Abstract
This iconographic and iconological research has shown the political value of the eagle symbol in the Palace Mosaic in Constantinople. Thus this subject has both ornamental and political significance, but political meaning is predominant. The chronology (532 as terminus post quem) and the historical-archaeological context have disclosed relations between the eagle symbol and the Emperor Justinian I. The eagle strangling a snake, in this perspective, becomes the symbol of supreme power of Justinian, while the snake is the symbol of all enemies of the empire. We can see these enemies in two masked heads in the frame. The first one evokes a subject very well characterized on the ethnic and physiognomic level, that is a Persian soldier, as Darius III, King of the Persians, and his soldiers in the Alexander Mosaic from the House of the Faun in Pompeii. This masked head recalls to mind the defeat of the Persians and the peace treaty between Justinian and Chosroes I in 532. The second masked head symbolizes Oceanus, the god of the mysterious west, i. e. it invokes the recovery of the Western Empire by Justinian (535-553). Therefore Justinian the Great was a new Augustus and, as the first emperor, politically exploited the language of images, especially the eagle symbol.
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