Representations of Music and the Dance in Late Roman Art

Music and the dance are an important theme represented in various artistic media of the Late Roman and Early Byzantine periods, including mosaic pavements and decorative arts such as silver metalwork, woven textiles, and carved ivories. A popular aspect of this theme is imagery of the Dionysiac thiasos, with members of the wine god's entourage making merry by dancing and sounding crotala or cymbal tongs, as we see in a fragmentary mosaic from the House of the Dionysiac Thiasos at Augusta Traiana - Beroe. A similar effect occurs in either an expanded or a somewhat reduced format in pavements from Argos and Madaba. Besides mosaics, this subject also appears on Late Antique silver plate made for display, such as objects in the Mildenhall Treasure from Roman Britain and related works. Coptic textiles used to ornament private houses as colorful wall hangings feature lively dancers and musicians, and these figures may or may not have a mythological identity. Other non-mythological representations of music and the dance appeared in domestic and public settings. An outstanding example is the well-preserved Mosaic of Female Musicians that decorated a house in Mariamin, Syria, and that assembles an impressive group of instrumentalists and a dancer. One observes a pipe organ (hydraulis) along with a cithara, an aulos, and an acetabulum, consisting of a series of metal bowls struck with a baton. Elsewhere there are depicted a pantomime performance with an organ accompaniment, visible in a mosaic from Noheda, Spain, as well as music-making and dancing in the context of the circus. The latter subject appears on a consular diptych, and on the base of the Obelisk of Theodosius in Constantinople. We finally note that the pipe organ was later adopted for use in the church liturgy, reflected in an illustration in the Utrecht Psalter of 9th-century date. If the latter work of art is a copy of a Late Antique manuscript, as some scholars believe, then the pipe organ's adoption for Christian ceremonial practice should be dated earlier than originally thought.