The Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations flourished on Crete and the Greek mainland during the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE. Homer immortalized them in his two epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey.

The fresco was over 100 years old when the eruption of Mount Vesuvius destroyed the ... at least until the second millennium B.C., to the god Dionysus worshipped by the Mycenaeans and the Cretans, who ...