the ancient roman emperor hadrian built the lavish river nuteiville. and in the dining room there was a formal deck and we are looking at a fragment of that, which shows two centaurs and three large cats and it is made of tiny pieces of natural stone which must have taken an enormous amount of patience to create. especially if we consider that this is a small fragment of the very large floor mosaic. these are tiny pieces of drawing and they are put together so that they can create and can be read very clearly even now that they are pieces of stone. in fact these kinds of mosaics might give us an indication of what greek painting looked like. so good a great painting has come down to us. we know from from written accounts that the greeks believed that their painting was the greatest art. we generally think of ancient greek sculpture and ancient greek architecture. but perhaps thher is painting and all that the greek themselves pailed the comparison to the work they did on the walls and yet none of them survived. the mosaics are really valuable in giving us a sense of what the greeks had been able to achieve. well i thought about this mosaic is the drama. we have the centaur, amythical creature that is half man and half horse. and he is involved in a battle agains these three wild cats