Achilles

New research from the University of Leicester has revealed something remarkable about one of Britain's most significant Roman archaeological discoveries. The celebrated Ketton mosaic in Rutland doesn't depict scenes from Homer's famous Iliad as initially believed, but instead illustrates an alternative "long-lost" version of the Trojan War first popularized by the Greek playwright Aeschylus. This groundbreaking finding, published in the journal Britannia, fundamentally changes our understanding of cultural connections between Roman Britain and the wider classical Mediterranean world. The mosaic was discovered in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown by local resident Jim Irvine, who noticed unusual pottery fragments while walking through his family's fields near Ketton. What followed was a major excavation by University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS) that