Cyparissus and His Stag: Ovid and Literary Culture in Fourth-Century Leicestershire and Beyond

This talk given by Martin Henig will begin by considering the first figural mosaic to have been preserved from Roman Britain. Discovered ca.1675, it was first published in 1710, though the subject was not correctly identified for almost a century as depicting a theme from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Ratae (Roman Leicester), developed as the chief town of the Corieltavi, with notable public buildings and wealthy domestic housing by the second century, although the Cyparissus mosaic dates to the Fourth century. It is closely related to figural mosaics from villas mainly in south west Britain, with literary themes drawn from the poetic works of Virgil (the Aeneid) and Ovid (Metamorphoses and Heroides). As in these cases, the lack of any label identifying the subject is best explained by the fact that these vignettes originally accompanied the texts in the owner’s de luxe manuscript. In the Leicester region, the same explanation explains the series of three recently discovered contiguous mosaic panels in the triclinium of a Roman villa at Ketton, Rutland showing the death of Hector and the weighing of his body, evidently copied from a manuscript derived ultimately from Homer’s Iliad.

Members of the Cluster are invited to the reserved AWRC lunch table in Hall starting at 12:30 to meet Martin. Martin’s talk in the Levett Room at 13:15 will be catered with cake and tea/coffee (all welcome).