Decoration and Demon Traps the Meanings of Geometric Borders in Roman Mosaics

Decoration and demon traps – the meanings of geometric borders in Roman mosaics

Introduction

The thousands of mosaics that survive from the Greek and especially Roman worlds are taken by many to be one of the great surviving artistic hallmarks of these two classical civilisations. The decorative variety of the floors, made usually and mostly from small stone tesserae, strikes a chord with those who view them as works of art (Neal & Cosh 2002, 9). They appear testimony to the erudition of the patrons who commissioned them, to the skilled artists who composed and executed the designs, and to the knowledge of those ancients who walked over them and who were able to interpret knowingly what was beneath their feet. Viewing them in a museum context, many of us judge them as we would an 18th century watercolour or an early Picasso – the end product of inspirational artistic endeavour. The near complete absence of written references from the ancient world regarding mosaics means that we are forced to generate meanings from the floors themselves.

What I want to suggest in this paper is an alternative way of looking at mosaics. I am going to draw on ethnographic and anthropological research to provide additional insights to the archaeological study of mosaics. I want to argue that there is something to be explained in the sheer constancy of some of the geometric borders on mosaics through the Hellenistic and Roman periods – a period of some seven centuries. This constancy is also apparent in overall design in large areas of the Roman Empire. For instance in the north-west provinces, including Britain, the enduring emphasis is on the pattern, and the picture-panels are fitted within this pattern, often in a series of more or less equally weighted panels. These kinds of stability need their explanations just as much as change does. I particularly want to focus on the abstract and geometric borders, - for example the meander, the guilloche, the wave-pattern - and seek to understand why these motifs were utilised across the length and breadth of the Roman Empire. I want to take a different approach than that taken by scholarly interpreters who seek to find layers of meaning in figurative representations and then ascribe them to erudite ancient patrons (pace Perring 2003). I also want to go beyond the obvious consideration that borders are just simply framing devices to contain and separate images. Of course they do perform this superficial function, but I search for deeper meanings. Rather I want to invest the mosaics with a sense of agency, with a power and a compelling force of their own, with a vitality rather than a lifelessness.

My interest in this subject has been generated in part by serendipity. I happen to work for the Sussex Archaeological Society which owns Fishbourne Roman Palace (Chichester, Sussex, UK), a palatial late first century building, excavated so brilliantly by a young Barry Cunliffe. The Palace houses some of the earliest mosaics in Roman Britain. Curiously, despite the manifest palatial character of the building, clearly much grander than a villa, the mosaics at Fishbourne nevertheless do not appear to be of marked superior quality to many other mosaics in this province of the Empire (Neal 1981, 35). Neal particularly contrasts the first and second century mosaics from Fishbourne with those of 4th century nearby Bignor and finds in the latter’s favour. However, not everyone concords with this view and Cunliffe (1971, 149) emphasises the quality of the polychrome mosaic in Room N20 at Fishbourne (as do Allen&Fulford 2004, 23), particularly remarking on the rarity of some of its elements – such as the band of rosettes alternating with vine leaves, and the fish and dolphins on either side of vases. The excavator also underlines that arguably the most important room in the entire Palace, the Audience Chamber, seemed to have the finest quality of mosaic, if the minute size of the tesserae are indicative of such. It is curious also, again in spite of the celebrity of Fishbourne, that the mosaics there do not appear to have been studied in any great detail, save the information recorded in the original excavation report (Cunliffe 1971; Witts 2005, 179). I will therefore comment in particular on a few of the Fishbourne mosaics in what follows, although what I have to say could just as easily apply to mosaics throughout the Empire.

Constancy not change

The recent volume by Dunbabin (1999) provides us with a useful vantage point from which to assess the degrees of structural change in the overall schemata of mosaics across the Greek and Roman worlds. The earliest mosaics, dating from the Archaic period (c.630-480BC) in Greece, were made of pebbles and confined to temples. By the 4th century BC such pebble mosaics began to appear in private houses, in which social context they would continue to be prevalent through to the end of the Roman period. A collection of pavements from the town of Olynthos in northern Greece illustrates that the essential structural composition of mosaics (geometric borders framing figurative panels) had already begun to crystallise. Two mosaics from one end of the Villa of Good Fortune depict friezes of beasts and humans surrounded by rectangular bands of leaf-scrolls, meanders and wave-patterns. One unusual mosaic at the opposite end in the same house provides a clue to the possible significance of such pavements. In a small room a large and small wheel are placed above an inscription reading ‘Agathe Tyche’ – Good Fortune. Dunbabin comments (1999, 8) that the inscription suggests that the symbols were apotropaic, and probably represented the Wheels of Fortune. One function of some of the floor decoration was the attraction of good luck and the corresponding repulsion of hostile influences. Indeed, Lavin (2005, 934) takes this argument a little further. He suggests that the mosaics with beasts and humans represent the clear, predictable, narrative rationality normally associated with Greek culture. The good luck symbols, on the other hand, underline the irrationality, chance and even the demonic. The Olynthos mosaics polarise the reasonable and articulate world of nature and language, with abstract and mysterious intimations of chaos (Lavin 2005, 937).

