Marine mosaic (central panel of three panels from a floor)

Mosaics covered the floors of houses belonging to the well-to-do throughout the ancient Mediterranean, especially in Roman times, and thousands of these pavements survive. Many inventive compositions, both figural and ornamental, were developed to complement the functions and layouts of the rooms they occupied. This mosaic is a three-part composition that once decorated a courtyard in a third-century residence, the so-called House of the Drinking Contest, near the port of Antioch-on-the-Orontes. Antioch was a great metropolis whose inhabitants, belonging to the Hellenized culture of Syria, enjoyed a privileged lifestyle similar to those of their wealthy counterparts throughout the Roman Empire.