In March 2015, jihadist gunmen attacked the National Museum of Bardo in Tunis (Tunisia), killing twenty-two people. The museum did reopen but it was a traumatizing experience and tourism in the country, already moribund, was further depressed. Then, in July 2021, there was an autogolpe. The president of the republic suspended parliament and dismissed the prime minister and his cabinet. The democratic reforms that had been so hard won in a revolution a decade before were completely undone.
The museum is located in a former seventeen-century palace in the Tunisian suburb of Le Bardo and, because it is adjacent to the national parliament building, it was ordered shut as well. And it remained closed until September 2023—the enforced closure at least allowing uninterrupted time for the ongoing conservation and restoration of what is the world’s largest collection of Roman mosaics.
These pictures were taken just a few weeks after the museum had reopened, some of which were permitted by a sympathetic guard who allowed access to several second-floor rooms not yet accessible to the public. Other galleries remained closed, sequestered by tape or hidden behind canvas curtains.
And yet, there still was a dazzling display of art and artifact in terracotta and stone, metal and marble.
This grinning terracotta funerary mask dates to the early sixth-century BC and was laid in the grave as an apotropaic talisman to ward off evil spirits and give peace (and perhaps some joy) to the deceased.
"And in one thing he [Cato the Elder] was even more savage, namely, in adding to his vote on any question whatsoever these words: "In my opinion, Carthage must be destroyed."
Plutarch, Life of Cato the Elder (XXVII.1)
This stele dates from sometime soon after 200 BC but before 46 BC—its terminus ad quem when Carthage was refounded by Julius Caesar as a Roman colony (a century after the city had been completely destroyed in the Third Punic War). It depicts eight deities flanking a goddess (the darker figure in the middle). All are distinguished by their intricately braided hair, the gods wearing a chlamys fastened at the right shoulder by a brooch.
In spite of the distracting reflections, this bronze cardiophylax, so named because it was designed to protect the heart from injury, still manages to impress. Dating from the third or second-century BC, the cuirass is Italian in origin and likely was acquired in Roman Campania when Hannibal occupied southern Italy between 211–203 BC. The helmeted figure of Athena is another apotropaic image to protect the wearer.
"Leopards are now a race of wild beasts, but aforetime they were not fierce wild beasts but bright-eyed women, wine-drinking, carriers of the vine branch, celebrators of the triennial festival, flower-crowned, nurses of frenzied Bacchus who rouses the dance."
Oppian, Cynegetica (IV.230ff)
This marble bas-relief of Maenads (from the Greek verb "to rave") dates from the first-century AD. One carries a knife and the dismembered haunch of an animal that has been sacrificed in a ritualistic act of sparagmos—in remembrance that Dionysus himself had been torn apart and consumed by the Titans. Another holds a thyrsos, a staff crowned by a pine cone and another attribute of Dionysus, here signifying fertility and propagation.
"Thus I sang of the care of fields, of cattle, and of trees, while great Caesar thundered in war by deep Euphrates and gave a victor's laws until willing nations, and essayed the path to Heaven."
Virgil, Georgics (IV.559ff)
It is the mosaics for which the museum is renown—the most important of which is the only one of Virgil and the earliest portrait of the Roman poet. He is depicted holding an open scroll of the Aeneid. One can read Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso (“O muse, relate to me the causes by what deity having been offended…”) from Book I, verse 8. Flanking the poet on either side are Clio, the muse of history, holding a scroll, and Melpomene, the muse of tragedy, holding a theatrical mask. (The museum itself identifies the muses as Calliope and Polymnia.) Given that Aeneas, a Trojan hero destined to found Rome itself, falls in love with Dido, the queen of Carthage, it is not surprising that Virgil would be so honored.
(Sent by his father to study law, Virgil was nostalgic for the rural Italian countryside and returned instead to the family farm to write poetry about a simpler time—before the upheaval of the civil war that followed the assassination of Julius Caesar. When, after thirteen years, it finally came to an end with the victory of Octavian (Augustus) at Actium in 31 BC, conscripted soldiers returning home had forgotten how to work the land, and Virgil was asked by his patron to instruct them about the values of a traditional agrarian life. In the Georgics Virgil writes about farming, bee keeping, and animal husbandry, which so impressed Augustus that he was given a villa on the Esquiline Hill and a generous stipend. There, he worked for more than a decade on the Aeneid, a national epic about Rome's origins. But, having caught a fever on a voyage to Greece (so as to provide some additional detail to the poem), he was not able to complete his final revisions and requested that it be burned. The emperor refused and ordered the Aeneid to be published. It is the greatest work of literature that Roman civilization ever produced.)
