1,700-year-old mosaic unearthed in UK depicts long-lost telling of Trojan War
A Roman mosaic recently discovered in Britain depicts a long-lost version of the Trojan War story that differs from the most famous story of the saga.
The artifact, known as Ketton Mosaicshows a key conflict during the Trojan War. But it’s not based on Homer’s “The Iliad,” the most enduring version of the tale, researchers report in a new study. Instead, it draws inspiration from a more obscure tragedy by the Athenian playwright Aeschylus. Called “Phrygians”, it was written in the early 5th century BC and survives today only in fragments and analyzes discussed in other ancient works.
Measuring 33 feet by 17 feet (10 by 5.3 meters), the mosaic probably covered part of the floor of a triclinium, or dining room, in a large villa. The mosaic was in use by the fourth century AD, but preliminary work suggests that the villa may have been occupied even earlier.
In Homer’s account of the Trojan War, the Greeks spend 10 years fighting against the city of Troy, in what is now modern-day Turkey. According to myth, Paris, son of King Priam of Troy, kidnapped the beautiful Queen Helen of Sparta, and the Greeks fought to get her back.
The mosaic shows three scenes from the conflict between the Greek hero Achilles and the Trojan prince Hector. In the first panel, the two fight after Hector kills Patroclus, a close companion and possible lover of Achilles. In the second, Achilles drags Hector’s corpse behind his chariot. And in the third, Achilles buys Hector’s body from his father, Priam, for its weight in gold.
Initially, researchers thought the mosaic depicted scenes as described in Homer’s epic, “The Iliad.” But upon closer examination, study the first author Jane Massegliahistorian at the University of Leicester, found that some details of the mosaic were not consistent with Homer’s version. In the new study, published December 3 in the journal BrittanyMasseglia and colleagues argue that the differences point instead to the “Phrygians” as the inspiration for the imagery.
For example, in the “Iliad”, Achilles explicitly says that he will not accept gold as ransom for Hector’s body. And in the mosaic, Achilles drags Hector’s body around the tomb of Patroclus, while in the “Iliad” he drags it around the walls of Troy. Fragments of “Phrygians” and analyzes of the text by ancient scholars, however, describe both events as depicted in the Ketton mosaic. “The Phrygians” is the only known account of the Trojan War describing the events in this way.
The artistic style offers further clues to the inspiration for the mosaic. “In the Ketton mosaic, not only do we have scenes telling Aeschylus’ version of the story, but the top panel is actually based on a design used on a Greek pot that dates from the time of Aeschylus, 800 years before the mosaic was laid,” Masseglia said in the release.
Other parts of the mosaic also featured designs from older times, she noted.
“I discovered that other parts of the mosaic were based on designs that we can see on much older silverware, coins and pottery, from Greece, Turkey and Gaul,” Masseglia said.
The findings suggest close cultural relationships between the Romans of Britain and the rest of the classical world, the authors write in the study.
“Romano-British artisans were not isolated from the rest of the ancient world, but were part of this larger network of trades passing down their design catalogs from generation to generation,” Masseglia added. “At Ketton we have British Roman craftsmanship but a heritage of Mediterranean design.”
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