The Signs of Romanization

Ocean god

This pavement covered the floor of the vestibule (100m²) of one of the site's largest houses, to which it gave its name. The mosaic's central area represents the four heads of the God of the Ocean. They are surrounded by water animals : fish (moray eels, sardines, rays), shells (mussels and murex). All around is a decor of intersecting circles. This black and white decor, whose sobriety stands in contrast to Viennois mosaics of this era, today has become the emblem of the site.

Victorious athletes

In the center, Hercules fights the Lion of Nemea. All around them, victorious athletes (wrestlers, discus throwers, runners) are rewarded with cups and palms. In the square are theatrical masks, and in the four corners, the seasons. This mosaic decorated the main hall of a large Viennois house near the end of the 2nd century AD. Hercules, a divinity particularly venerated in Gaul, was an athlete whose force and courage was an example for athletes. The presence of the theatrical masks is a reference to the mixed spectacles combining theatre and sports. Vienne, exploratory dig, Place Saint-Pierre, 1965. Courtesy of the city of Vienne.

Wrestlers

Fountains springing forth from a marble wall, an elegant pool surrounded by a colonnade, paintings on the walls : the most luxurious of these rooms of the wrestler's baths is the one containing the toilets! The painted decorations consisted of a series of tableaux showing sports of the palestra, the room where bathers exercised before bathing. Four pieces, recovered in fragments, were painstakingly reconstructed. They represent nude athletes according to the era's conventions: wrestlers, discus throwers, and boxers. Only the referee is clothed : positioned at a far end of the room, he indicates the exit toward the baths.

> Four Centuries of History

> Commerce, a Source of Wealth

> The Thousand and One Vocations of the City

> Colorful Houses

> Areas of the House