Alexander Mosaic

The house contained mosaic floors of a quality and complexity that most Roman cities could not match in their public buildings.

The most famous of these, the Alexander Mosaic, depicted Alexander the Great at the Battle of Issus, charging on horseback toward the Persian king Darius.

The mosaic measured roughly five meters by three meters and was composed of approximately one and a half million individual tesserae, tiny cubes of colored stone, each one cut and placed by hand.

the detail was extraordinary the reflection of a fallen soldier's face in a polished shield the individual strands of alexander's hair the panicked expression on darius's face as his chariot turned to flee And this masterpiece, this work of art that would be the centerpiece of any museum in the world today, was a flaw.

The Thermopolia counters are clean and dry, the Dolia empty, the painted menus advertising food that will never be served again.

The amphitheatre holds 20,000 seats and no one is sitting in them.

the bakery oven is cold the millstones are still in the house of the faun the alexander mosaic lies on the floor in the fading light its million and a half tesserae still locked in the same positions that an artisan placed them twenty-two centuries ago still showing Alexander's horse mid-stride, still showing Darius turning to flee, still depicting a battle that happened three centuries before the mosaic was made, and two millennia before you are standing in the room looking at it.

The fresco painter's brushes are where they left them.

That is a Greek pediment from a building, and it has Greek architecture in it there.

And then if you've never heard of it, the Alexander Mosaic that was discovered in Pompeii at the House of the Fawn, which may be Julius Caesar's father-in-law's house, shows the Battle of Issus, the first battle, and, uh, it's made of one million tesserae tiles, which are, like, the size of your, your thumbnail.

And, uh, just a mo- amazing monument there.

So, and Josephus, uh, talks about the, when he besieges, uh, Tyre.