Plato's Academy mosaic Ceramic Tile

Roman mosaic of the 1st century BCE from Pompeii. The image is said to present some variation on the topic of the Seven Sages of Ancient Greece. The figures are in classical attire of toga and sandals, gathered under a tree, against a backdrop of allusive elements, including stone columns suggestive of the grand civic architecture of the age, and glimpses of distant cliffs or havens, perhaps metaphysical in nature. Since its discovery in 1897 many hypotheses about the personages and the meaning of the representation have been proposed.