The realistic style now dominant in Roman portraiture echoes both the style and the technique of Egyptian mummy portraits.
The floor of a Roman villa in southeastern Sicily near the present town of Piazza Armerina boasts a spectacular series of multicolored mosaics thought to have been set around 300 by artisans from North Africa.
Covering an area of about forty-two hundred square yards (thirty-five hundred square meters), the pavements feature large figures distributed seemingly at random in crowded, spaceless fields.
One major scene depicts the hunting and capture of African animals for shipment to Rome; others represent women exercising, the circus, seascapes, cupids at play, and mythological themes.
