Masking the Bacchic Floor: Materiality and Theatricality in a Late Roman Dining Mosaic

Abstract

While the social and visual significances of ancient Roman mosaics continue to gain recognition, an unprovenanced work at the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens in Jacksonville, Florida has not been extensively researched. Mosaic with Mask of Silenus (first century CE) is a polychrome mosaic fragment. It features a ruddy-cheeked, floral-crowned mask identified as the mythological figure of Silenus. Bacchic-themed masks appear frequently throughout the corpus of Roman mosaics. In fact, two additional works exist that are comparable in composition, scale, style, and technique to that of the Cummer Museum. By analyzing each of these works, I position the latter’s image within the context of the social life of private Roman banqueting. Certain features of the image’s composition––a crown of corymb flowers and the figure’s exaggerated facial features––are visually comparable to those of a second figure: the “lead slave” character, whose image was widespread in contemporary Roman theater. Similarly drunken and aged, these theater masks bear a remarkable likeness to that of the satyr. Analyses of these characters and their depictions reveal their relevance to Roman social life and performance. In the context of elite banqueting, where enslaved assistants served those partaking in the dining, the Cummer mosaic may have functioned as an ambiguous image. It evoked bacchic (festive and exotic) ideals, while also highlighting the ever-present hierarchies of real and literary social dynamics related to slavery. Recontextualizing the Cummer mosaic and considering its materiality within a Roman triclinium setting allows it to be understood as part of a private theatrical performance of cultured, aristocratic self-definition modeled on public forms of theater.

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