The evidence for achondroplasia in 1st century AD Italy

Among the number of works of ancient art on display at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples (MANN), Italy, is a mosaic (50 × 50 cm) dating to the second half of the 1st century AD from the Vesuvian area, possibly Pompeii, and formerly in the Borgia collection, classified as Dwarf with a rooster (inventory number 10 003, room LXVII; figure).1 Mentioned in 19th century guidebooks (titled as Caricature: a dwarf giving a piece of grass to a rooster), the work also appears in Domenico Monaco's guide to museum collections,2 where it is titled: Dwarf feeding two gamecocks and holding a palm branch out to one of them (Pompeii). In a later Italian version of the guide, however, a much more generic and misleading description, Man in a cloak giving grass to two roosters, perhaps with the intent to steal them (Pompeii), is given. Monaco's guide suggests that the work portrays a servant caught in the act of giving the palm of victory to a rooster, breasted and proud of his success over his adversary, another rooster next to the first that is portrayed with his head bowed to the ground.