Agony in the Dining-Room: Competitive Imagery in Domestic Floor Mosaics

Alexis M. Christensen (University of Iowa)

The iconography of late-Classical and Hellenistic floor mosaics has been categorized in a somewhat general manner according to the imagery depicted (e.g. Pollitt 1986, Dunbabin 1999, Andreae 2003) with limited consideration for how that iconography might relate to the activities carried out in a particular type of room. While categorizations such as mythological, theatrical, nilotic, royal or culinary are valid and useful in trying to understand the repertoire of mosaic art, they lack the application of the more specific meanings that maybe understood from the both the architectural context of the floors and the contextualization provided by contemporary literature. In order to create a more nuanced reading of domestic floor mosaics, I examine those mosaics discovered in dining-rooms of private houses from the late-fourth to the early-first centuries BCE in light of the functions assigned to these rooms by architectural and literary evidence.

It is well established that dining-rooms, whether the Greek andron or the Roman triclinium, were spaces in which the head of a household could advantageously define his public image to selected individuals of similar social status. Ruth Westgate (1997-98) has demonstrated that Greek mosaic floors were predominately associated with dining-rooms and that they tended to be associated with other types of decoration, most commonly frescoed walls. Thus, the more frequent presence of costly decoration in spaces used for the reception of guests suggests that such decoration was meant augment the image of the host. The largest corpora of late-Classical and Hellenistic domestic floor mosaics are to be found at the sites of Olynthus, Delos and Pompeii. Using the evidence from these three sites, I show that the cultural meaning assigned to these dining-rooms is best understood by a conflation of mosaic iconography, architectural context, and literary contextualization. The image of the host that emerges from these sources is one of success and victory.

I argue that domestic floor mosaics, especially those found in dining-rooms, can be read as Dionysiac or agonistic scenes, and that these two themes were a well-suited pair for such contexts. The representation of Dionysus or his entourage need little explanation in the context of the symposion or convivium. Also common place at such occasions were opportunities for competition, whether it be in the form of games, erudition, poetic talent or love. Greek literature provides us with the poetic competitions at symposia designed for “the expression of personal ambition and private gain” (Collins 2004, 63), while Roman love elegy (Yardley 1991, 150) provides the competition of a lover for a girl against his rival at a convivium, not to mention the numerous depictions of such gatherings in literary form (e.g. Ath., Plut. Quaest. conv.). Such agonistic pursuits can also be found in the mosaic floors depicting scenes of combat (martial, athletic, or animal), the hunt, and in symbols of good fortune, the talismans of success in competition. Thus, the iconographic and literary evidence created an environment of agonism in the dining-room in which the host was the most obvious victor.