The Mosaics at Villa Romana del Casale
All and only dirt! the tipsy dominus declaims, dirt and its children. Dirt to fodder for liveststock and slaves, to forests for sills and roof-beams, to grapes and cellars of wine, olives and cisterns of oil. And the surplus to money. The money? To these celebrated fragments of vitrified clay. Q.E.D! Our thing, his pretty consort puts in by way of punctuation, meaning to spare their guests more of the same, ushering us into magic rooms where horses fly; a sly Ulysses tricks a drunken Cyclops; two maidens play a gentle game of catch; gazelles, rhinoceroses, elephants, men in leather tunics driving oxen; Cupids fishing; a boy in a chariot harnessed to two knock-kneed herons, alfresco lovers on a chair comfortably copulating; and a wounded huntsman whom a boar has thrown to earth. Bleeding, defenseless, his broken spear beside him, the monster lunging for the kill, he raises himself on an arm and sees, up beyond his millenial death- in-waiting, past all time and likelihood, me, of all people, leaning against the catwalk railing: Mets cap, mirror-shades, sweaty t-shirt, woozy from Sicilian sun and vino.