Celebrated Rutland mosaic depicts 'long-lost' Troy story connecting Roman Britain to the ancient classical world

[erronis]

https://phys.org/news/2025-12-celebrated-rutland-mosaic-depicts-lost.html
by University of Leicester

Section of Panel 1 of the Ketton Mosaic shows Hector, prince of Troy, in his chariot. Credit: ULAS

The team behind what has been described as "one of the most significant mosaics discovered in the UK" have revealed that it depicts an alternative "long-lost" telling of the Trojan War. The paper is published in the journal Britannia.

New research from the University of Leicester has conclusively determined why the famous Ketton mosaic in Rutland—one of the most remarkable Roman discoveries in Britain for a century—cannot depict scenes from Homer's Iliad as was initially believed. Instead, it draws on an alternative version of the Trojan War story first popularized by the Greek playwright Aeschylus that has since been lost to history.

The mosaic's images combine artistic patterns and designs that had already been circulating for hundreds of years across the ancient Mediterranean, suggesting that craftsmen in Roman Britain were more closely connected to the wider classical world than has been assumed.

The Ketton mosaic was discovered in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown by local resident Jim Irvine, leading to a major excavation by University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS). The mosaic and surrounding villa complex have since been designated a Scheduled Monument in recognition of their exceptional national importance. Historic England and ULAS undertook collaborative excavations at the site in 2021 and 2022 and are working together to publish the results of those investigations.

. . .

Edited to add:
There are some incredibly well-preserved additional mosaics pictured in this article.

[rampartd]

1. wow. i'm not crazy for the photos. they need cleaning up

but there is more and deeper dive into homer and Aeschylus than i thought was coming.

thanks for posting

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/britannia/article/troy-story-the-ketton-mosaic-aeschylus-and-greek-mythography-in-late-roman-britain/AF6081088C925F10AB0DC670A7540A7D

[NNadir]

2. Quoth Conrad: ""And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth..."

...I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago—the other day .... Light came out of this river since—you say Knights? Yes; but it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker—may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday. Imagine the feelings of a commander of a fine—what d’ye call ’em?—trireme in the Mediterranean, ordered suddenly to the north; run overland across the Gauls in a hurry; put in charge of one of these craft the legionaries—a wonderful lot of handy men they must have been, too—used to build, apparently by the hundred, in a month or two, if we may believe what we read. Imagine him here—the very end of the world, a sea the colour of lead, a sky the colour of smoke, a kind of ship about as rigid as a concertina—and going up this river with stores, or orders, or what you like. Sand-banks, marshes, forests, savages,—precious little to eat fit for a civilized man, nothing but Thames water to drink. No Falernian wine here, no going ashore. Here and there a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay—cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death—death skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush. They must have been dying like flies here. Oh, yes—he did it. Did it very well, too, no doubt, and without thinking much about it either, except afterwards to brag of what he had gone through in his time, perhaps. They were men enough to face the darkness. And perhaps he was cheered by keeping his eye on a chance of promotion to the fleet at Ravenna by and by, if he had good friends in Rome and survived the awful climate. Or think of a decent young citizen in a toga—perhaps too much dice, you know—coming out here in the train of some prefect, or tax-gatherer, or trader even, to mend his fortunes. Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him—all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. There’s no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination—you know, imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate.”

He paused.

“Mind,” he began again, lifting one arm from the elbow, the palm of the hand outwards, so that, with his legs folded before him, he had the pose of a Buddha preaching in European clothes and without a lotus-flower—“Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this. What saves us is efficiency—the devotion to efficiency. But these chaps were not much account, really. They were no colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force—nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind—as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea—something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to....”

The thought of the Romans in Britain made me recall Conrad's "Heart of Darkness."