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efers to the bull-headed man as Dionysos the bull, who has been “assimilated to a prototype of
the Minotaur” and suggests that this “hybrid type derives from Greece, probably through
Cumae.” 485 She then interprets the panthers as animals that typically accompany Dionysos or
animals that he sometimes rides. E.R. Young, on the other hand, suggests that Dionysos, when
depicted in therianthropic form is represented as a bull with a man’s head and that this bull-man
may be an attendant to a god “like” Dionysos or Zagreus. 486 Woodford suggests that this bull-
man may be an “anonymous creature serving either decorative or apotropaic purposes.” 487 That
there was no cult of Dionysos honored in the Regia need not deter us from linking the revetment
plaque to the god, as the scenes represented in pediments or sculptural friezes are not often
directly linked to the honoree of a temple. 488 Still, the argument that panthers are a creature of
Dionysos is not strong enough to identify the Regia bull-man as the god of the vine. This may be
nothing more than a monster placed in a decorative frieze, such as the many sirens and sphinges
that appear on Corinthian pottery, 489 and thus the panther may have no bearing on the identity of
the bull-man.
Thus, there is no scholarly consensus as to the identity of the bull therianthrope on either
the Settecamini Painter’s cup or the Regia plaque. Neither of these pieces bears an inscription or
sufficient iconographical or narrative details to secure the identity of the bull-man beyond a
shadow of a doubt. Perhaps there was a conceptual link between the Minotaur and Dionysos, for
Dionysos does play a role in the narrative of Theseus’ saga. 490 It is the abandonment of Ariadne,
the Minotaur’s half-sister and the princess who facilitated Theseus’ victory of the monster, that
allows Dionysos to take a wife. It is surely not coincidence that the Minotaur’s sister is the bride
of a bull-god. 491 A. Evans takes this hypothetical connection one step further and boldly states
that the Minotaur is one incarnation of Dionysos and that the stories of the Minotaur are
485 Iacopi 1976, 35.
486 Young 1972, 92.
487 Woodford 1992, 579.
488 Brown and Scott (1985, 186) list the deities with cults in the Regia as Mars and Ops Consiva. The possibility of
a cult of Mars in the Regia may return us to Altheim’s suggestion that Mars could be conceived as a bull god, but
there is no evidence to suggest that the bull-man on this plaque is Mars.
489 Winter 2006, 349-55.
490 From the outset, the chain of myths which leads to the birth of the Minotaur is full of bull, so to speak.
491 For the identification of the bull-man on the Regia plaque, Altheim (1938, 70-4) presupposes an Etruscan original
covered over by a Greek conception and follows the general trend of Kerényi, Evans, and Bevan when suggesting
that bull gods find their ultimate origin in Minoan religion.
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