artists embraced piracy in their works, as in this third-
century a.d. Roman mosaic. Uncovered in the House of
Dionysus and Ulysses at Thugga (in modern Tunisia),
it depicts, Dionysus, god of wine, aboard a pirate ship.
Adapted from a tale that appears in the Homeric Hymns
(a series of poems from the seventh and sixth centu-
ries b.c.) and Ovid’s Metamorphoses (a.d. 8), the god is
kidnapped by pirates who believed him to be a mortalCRIME AND DIVINE
PUNISHMENT