It’s believed that the mosaic was created at some point between AD 325 and 350. This was the time when the city of Constantinople was being founded.
At the centre is an image of a red rooster along with fruit. The rooster is surrounded by a vine scroll. A Greek inscription is at centre and reads: (mosaic) was completed on April 15 in the Indiction year 10 in the year 104. There is a geometric pattern surrounding these motifs. On the right side of the mosaic there is a very complex pattern.
The mosaic will be featured in the new Byzantine gallery, opening in 2011, at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada.
The galleries will be completed some time in 2011. For now I thought I would show a picture of a key artefact that will be featured in the Byzantine Gallery. It’s a mosaic that dates to the time when the city of Constantinople was being founded (AD 325-350).
Submitted by Roger Kean on Tue, 01/19/2010 - 20:43
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In the winter of AD 406/7, the bitterest in living memory, the Rhine froze solid. Suddenly, the natural frontier barrier protecting Roman Gaul from the massed Germanic tribes inhabiting the dark, trackless forests of the east bank lay wide open. The teutonic warriors poured across, overwhelming the poorly garrisoned towns of north-eastern Gaul. Within two years, all of Gaul was alight and the barbarian hordes were hammering at the Pyrénées.
From Britain into the midst of this chaos came Constantine III, proclaimed by his alarmed (and largely Gallic) troops. In his attempt, ostensibly to protect the island against the effects of the barbarian invasion across the Channel but really to seize the throne from the rightful emperor, Honorius, Constantine III denuded Britannia of its last Roman soldiers, and the province effectively disappeared from the map of civilisation.
Planners and construction workers are hard at work building new 
