Unswept-floor mosaics / asarotos oikos
About the work
Imported from the workbook's Full reassessment sheet, revised 7 October 2026 (record ID 31). The assessment below is the workbook's comparative judgment under its stated criteria; source links and limits are retained.
Workbook assessment: Spread only
Date or witness: Design attributed to Sosos, 2nd century BCE; Vatican version made under Hadrian, 117–138 CE
Region: Hellenistic Pergamon and Roman Italy
Workbook date-sort bounds: 200 BCE to 138 CE; these bounds are not automatically invention or disappearance dates.
Description
Dining-room mosaics permanently depict scraps, bones, shells and other banquet debris as if nobody had swept the floor. The Vatican version includes a mouse at a walnut shell.
Evidence of adoption or transmission
The unswept-floor design was copied and varied across mosaics.
What remains uncertain
The principal evidence is costly dining-room decoration and named artistic models, with no demonstrated non-elite uptake.
Workbook revision note: Reassessed using grassroots criteria