If the portrait of Virgil is the most unique of mosaics, the most impressive is a depiction of Neptune and the Four Seasons (Horae), which dates to the second-century AD and measures sixteen feet square. Neptune's chariot is pulled by four hippocampi, mythological creatures with the foreparts of a horse and the finned tail of a fish. The god himself holds a trident and a dolphin, symbolizing his dominion over the sea, and is escorted on either side by a Triton and a Nereid. But not merely a god of the ocean, Neptune, his head hallowed with a nimbus to symbolize his divinity, is portrayed as a cosmocrator or ruler of the cosmos itself.
In the lower right, framed in roses, is the personification of Spring, who wears a floral wreath and extends a rose in one hand and holds a basket of roses in the other. Gathered from a garden, more roses are carried by a laborer in a basket on his head. A dog tugs at its leash. The association with Spring is not immediately apparent but may have to do with the Robigalia, celebrated on April 25, in which a red dog was ritually sacrificed to propitiate against the threat of wheat rust or mildew. On that date, according to Ovid, "the season of spring will be in mid course...and the constellation of the Dog will rise" (Fasti, IV, 901ff) and "when that constellation rises the earth is parched and dry, and the crop ripens too soon" (940ff). (Here, Ovid is mistaken: Sirius the Dog Star then rose on August 2. An author also has suggested that a dog is represented because it guarded the flock, but that was the task of the much heavier Molossian.)
Above is golden Summer, more sun kissed than her sisters and framed by stalks of wheat. She holds a sickle and a basket of grain, while sheaves are gather by a laborer. A black-maned Barbary lion signifies the season, when the sun entered the sign of Leo at the summer solstice. As the Sun now was in its true domain, so the lion was consecrated "an animal among the signs of the zodiac in that part of the heavens where the sun burns hottest in its yearly course, and there they call the sign of Leo the house of the sun, because that animal seems to derive its essence from the nature of the sun" (Macrobius, Saturnalia, I.xxi.16). Its fiery majesty is vividly imagined by Hercules, who has been brought to madness by Juno. "See where the lion, my first toil [the Nemean Lion], glows in no small part of heaven, is all hot with rage, and makes ready his fangs. Forthwith he will seize some star; threatening he stands with gaping jaws, and breathes forth fire, and shakes the mane upon his flaming neck" (Seneca, Hercules Furens, 939ff).
Even in North Africa, the weather has begun to cool and Autumn is partially cloaked. Surrounding the goddess are symbols of her season. She is wreathed in grape vines and crowned with ivy. In her right hand, she holds a thyrsos, a staff topped by a pine cone and symbolic of Dionysus, the god of wine whose season it was (grapes usually were harvested in September). In her left, she pours a libation from a kantharos, the two-handled drinking cup also associated with the god, whose imagery is further reinforced by a leopard, symbolizing his wild and untamed nature (compare the time that Dionysus was captured by pirates: "But ivy twines and clings about the oars, creeps upward with many a back-flung, catching fold, and decks the sails with heavy, hanging clusters. The god himself, with his brow garlanded with clustering berries, waves a wand wreathed with ivy-leaves. Around him lie tigers, the forms (though empty all) of lynxes and of fierce spotted panthers," Ovid, Metamorphoses, III. 664ff; as to the pirates themselves, they were transformed into dolphins). An accompanying laborer carries baskets of grapes weighing down his bending pole.
The personification of Winter is completely bundled up, wearing a hood and shoes and surrounded by olive branches (which were harvested in the autumn and early winter) and carrying, somewhat incongruously, a brace of ducks over her shoulder. But ducks also were symbolic of the season and, not the least, objects of the hunt—an image reinforced by a charging bristled boar, another attribute of winter. Next to the goddess, a laborer gathers fallen olives in his basket.
"Be ashamed, ye Roman people everywhere, be ashamed of the lives you lead....It is neither the natural strength of their bodies that makes them [the barbarians] conquer nor the weakness of our nature that makes us subject to defeat. Let no one think or persuade himself otherwise—it is our vicious lives alone that have conquered us."