Mosaics made from thousands of stone tesserae flourished in the Hellenistic period (3rd and 2nd centuries BC). By this time the structural consistency of mosaics was well established. The most characteristic design consisted of a carpet-like tessellated area, square or oblong. The ‘carpet’ had multiple geometric frames and borders, and a central field which could contain figured or ornamental panels. There was often a separate threshold panel at the presumed entrance to the room, decorated differently from the rest of the mosaic. On Delos, for example, one of the mosaics in the House of the Dolphins has a square outer border of crenellations, with pairs of dolphins in the corners. Both of these could be interpreted as protective elements: the crenellations may symbolise the protective circuit of town walls, excluding outsiders; the dolphin was speculatively conceived of as the sailors’ friend, arcing from the water in front of vessels[1]. On many floors the most striking feature was the number and complexity of the borders; the geometric motifs included wave-patterns, crenellations, chain guilloche, bead-and-reel and meander[2]. Some of the geometric motifs were exploited for their three-dimensional character: for instance lozenges of three or more different colours were combined to form the illusion of cubes seen in perspective; this particular trompe l’oeil was much appreciated for its illusionistic effects (Dunbabin 1999, 32).

The last point is indicative of the way in which mosaics can be taken apart to reveal individual elemental motifs, both geometric and figurative, which occur repeatedly across the Roman Empire. There is a sense that whatever the social, economic or political mechanisms for the cultural diffusion(s) or emergences of mosaics in the Roman world, the ‘form’ that was transmitted may not have been the particular composition of various elements of a specific mosaic, but rather the specific popularity of the individual elements, and the overall framework of ‘borders framing pictures’. What evidence is there for this? Well, if the compositions of specific mosaics were being replicated in their compositional entirety we should find, perhaps on a regional base, the same compositions, or variations of them, repeated; but the fact is there are very few mosaics that appear to be copies of previous compositions or variations on a compositional theme (Ling 1998, 13), although it does seem that there are broad similarities of design within regions. In addition, there is evidence that picture-panels could be acquired independently of the rest of the mosaic (Dunbabin 1999, 29,39). This inevitably leads to the presumption that individual artisans might be habitually responsible for different elements in mosaic-making, but not specific compositions. Surely if the ‘master-mosaicist’ were more common then areas of regional compositional homogeneity, as opposed to broad similarities of design, should be more obvious?

Once the overall composition of a mosaic is deconstructed in this way, it is relatively easy to contrast the aesthetics of appreciation and commission in western art, from mosaical practices in the classical world. Instead of the inspired 19th century artist working alone on a grand and unique composition, we can picture a number of mosaicists working on one mosaic within the confines of traditional repertoires of motifs and picture-panels, with none of those mosaicists having an exact mind’s eye image of what the eventual finished mosaic in its entirety would actually look like. And, instead of an educated and refined patron in a 19th century mansion commissioning a grand tableau for the dining room, we can imagine a scenario where an owner cherry-picks different geometric and figurative elements, with no overall sense of finished design at the outset, or indeed an alternative where the mosaicists present their own elements to the owner more or less as a fait accomplit.

In the Hellenistic period in Italy, from the late 2nd century BC until the Civil Wars of the 1st century BC, figurative panels excelled as mosaicists used the technique of vermiculatum (very small tesserae) to imitate contemporary paintings, achieving highly realistic renderings of form and space. The Darius and Alexander mosaic in Pompeii is a good example of this approach. Even at this apparent apogee of artistic endeavour there are indications of failures in execution. The Alexander mosaic itself, on close inspection, is not without flaws (Ling 1998, 29). More significantly, countering the modern sense of the integrity of overall interior design, there is little to indicate thematic connections between mosaics in the same house, or much evidence of determined attempts to create a link between mosaics and specific room functions or wall-paintings, or indeed linkage between picture-panels in the same mosaic (Dunbabin 1999, 39); although Witts (2000) demonstrates that from 4th century Britain it may be possible to infer a function as a dining room from the spaces in mosaics left for dining couches, or the orientation of picture-panels. The overall impression, however, is of an arbitrary selection process operating at the elemental rather than compositional level.

