ABSTRACT
The illustration at the front of this volume, a mosaic of a tigress bringing down a calf, is a way to start thinking about the topic of violence in Late Antiquity. Created for the fourth-century domus of Junius Bassus in Rome, it is definitely a product of the world Peter Brown introduced us to more than thirty years ago.1 It is also, most definitely, a depiction of a violent act, albeit one that the artisan’s hand has transformed into a thing of beauty. There is much it has to tell us about the nature of violence in Late Antiquity and about the age that produced it.
