ART/ARCHITECTURE; Reading a Civilization Through Its Ancient Shards - The New York Times - 0 views
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ENTERING the Worcester Art Museum, the first thing a visitor sees is a sixth-century late Roman mosaic, more than 20 feet square, set into the floor of the entrance hall.
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This spectacular and brutal scene paved the floor of a private house in Antioch, founded in 300 B.C. and one of the great cities of the classical world. Today ancient Antioch lies beneath the modern Turkish city of Antakya, near the Syrian border at the northeast elbow of the Mediterranean. The mosaic, along with other equally stunning and tantalizing glimmers of an almost mythical place, arrived in Worcester nearly 60 years ago.
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Four silver-gilt tyches on display -- female deities personifying the good fortune of a particular city -- representing Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria and Antioch attest to Antioch's status. Sculptures, mosaics, jewelry and intriguing inscriptions, most of them from the second to the sixth centuries A.D., bring to life a complex metropolis that thrived in an era whose economic, political and spiritual circumstances were in many ways similar to our own.
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