just in front of this same apse the tables are turned: a man has taken refuge in a cage against the attack of a fabulous winged griffin, with the head of a bird of prey. The crowded, vivid, barbarous artistry of this mosaic brings us to the very threshold of the Byzantine age; in Rome’s past, only the Barberini mosaic at Palestrina can match it. In Maximian’s family even the children were brought up to take part in blood sports. Room 36, a child’s room, perhaps Maxentius’--his squint-eyed portrait recurs in the anteroom (35)--portrays a child’s hunt, in three bands, full of characteristic Roman insensibility to animal suffering. In the upper band, a boy has hit a spotted hare full in the breast with a hunting spear, while another has lassoed a duckling. The middle band portrays hunting mishaps: a small animal nips one fallen small boy in the leg; a cock attacks another with its beak and spurs. In the bottom register one boy clubs a peacock, a second defends himself with a shield against a buzzard, and a third has plunged his hunting spear into the heart of a goat. [Illustration: FIG. 13.5 Piazza Armerina, Imperial Villa, large hunting scene, mosaic (detail). (MPI)] [Illustration: FIG. 13.6 Piazza Armerina, Imperial Villa, Labors of Hercules, mosaic (detail). (Pace, _Mosaici_, Pl. 7)] The child’s Circus (33), unlike the hunt, is rather fantastic than brutal. Around a _spina_ with a single obelisk, as in room 8, run four miniature chariots drawn by pairs of birds in the appropriate stable colors: green wood-pigeons, blue plovers, red flamingoes, and white geese. As usual, Green wins, and is awarded the palm. Servants with amphorae sprinkle the track to lay the dust. It is all vivid, detailed, alive, more illuminating than a dozen pages in a handbook.