This exceptional mosaic bears the signature, like another small scene from the same villa, of Dioskourides of Samos. It exemplifies the Hellenistic tradition at its best, and a recent hypothesis dates it to the third rather than the latter part of the second century B.C. The scene portrayed is either from Aristophanes’s comedy Synaristoi or from a play of the New Comedy. Three women carrying masks are seated round a circular table, two of them youthful and the other an old hag.

The presence of vases on the table suggests that the sorceress might be preparing love potions, assisted by a serving girl seen on the right. The mosaic reproduces a painting characterised by pastel hues with colours that blend into one another and by a remarkable sense of volume, well embodied at the bottom by the steps and overhead by the perspective created by the wings in graded colours.