ROMAN PAVEMENTS. 243 



has a silvery lustre and is always quadrangular like tessellse,* 

 though, perhaps, it is the shape and not the size that he com- 

 pares. 



No one could have been more familiar with the beautiful 

 Mosaic pavements of Pompeii than was Pliny himself, who 

 perished on the 24th August, in the year of Christ 79, by the 

 volcanic eruption which destroyed that city. He must have seen, 

 for example, in the house of Pansa, the Mosaic of the Battle of 

 Issus, which was composed, when perfect, of 1,384,000 cubes of 

 diverse material, or, on an average, of about 86 in each square 

 inch. 



Pliny says : " Pavements were invented by the Greeks, who 

 also practised the art of colouring them, till they were super- 

 seded by lithostrota [or mosaics]. In this kind of work Sosus 

 was very celebrated. [He is conjectured to have lived during 

 the last years of Alexander the Great, say B.C. 330.] He laid 

 at Pergamos [a town of Crete] a pavement composed of small 

 tiles and stones, parvis e testulis, variously coloured, tinctisque in 

 varios colores, which represented, amongst other things, a dove 

 drinking from a cantharus and casting the shadow of its head 

 upon the water; whilst others, perched on the edge, were sunning 

 themselves and preening their feathers." Farther on he has : 

 " Lithostrota [mosaic pavements] were first introduced [into 

 Italy] in the time of Sylla [d. B.C. 78], and there still exists at 

 least one of them in the Shrine of Fortune at Prseneste, which 

 he had made of very small segments of stone, parvulis crustis"\ 



* Androdamas argenti nitorem habet, quadrata semperque tessellis similis. 

 Plin. XXXVII., 10. 



f" Pavimenta originem apud Grecos habent, elaborata arte pictures ratione, 

 donee lithostrota expulere earn. Celeberrimus fuit in hoc genere Sosus qui 

 Pergami statuit [stravit] quern vocant " asaroton cecon" [ao-dpooros O!KOS = the 

 unswept house] quoniam purgamenta coense in pavimento, quseque everri solent, 

 veluti relicta fecerat parvis e testulis [dim. a testa, a tile] tinctisque in varios 

 colores. Mirabilis ibi columba bibens et aquam umbra capitis infuscans. 

 Apricantur alise scabentes sese in canthari labro. XXX. 



Lithostrota cceptavere jam sub Sylla [B.C. 82] parvulis certe cnistis, extat 

 hodieque, quod in Fortunes delubro Praeneste feoit. Plin. XXXVI., 25. 



