PAVONE. — The peacock, native to India, was perhaps known in Israel as early as the time of Solomon, and subsequently in Greece and Rome.
It was a sacred animal of Hera and Juno; it was represented on gems, on coins such as those of Samos and Argos already before Christ, on funerary monuments, and in houses, as at Pompeii and Herculaneum. Ovid writes that it carries the stars in its tail (Metamorphos., 15, 385). Pliny calls its colors «gemmantes» (Nat. hist., 10, 43), and Martial applies the term to its wings (13, 70). Tertullian reports Ennius’s legend that Homer was transformed into a peacock (De anima, 33-34: PL 1, 750-51; De resurrectione carnis: ibid., 841); in his treatise De pallia (ibid., 1090-91), he describes its eyed feathers, which it loses and renews. For this reason the peacock became a symbol of spring and was depicted in the Chronograph of 354 for the month of May; the wheel of its tail, with its hundred eyes, symbolizes the starry heavens (Fr. Cumont, Recherches sur le symbolisme funéraire des Romains, Paris 1942, p. 231). S. Augustine writes that the flesh of the peacock was granted immunity from corruption (De civ. Dei, 21, 4: PL 41, 712). It therefore became a symbol of immortality, which explains why it was so often represented on Roman funerary monuments, from the cemetery on the Isola Sacra to the columbaria of the Codini vineyard, those beneath the basilicas «in Catacumbas», and those in the Vatican beneath the annona building and beneath the basilica of S. Pietro. It thus passed into Christian funerary art, as in the hypogeum of the Acilii in Priscilla and elsewhere in the same cemetery (Wilpert, Pitture, pls. 91 and 109, 1, 202), in those of Bassilla (ibid., pl. 151), Domitilla (ibid., pl. 196), «inter duas lauros» (ibid., pl. 131), Marco and Marcellino (ibid., pl. 162, 1), Callisto (ibid., pls. 37, 38, 134, 2), and Panfilo (E. Josi, Il cimitero di Panfilo, in Riv. arch. crist., 1 [1924], p. 112 and figs. 59-60; 3 [1926], p. 190, fig. 78); and in the hypogeum of the Viale Manzoni (G. Wilpert, Le pitture dell'Ipogeo di Aurelio Felicissimo presso il Viale Manzoni in Roma, in Atti e Mem. della Pont. Acc. Rom. di arch., 1, 2, pl. 8).
It appears in paradise in the fresco known as that «of the five saints» in Callisto (Wilpert, Pitture, pl. 110), and at Syracuse in the crypt of S. Marziano (J. Führer-V. Schultze, Die alchristl. Grabstätten Siziliens, Freiburg i. Br. 1907, p. 304). They seem to be purely ornamental in the arcosolium of Bonifatia in the cubiculum of Ampliato in Domitilla (Wilpert, Pitture pl. 30, 1). Outside Rome, it is found at Naples in the cemetery of S. Cennaro (G. Achella, Die Katakomben von Neapel, Berlin-Leipzig 1936, pl. 28); at Syracuse in the catacomb of the Cassia vineyard (J. Führer, Forschungen zur Sicilia Sotterranea, Munich 1897, pl. 10). In all the examples cited, one may find peacocks alone above or below a tree; peacocks facing a vase or chalice; peacocks on vine branches or emerging from a vase; and peacocks pecking at a bunch of grapes or drinking from a vase. In mosaics the peacock is frequent, either alone with its tail spread into a wheel or in the act of pecking at a flower, in pairs beside a vase, or even in groups of three; it appears on funerary decorations at Carthage, and in the basilicas of Hadrumetum, Bordj-el-Joudi, Sidi-Diedidi, Oued-Ramel, Sidi-Abich, Carthage, Cherchel, Djemia, Henchir-Guerneria, Henchir-Chigarmia, and Henchir (Inventaire des mosques de la Gaule et d'Afrique, passim). It was also engraved on funerary slabs, as on that of Aurelia Proba and on one from Praetextatus, where the two peacocks facing a vase are shown together with dolphins and anchors (O. Marucchi, Monumenti del Museo cristiano lateranense, Milan 1910, pls. 58,3 and 29,3). In Gaul, it appears on an epitaph of a religious woman named Eusebia, «magna ancilla Dei» (E. Le Blant, Inscriptions chrétiennes de la Gaule, Paris 1857, pl. 70, no. 423), and at Vienne on that of an «Urbanus» who died in 491 or 536 (M. Faure, Vienne, ses monuments chrétiens, Vienne 1948, p. 132, fig. 1). It also appears in a graffito found in the Christian basilica of el-Asaba (R. Baroccini, in Africa italiana, 1929, p. 77). They are shown facing a cantharus also in the floor mosaic of the synagogue of Naro, today Hammam-el-Lif in Tunisia (E. Renan, La mosaïque d'Hammam-Lif, in Revue arch., 3rd series, 3-4 [1884], pp. 273-76, pls. 7-8). In Rome they also appear on the vault of a cubiculum in the Jewish cemetery of the Randanini vineyard on the Via Appia; this cubiculum, however, may originally have been pagan and was later incorporated into the cemetery (R. Garrucci, Storia dell'arte cristiana, VI, Prato 1881, pl. 580). In non-funerary art the peacock appears in mosaics, as on the vaults of the mausoleum of S. Costanza in Rome, in S. Matrona near Capua, and in S. Vitale at Ravenna. At Vid of Narenta (ancient «Narona»), in Dalmatia, a fragment of a bas-relief shows two peacocks facing a vase (Fr. Bulic, Di un antico bassorilievo con rappresentazione eucaristica, in Nuovo bull. arch. crist., 12 [1906], pp. 207-14).
It is often found on transennae, in S. Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna and in S. Vitale; also on the abaci of the capitals of the reliquary urn in the Museo Civico of Verona, and on the sarcophagus in the atrium of S. Lorenzo al Verano in Rome, which has been reworked (Fr. H. Taylor The Sarcophagus of St. Lorenzo, in The art Bulletin, 10 [1927]). It is found even on a lamp from Beirut (O. M. Dalton, Early christian antiquities, London 1901, p. 132, no. 835) and on a lead bucket discovered in Tunis (G. B. De Rossi, in Bull. arch. crist., 5 [1867], pp. 77-87).