During the 1st century BC in Italy black-and-white geometric mosaics came to dominate the mosaicists’ industry, perhaps as a reaction to the fact that figured panels now appeared more often on walls of rooms. Polychrome mosaics now became a rarity and black-and-white geometric mosaics were still predominant in Ostia during the 2nd century AD. It is, of course, in this context that the geometric mosaics of Fishbourne were situated, being works of the last quarter of the 1st century AD. With the emergence of black-and-white geometric mosaics borders seem to have become simpler, often consisting simply of two or three solid black lines (as in some of the Fishbourne examples). It is as though, without central picture-panels, the geometric attributes of the mosaics had been transferred to the entire central pavement areas, with the borders correspondingly reduced to straightforward lines. However, there is no doubt that the appearance of all-over geometric designs represented a significant rupture in the tradition of what constituted a mosaic floor. I am not convinced that this radical change was entirely a response to changing fashions in wall paintings, and indeed this interruption might be seen to challenge the argument presented in this paper. In addition, polychrome mosaics did continue throughout this period, no doubt as a minority, alongside black-on-white examples, as the Flavian coloured mosaic from room N20 at Fishbourne indicates. Indeed Allen&Fulford (2204, 34) suggests that the ratio of polychrome to black-and-white may have been underestimated for the first century AD at Fishbourne.

During the 2nd century AD polychrome mosaics regained their popularity, although, at least in the western empire, the mosaics differed from their Hellenistic antecedents. In Hellenistic times the emphasis was on centrally-placed, realistic, pictures. In the west in the third and fourth centuries AD the design concept and treatment of the pictures was different. The emphasis was on a geometric pattern that structured the pavements, and the less realistic pictures were slotted into the overall geometric grid. New popular motifs and techniques appeared such as the black silhouette figures and vegetal elements.[3] Geometric borders regained their popularity, re-appearing with the same elements. For instance, to take three examples from thousands, the ubiquitous guilloche appears at Croughton in Northamptonshire, and again at Mascula in Numidia, and again at Apamea in Syria all during the fourth century AD. Later still, in 6th century Greece, Basilica A at Nikopolis in Epirus is richly decorated with mosaics. The transepts on either side of the apse feature central figured panels surrounded by multiple borders, one of which is a wave-pattern, stylistically exactly the same as that from Olynthos a millennium earlier.

In concluding this section of the paper two further points can be brought to bear to support of my contention that there is an unusual constancy in this mosaic tradition which endures for a thousand years (and see also Swift, forthcoming). The first is that there is also a limited repertoire of figured motifs which the mosaicists draw on. These are most often taken either from Greek mythology, or draw inspiration from scenes in the arena or on the hunt; other sources included subjects drawn from Roman legends, theatrical scenes and agricultural operations. There is even some evidence that these figured mythological scenes actually contained elements comprising groups of figures (Dunbabin 1999, 301) and it was these groups of figures that were put together, in different combinations on different mosaics, rather than an overall composition; indeed this is a feature common to other areas of Roman art such as sarcophagus reliefs. There is an obvious parallel here to the elemental characteristics of individual geometric motifs. The second point is that these mosaics appear to contain no signs of any indigenous elements in their composition (Dunbabin 1999, 2). Even when a mosaic demanded elephants and the mosaicist had never seen an elephant, elephants were depicted and not usually substituted with some local and better known fauna. The overall impression is that these thousands of mosaics were produced throughout the Empire from a limited and conventional repertoire, and within a tradition of mosaic-making that did not encourage innovation. That is not to say, of course, that there was no change at all. The switch from polychrome mosaics to completely geometric ones and then the re-establishment of the ‘borders framing pictures’ structure indicates that change did take place. But I would argue that that change was minimal when one considers changes in other areas of Roman material culture. The changes, for instance, in the forms of Samian pottery varied considerably in the first two centuries AD, while the four styles of Pompeian wall-painting show marked shifts in taste over a period of two centuries. There was something that maintained this mosaic constancy, and I want to suggest that for explanations we should look at the function of the geometric borders, and at the role of mosaic-maker.

Figurative and Geometric

Having emphasised this structural constancy of ‘borders framing pictures’ in the last section, I now want to explore how archaeological scholarship, over the last 50 years or so, has approached this conundrum, or at least treated the combinations of borders and picture-panels. Again, Dunbabin’s book provides a good starting point. Her discussion of geometric motifs is useful (pp291-8), and she comments on the great increase in the number of geometric motifs in the early imperial period, and the importance of floral-vegetal motifs right from the Greek pebble mosaics. However, there is no attempt to try and delve into what the geometric motifs might symbolise. Despite the fact that the great part of the mosaicists’ repertoire at all times consisted of ornamental and geometric motifs, there is scant investigation of what these might mean. When geometric motifs are discussed at all the main endeavour seems to be to catalogue and classify the different elements (Neal 1981; Neal & Cosh 2002). A particularly fine example of this genre is a spectacular French publication - Le décor géometrique de la mosaique romaine, (Balmelle et al, 2002). Another mode of examination, especially in relation to those completely geometric mosaics, is to explore how they could have been laid out by the application of simple mathematical rules (Field 1988; Tebby 1994). Tebby convincingly demonstrates, for example, that the ‘fortress mosaic’ at Fishbourne is laid out on a 6 units by 6 units grid (Tebby 1994, 275). The only hint of an inquisitive tone in respect of the geometric borders is provided by Neal (1981, 33) who suggests that the swastika pattern may have been intended to ward off evil spirits.