The young Roman emperor Elagabalus watches from a raised couch as his guests below are buried under drifts of pink rose petals released from a false ceiling. In the unreliable Augustan History, the source of the story, some guests are smothered to death. Alma-Tadema reportedly had fresh petals sent from the south of France each week during the four months he spent on the canvas.
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Behind the banquet, a woman in a leopard skin plays the double pipes beside a bronze Dionysus modelled on the Ludovisi Dionysus.
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