A Rabbit Rides a Chariot Pulled by Geese in an Ancient Roman Mosaic (2nd century AD)

If you head to the Lou­vre, make sure you vis­it the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and Lib­er­ty Lead­ing the Peo­ple. But then swing by the Depart­ment of Greek, Etr­uscan, and Roman Antiq­ui­ties. There you might find (no guar­an­tee!) a Roman mosa­ic fea­tur­ing a rab­bit rid­ing a char­i­ot pulled by geese. Dis­cov­ered at Hadri­an’s vil­la in Tivoli, Italy, the mosa­ic dates back to the 2nd cen­tu­ry. About the mosa­ic, the His­to­ry Cool Kids writes:

This kind of humor­ous scene is an exam­ple of asária, a type of ancient visu­al joke where ani­mals behave like humans (anthro­po­mor­phism). Such mosaics were pop­u­lar in Roman domes­tic dec­o­ra­tion, often as floor or wall pan­els in vil­las and bath­hous­es.

This par­tic­u­lar mosa­ic is part of the Louvre’s exten­sive col­lec­tion of Greek, Etr­uscan, and Roman Antiq­ui­ties. It illus­trates how Roman artists loved play­ful or satir­i­cal imagery along­side more seri­ous mytho­log­i­cal and real­is­tic scenes. The rab­bit, a sym­bol often asso­ci­at­ed with fer­til­i­ty and speed, paired with the absur­di­ty of it dri­ving a char­i­ot of geese, reflects both Roman wit and their fond­ness for dec­o­ra­tive exu­ber­ance.

Some schol­ars believe the mosa­ic plays on a line in Ovid’s Meta­mor­phoses: “Cytherea [Aphrodite] was rid­ing in her dain­ty char­i­ot, winged by her swans, across the mid­dle air mak­ing for Cyprus, when she heard afar Ado­nis’ dying groans, and thith­er turned her snowy birds.” But it’s hard to know for sure.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent 

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