Fig. 13.4 Piazza Armerina, Imperial Villa, small hunting scene, mosaic. (Pace, Mosaici, Fig. 30)
Now was the time to have recourse to the study, there to take down from the shelves the works of the Byzantine chronicler John Malalas. He records that Maxentius, the son of the Emperor Maximian Herculius (A.D. 286–305), Diocletian’s colleague, was cross-eyed. Armed with this firm clue, Gentili examined the mosaics again, looking for proof or disproof that the villa belonged to Maximian. He found proof. Knowing that Maximian Herculius equated himself with Hercules, as his name shows, he looked for, and found, evidence in a colossal sculptured head of Hercules from the basilica apse, and in the mosaic, of preoccupation with that hero and his exploits. Over and over again, in the borders of robes, in foliage, and self-standing (in 4) he found representations of ivy, which was Hercules’ symbol: the initial of its Latin name, hedera, is the initial of the hero’s name. Furthermore, one of the most extensive and important mosaics in the villa, that in the state dining room (46), has as its subject the labors of Hercules. Gentili’s case looks conclusively proven; it was buttressed when he took up the Circus mosaic (8), to back it with concrete and replace it, and found under it a hypocaust containing coins of the late third century, presumably dropped by the workmen who laid the mosaic in the first place.
The subjects of the mosaics are in part more or less conventional mythological scenes. Odysseus hoodwinks the one-eyed Sicilian giant Polyphemus, making him drunk with a great bowl of wine (27); an obliging dolphin rescues the musician Arion from a watery grave (32), and Orpheus with his lyre charms a vast array of animals, including a goldfinch, a lizard, and a snail (39). Still more interesting are the mosaics which show Maximian’s interests. He appears to have had three obsessions: hunting, the circus, and his children. The three scenes of the chase (23,26,33) have prompted L’Orange to suggest that the villa was built as a sumptuous hunting-lodge, but the great basilica shows that it was adapted also to the uses of more formal protocol; the Imperial court must sometimes have met here.
The smaller hunting scene (23) is divided into five bands ([Fig. 13.4]). At the top, two eager hounds, one gray, one red, are off in full cry after a fox. Next below, a young hunter identified by Gentili as Constantius Chlorus, Maximian’s adopted son, accompanied by our old friend the squint-eyed Maxentius, sacrifices to Diana, the goddess of the hunt. The third band is devoted to fowling—with birdlime—and falconry, the fourth to the fox, gone to ground and besieged in his den by the dogs. In the fifth, on the left a stag is about to be caught in a net stretched across a forest path in the unsporting Roman way; on the right is a boar-hunt with an unorthodox hunter just about to make the kill by dropping a large rock from above on the boar’s head. In the center is a vivid huntsman’s picnic. The hunters, wearing puttees, are sitting under a red awning. While they are waiting, one of them feeds the dog. A black boy blows on the fire, over which a succulent-looking trussed bird is roasting. Servants fetch bread from a wicker basket; another basket harbors two ample amphorae of wine.
This is an intimate genre scene. More impressive is the large hunting scene which crowds the whole 190-foot length of the double-apsed corridor (26). Here the aim portrayed is to catch exotic North African animals alive for the wild beast hunts in amphitheaters like the Coliseum. In the south apse is a female figure symbolizing Africa, flanked by a tiger and an amiable small elephant with a reticulated hide. The figure in the opposite apse who has a bear on one side, a panther on the other may be Rome, the animals symbolizing her dominion over palm and pine. In this case Africa is the point of departure of the captured beasts, Rome their destination. Between the two apses the hunting scenes unfold amid fantastic architecture in a rolling, wooded landscape sloping down to the sea in the center, teeming with fish. On land, animals attack each other (a leopard draws blood from a stag’s belly), and hunters in rich embroidered tunics hurl javelins, in the presence of the Emperor, at snarling lions and tigers at bay, set traps baited with kid for panthers (the kid being spread-eagled in a way that looks curiously like a parody of the Crucifixion). The hunters act as bearers—their heads camouflaged with leafy twigs, like Birnam wood coming to Dunsinane—or drag a lassoed bison toward the red ship that will transport it to Italy. A horseman, having stolen a tiger cub, delays the mother’s advance by dropping another cub in her path. A hippopotamus and a rhinoceros are among the game; smaller animals are hauled to the ships in crates on ox-carts; a live trussed boar is carried slung on a pole; a recalcitrant ostrich and an antelope are being pushed up a gangway ([Fig. 13.5]), while the gangway of another ship is groaning under the weight of an elephant with a checkerboard hide like the one flanking Africa in the apse. Most curious of all, just in front of this same apse the tables are turned: a man has taken refuge in a cage against the attack of a fabulous winged griffin, with the head of a bird of prey. The crowded, vivid, barbarous artistry of this mosaic brings us to the very threshold of the Byzantine age; in Rome’s past, only the Barberini mosaic at Palestrina can match it.
In Maximian’s family even the children were brought up to take part in blood sports. Room 36, a child’s room, perhaps Maxentius’—his squint-eyed portrait recurs in the anteroom (35)—portrays a child’s hunt, in three bands, full of characteristic Roman insensibility to animal suffering. In the upper band, a boy has hit a spotted hare full in the breast with a hunting spear, while another has lassoed a duckling. The middle band portrays hunting mishaps: a small animal nips one fallen small boy in the leg; a cock attacks another with its beak and spurs. In the bottom register one boy clubs a peacock, a second defends himself with a shield against a buzzard, and a third has plunged his hunting spear into the heart of a goat.
Fig. 13.5 Piazza Armerina, Imperial Villa, large hunting scene, mosaic (detail). (MPI)
