( fl c. 100 BC). Mosaicist from Arados, Phoenicia. The fragmentary inscription...piades Aradios epoiei (Gr.: ‘...piades of Arados made’) is set in two lines of black tesserae on the white ground of a tessellated floor still in situ in the House of the Dolphins on the island of Delos (see Bruneau, fig. 210). The beginning of the name is lost, but ‘Asklepiades’ is the most probable. The square floor, which occupies the central court, can be dated to c. 100 BC. It has an outer border of black crenellation and within that a series of pattern bands in concentric circles surrounds a rosette, each corner being occupied by an Eros riding a dolphin and leading a second on the rein. Most of the floor is worked in opus tessellatum, but these corner groups are in opus vermiculatum (using very fine tesserae). The inscription lies between two of the pattern circles. One of these has horned heads, alternately characterized as griffins and lions, that grow out of arcs of ornament. Animal ornament is rare in Greek art, but there is a close parallel on an Orientalizing vase of the 7th century BC from Crete (Herakleion, Archaeol. Mus.). Another floor in the house has the ankh-shaped symbol of the Punic goddess Tanit, suggesting that the owner was perhaps also from the Arados area, but Asklepiades’ style is purely Greek. The circle in square composition (generally rare in Greek art) is unique here in developed tesserae mosaic but is found regularly in pebble and transitional floors from their beginning, c. 400 BC, to the late 3rd century BC.

• Asklepiades
  • Delos, §3: Mosaics
  • Greece, ancient, §VI, 2(iii): Wall and panel painting: Hellenistic
  • Greece, ancient, §VII, 1(iii): Mosaicists
  • works
    • Greece, ancient, §VII, 1(iv)(a): Mosaic motifs and subject-matter: Patternwork
    • Greece, ancient, §VII, 2(iii)(c): Mosaics: Tessera