For too long, ancient mosaics have been the stepchild of histories of ancient art, although they exist in countless numbers from all over the Empire, contribute substantially to the décor of the buildings, both public and private, in which they occur, and constitute an extraordinary repertory of ornamental and figurative motifs. For several decades, however, under the leadership of Henri Stern and his many colleagues and successors in Europe and America, there has appeared an extensive, if largely descriptive, archaeological and art-historical literature, especially on Roman mosaics, whose disparate character is fully revealed in the publications of the various congresses on Greco-Roman mosaics and in the annual Bulletin of the Association Internationale pour l’étude de la Mosaïque Antique, the organization dedicated to the study of ancient mosaics. Dry archaeological reports of excavated sites, schematic repertories of ornamental framing motifs, monographic treatments of rich ensembles from Antioch, or Piazza Armerina, or North Africa, and topical studies of programs of thematic or iconographically charged subjects, such as the Seasons or Dionysiac representations, have altogether enriched the scholarly literature. But for the small book by Roger Ling, Ancient Mosaics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), intended for students, there has been, until now,...