BANQUET, SCENES OF. — It cannot yet be said that the convivial scenes in Paleo-Christian art have found a definitive interpretation. Iconographically, it is true, the individual groups are already delineated with considerable clarity. Despite certain secondary variants and abstracting from representations of the banquet that are purely and certainly funerary, in the cemetery frescoes one can now distinguish: a) the banquet of the seven, exceptionally twelve, almost always all men who eat fish (and bread) in immediate proximity to a series of baskets filled with bread, the number of which varies between seven and twelve; b) the banquet of the three, exceptionally five, men, women, and children, in which appear, together with the fish on the tripod, the allegorical figures of Agape and Irene and some cupbearers; in sculpture, moreover: c) the banquet of bread and wine, usually served to five men, among whom the central group of three stands out; d) the banquet with fish among breads, generally served to four men and often completed by six, eight, or ten baskets. A special position is occupied by the so-called *Fractio panis* in the Greek Chapel at Priscilla and the miracle banquet at Cana in the cemetery “ad duas lauros” (q.v.).
Despite their septenary number of diners, which links them to group a), such varieties of depiction gave rise to a great number of contrasting interpretations that in turn sought to find therein the reproduction of real scenes of earthly life, funerary banquets, the celestial banquet (*refrigerium*), the Agape (q.v.), or the celebration of the Eucharist. It now seems possible to exclude the notion that these are realistic representations of the Agape or the Eucharist (here, as elsewhere, Christian art proceeds by evocative allusions), and the need arises to distinguish between periods and depicted contexts. As a solution more consonant with the spirit of this art, it may be held that these scenes generally represent the refreshment of souls in the blessed life, with more or less explicit references to the food of immortality, which is also prefigured in the miraculous feeding of the multitudes in the desert.