invented weaving, for the clothmakers; the hearth goddess Vesta for the bakers. The front of the felter’s shop described above is emblazoned with a magnificent Venus in a chariot drawn by four elephants. Sex, too, had its enthusiastic worshipers: a dyer’s vat (IX.vii.2) bears a relief of an enormous winged phallus, set in a temple whose _acroteria_ are also phalluses, of smaller size. But perhaps the perfect symbol of the religion of this tradesmen’s town is a fresco in the House of the Cryptoporticus, in which the family of Aeneas (the symbol of Rome) is shown guided to its destiny by Mercury, the god of trade. * * * * * Is all this great art? A fair answer to the question should come from an analysis of what is usually regarded as the masterpiece of Pompeian painting, the fresco in Room 5 of the Villa of the Mysteries. This analysis must be prefaced by a word about the four more or less successive styles into which archaeologists have succeeded in dividing the vast corpus of Pompeian painting. The First (or “incrustation”) Style, found in buildings (_e.g._, at Palestrina) dated by their fabric and technique from 150 to 80 B.C., uses colored stucco to imitate marble dadoes, rusticated blocks, and revetments. The Second (or “architectural”) Style (80 B.C.-A.D. 14) imitates architectural forms, uses perspective, and throws the field to be painted open to mythical or religious subjects. The Third (or “Egyptianizing”) Style (A.D. 14–62) flattens out painted architectural detail into painted “surrounds” or frames for panels which look like hanging tapestries, worked out with fine detail in a miniaturist’s technique. The Fourth (or “ornamental”) Style (A.D. 62–79) features infinite vistas, with figures moving amid fantastic architecture. Examples of the last three styles are frequent in the Villa of the Mysteries, but the great sequence from which the Villa takes its name is of the Second Style and Augustus’ reign. [Illustration: FIG. 8.15 Pompeii, Villa of the Mysteries, fresco: woman being scourged. (MPI)]