Qasr mosaic leopard and VMS Leo/August image

[R. Sale]

And now to the other end of the cat. I notice that VMs Leo seems to have its tongue out as though licking the raised, front paw. While the mosaic example is a cat looking back over its shoulder. What I've seen of lions, more on the heraldry side of things, is that heraldic lions frequently do have their tongues extended. But it occurs to me that this may not be the case with lions that are associated with the month of August. Does the typical August lion have its tongue in or out?

And while heraldic lions are most often represented as aggressive or rampant, August lions are not so much. Many positions have heraldic designations.
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The VMs lion would be passant, standing with its right paw raised. The mosaic lion would be regardant or looking backward. Not to mention that they are oriented in opposite directions. Can it be suggested that the appearance of the animal in one particular representation is retained through various iterations, but its positioning has been lost in transmission?

Going back to the tail end of the cat. In the VMs, the tail is between the hind legs. In the mosaic it is not. In heraldry it is not between the legs, except in the example: Lion coward. So is the VMs illustration of Leo a cowardly lion licking its wounds? Or just washing its feet on a bad day?

On the whole, however, and just as an example, this sort of search for one-to-one correspondence always raises certain questions.
Is the comparison valid? And if so, what does that mean? How does a Roman mosaic from Tunis make it into the VMs Zodiac?

What we have is a great discussion about what this proposed correspondence of illustrations might mean, but not an answer to the original question as to whether the correspondence is truly valid in the first place. To some extent it is just part of difficulties inherent in the use of the one-to one paradigm. In order to answer the first question more clearly, the standard option is to try to find an example with better correspondence, that's what we do. A better answer to the question of validity is found by changing the paradigm. That is what the author has done through the institution and use of a two-to-two paradigm. It is a paradigm shift. And its presence is obvious. It's the paring paradigm - a pair in the real world and a *pair* in the VMs.