A Gallo-Roman mosaic illustrating the conclusion of a boxing match in Sicily between the youthful Trojan Dares and an older local Sicilian, Entellus. The mosaic, dating from 175-200 AD, was discovered in 1836 on the estate of Marquis Forbin-Janson in Villelaure, France, and was subsequently sold after several owners and much controversy to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles in 1971. The mosaic depicts a passage from Virgil's Aeneid (Book 5, lines 362–484): the end of the boxing contest during the games organised by Aeneas, who was fleeing Troy and was the future founder of Rome, in Sicily to mark the anniversary of his father Anchises' death.
Dares was regarded as unbeatable and highly experienced, and no one dared to challenge him. However, only when he arrogantly demanded the prize without fighting did a challenger step forward: the Sicilian Entellus, older than Dares, endowed with extraordinary strength and extensive boxing knowledge. He had been a pupil of the legendary Erix, a hero, boxer, and king of western Sicily (modern-day Erice), who was killed in a boxing match by Hercules. Dares fared worse, "vomiting teeth mixed with blood," nearly dying from the force of the Sicilian boxer's punches. Aeneas intervened, stopping the fight and declaring Entellus the winner. He received the prize: a white bull, which he then sacrificed, crushing its skull with a single blow to demonstrate his strength and honour the gods.
In the mosaic, the central image is surrounded by a three-part border: a guilloche inner band, a rinceau of vine and ivy leaves alternating with red squares at the four corners, and an outer border of black and white braid. In the centre are two boxers standing back to back: on the left, a brave Entellus stands before a kneeling, dying white bull, whose forehead is dripping with blood after he punched it to kill it and sacrifice it to the gods; on the right, Dares turns in defeat with his arms lowered, his forehead, temples, and nape also dripping copiously with blood. Both men are depicted nude in the Greek style, wearing the type of boxing gloves known as himantes, the same as those worn by the famous Boxer of the Baths or Boxer at Rest, a bronze work now housed in the Palazzo Massimo in Rome. However, the Aeneid refers to caestus (pl. caesti), a general term for boxing gloves, and often a specific type of glove from the imperial period.
The figures are rendered in polychrome on a white background and are composed of natural stone tesserae, primarily red, black, and grey; the bull's horns, however, are pale blue, glass paste tesserae. The mosaic was part of several panels that decorated the floor of an ancient Roman country villa located near the modern town of Villelaure in southern France, which was once part of the Roman province of Gaul. The illustration of this passage from the Aeneid is rare in Roman art; in fact, the only other known mosaics depicting this passage are from the same area, and also date to the mid- to late 2nd century AD, suggesting that all are a product of the same local workshop.