Salvian, On the Government of God (VII.23)
To Salvian, a Christian trained in the law, the capture of Carthage by the Vandals in AD 439 was certain justification for his jeremiad: "The barbarians' arms clashed about the walls of Cirta and Carthage while the Christian congregation of the city raved in the circuses and wantoned in the theaters" (VI.12). This early third-century AD mosaic may depict the circus at Carthage, which was second only to the Circus Maximus in size (but not in capacity). The four racing factions are represented, and one sees the carceres or starting gates and the central spina about which the chariots raced. Wine awaits the victor.
If the Carthaginians could linger at the games while the Vandals were at the gates of the city, this late fourth-century mosaic explains their enthusiasm. It depicts Eros, the auriga or charioteer for the green faction, by whom omnia per te ("all things by you"). Two of the four horses that pull his quadriga are immortalized as well: Amandus ("Lovable") and Frunitus ("Enjoyable").
Although this mosaic is not illustrated in the museum catalog, it deserves comment. The Telegenii were a sodality or professional guild of theatrical producers who provided wild animals to the games in North Africa (and sometimes the actual venatores or animal fighters themselves). Here, they are celebrating. One member, who seems to be presiding over the event, carries a staff with a crescent moon and declares Nos tres tenemus (literally, "We have three" but signifying that "We three are getting along fine"). The others variously exclaim Avocemur ("We might be amused"), Ia[m] multu[m] loquimini ("You have spoken too much already"), Bibere venimus ("We have come to drink"), and, in a damaged caption, [N]os nudi [f]iemus ("We will be naked")—a proposal the reveler seems already to have adopted.
A servant extends a glass of wine from a table next to a large vat, while another, his hand to his mouth, admonishes the drunken revelers to be quiet and let the five bulls sleep—Silentiu[m] dormiant tauri.
"For coursers, such at least as are true sportsmen, do not take their dogs out for the sake of catching a hare, but for the contest and sport of coursing."
Arrian, Cynegeticus (XVI)
This extraordinary scene is from a fourth-century AD mosaic known as the "Boar Hunt," although rabbits seem to be the quarry, one of which is cowering in the grass. The sleek hounds that pursue them likely are Vertragi, which track game by sight rather than scent (coursing). They were so swift that the hunter could follow the chase on horseback, rather than having to run behind on foot. Horses, hares, and hounds: it was the sport of the chase that was so enjoyable.
"The Vertraha [Vertragi], coloured with yellow spots—swifter than thought or a winged bird it runs, pressing hard on the beasts it has found, though less likely to find them when they lie hidden."
Grattius, Cynegeticon (203ff)
This detail is from a larger scene showing frantic hares being chased into a net strung across their path. If not caught by the pursuing hounds, they are snatched by hunting falcons.
The vertical perspective of the larger mosaics have been adjusted.
There was a rumor of student protest when the museum was visited—which, only recently opened and still being renovated, was virtually empty that day. Now, two years later, one hopes that its mosaics are fully restored, the galleries open, and the halls filled with admiring visitors.
References: Bardo: Tunisia's Great History (2019) by M'hamed Hassine Fantar, Samir Aounallah, and Abdelaziz Daoulatli; The Mosaic of Neptune and the Seasons from La Chebba (1991) by Gifty Ako-Adounvo (master's thesis); Salvian: On the Government of God (1930) translated by Eva M. Sanford; Macrobius: Saturnalia (2011) translated by Robert A. Kaster (Loeb Classical Library); Seneca: Tragedies (1917) translated by Frank Justus Miller (Loeb Classical Library); Ovid: Metamorphoses (1911) translated by Frank Justus Miller (Loeb Classical Library); Ovid: Fausti (1959) translated by James George Frazer (Loeb Classical Library); Arrian on Coursing: The Cynegeticus (1831) by Anonymous; Minor Latin Poets (Vol. I) (1935) translated by J. Wight Duff and Arnold M. Duff (Loeb Classical Library); Plutarch: Parallel Lives (Vol. II) (1914) translated by Bernadotte Perrin (Loeb Classical Library); The Arts of Orpheus (1941) by Ivan M. Linforth (for a review of the Dionysian myths); Virgil: Ecologues, Georgics, Aeneid I-VI (Vol. I) (1916) translated by H. Rushton Fairclough (Loeb Classical Library); Star Lore of All Ages (1911) by William Tyler Olcott (who quotes Seneca as saying "The sun glows in the Lion," which is repeated but no source ever is given—and indeed there seems to be none. Ausonius does say, however, that "The raging lion scorches the month of August with his fires," The Eclogues, XVI).
See also Circus at Carthage, Sack of Rome, Robigalia, Telegenii, Venatio, Coursing.
