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Many of the most beautiful mosaics in the whole Roman world were made in Roman Africa. One of the most famous is the oldest known portrait of the great Latin poet Virgil. This mosaic, which was found in Sousse, is now kept at the Bardo Museum in Tunis.
This square fresco, of 1.20m a side, represents Virgil, the greatest Roman poet and the author of the Aeneid, wearing a white toga and sitting on a chair, with a parchment on his knees. To his right and left, the muses (goddesses of art) Clio and Melpomene are standing: Clio, the muse of history, is reading, while Melpomene, the muse of tragedy, is holding a tragic mask. On the open parchment, a passage of the Aeneid that refers to the muses can be read: “Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso, quidve…” (“Muse, tell me the cause: how was she offended in her divinity, how…”).
This mosaic was discovered in 1896, in the garden of a Roman villa in Sousse. Its date is uncertain: it was made between the 1st and the 4th Century. The fact that it is the oldest known portrait of Virgil gives it particular historical importance. The mosaic is also remarkably well-made.
The Tunisian historian of art Mohamed Yaqoub suggested that the owner of the villa might have represented himself under the traits of Virgil, to express his admiration for the poet.
The Virgil mosaic is now kept at the Bardo Museum, in Tunis, where it is the masterpiece of the museum’s rich collection of Roman mosaics.
