Mosaic with Aion and Tellus from Sentinum

In 295 BC the country around Sentinum, a town in the hills of central Italy, saw one of the great battles of Rome's wars for Italy, a Roman victory over an alliance of Samnites and Gauls. More than four centuries later Sentinum was still a Roman town, and in one of its buildings this floor was laid.

At its centre stands Aion, the god of unending time, a young man inside a great ring that carries the signs of the zodiac. A green tree grows on one side and a bare one on the other, often read as summer and winter. Below him Tellus, the Earth, appears with four small children, the four seasons. The whole floor covers about 26 square metres.

It came out of the ground in 1806 near Sassoferrato, the modern town on the site of Sentinum. When it was made is disputed. Some scholars date it to the middle of the 2nd century AD, under the emperor Antoninus Pius, others to the first half of the 3rd century.