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This picture is in a house in the Street of the Temple of Fortune, nearly opposite the great entrance into the court of the thermae. The habitation is usually known by the name of the House of Bacchus, so called from a large picture of the god upon one of the walls.

The subject, if it may be judged by the spear in the hand of the female and the attendant cupids, is that of Mars and Venus, whose face, nevertheless, is by no means beautiful. It is possible that, during that period of the universal decline of pagan superstition which preceded the introduction of Christianity, the portraits of private persons might sometimes be introduced in their own houses among the allegorical deities, as had long been the custom among sovereigns.