An Exotic Menagerie in Tesserae: the Mosaic Pavement of Lod/Lydda

This article deals with several aspects of the Roman mosaic pavement of the villa at Lod, mainly focusing on the central octagon and the wild animals depicted within it. Several of these were perceived as exotic animals and aroused the interest and curiosity of Roman writers and artists, as well as of kings, rulers and important and powerful men. The idea proposed here is that, given the difficulties of maintaining a real zoo, this mosaic may instead have been meant to present an enjoyable substitute image of a menagerie, a private collection of exotic animals or some kind of zoo. (D'après le résumé de la revue)