Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
So in this mosaic we've got the image of the learned man
that you often see in paintings and mosaics around villas in Italy.
We might see this as advertising
the kind of leisure that was going on at the villa.
We know that amongst leisure pursuits,
particularly valued was learning about the classical past
and philosophy.
You can tell from this chap's beard
that he's been passed as a sort of archetypal Greek philosopher.
So what's that in his hand?
Well, he's in a classic pose. He's holding a pointer.
He's pointing towards a celestial or armillary globe.
So he's telling us instantly, really, that he's an astronomer.
And he has other appropriate instruments as well to confirm that.
So the tall thing you see to his right
is a sundial mounted on a tall column.
Then the object down by his feet is yet another sundial,
and that is the sort that we often see in gardens today.
The exciting thing is that we now know the name of the astronomer.
There is a somewhat similar mosaic panel in Treia
and on that one, very helpfully, the name of the astronomer
has been added by the mosaic artist.
And that name is Aratus.
And Aratus was a Greek philosopher and he produced a work
which was highly respected in antiquity called Phaenomena,
and this is a poem trying to explain and look for a natural order
in the things that he saw around him.
It's very appropriate that he's shown here
because the panel fits in with the rest of the mosaic
in the lower part of this room.
So when first entering the room,
the visitor first sees the maritime panel, dealing with the sea.
Then we see the central panel
which deals with the way in which land and the earth is managed,
which leads us to the heavens.
He's also a linking panel
because what comes to follow in the upper part of the room
indeed, again, deals with the seasons and the rotation of time.
So he's drawing the entire floor together, really,
and linking the themes.
I think we don't necessarily need to presume
that everybody that walks into this room
would have got all of that meaning out of these mosaics.
I might have worked out that he was an astronomer
but I wouldn't have had a clue about the rest just from looking, no.
Images are used to create hierarchies
and power and symbolic status in antiquity
and this philosopher is really a very good example
because people would have come in here and they would have realised
that this was a portrait of a particular person.
They would also have realised that they themselves
didn't have the cultural resources to say who that was.
Well, that relates to me and what I know about these mosaics, as well!