The Antioch floor mosaics have long served as a useful gauge of iconographic and stylistic tastes and trends of the Roman and early Byzantine periods because of their nearly five hundred years of uninterrupted production. A powerful lion on one of the many floors would have counted among the expected representations of the kind of beasts had it not been for a long ribbon, identified as a 'pativ,' a Sasanian royal symbol, fluttering around its neck. This Antioch lion is not the familiar animal of the lion hunts and Roman amphitheater games but a captive of the royal hunting preserves of one of the empire's powerful neighbors and adversaries to the east, the Sasanian Persians. The mosaic was made during a rare pause in the centuries-long conflict between the two empires marked by the Sasanian sacking and destruction of Antioch by Shapur I in 256 C.E. and by Chosroes I in 540 C.E. It is also an instance of the direct influence of Sasanian art on Roman art. Sasanian Persia was the most important intermediary for luxury goods such as sick and spices reaching Rome from as far east as China, and from the early fifth century on it was also a source of both artistic motifs and luxury goods, among which textiles, especially silks, would have been much sought after.