INTRODUCTION: THE SELECTIVE SURVIVAL OF CLASSICAL FORMS IN A CHRISTIAN WORLD

Although classicizing art was never immobile, the nature of its transformation itself changed as the High Imperial era gave way to the Christian empire of late antiquity. High Imperial sculptors drew on familiar Greek statue types to represent the Roman ideal of humanitas, the high culture common to elites throughout the empire. These images were formulated above all in metropolitan Rome, and transmitted – through small portable objects such as coins, or via mobile populations such as soldiers – to the empire's far-off borders. There they were reworked by provincial artists, who altered them in style, context, and meaning to reflect local tastes, and more broadly local conceptions of humanitas. The result was an array of “resonant images,” comprehensible and acceptable to both imperial and provincial viewers, although understood differently by each. These attractive, visually impressive, and flexible images were, it is argued, a central achievement of Roman art.

My final chapter traces the evolution of these resonant images in the Late Antique era (c. A.D. 250–400), as the Roman Empire became Christian. It analyzes some of the ways in which they were deployed to represent new ideals – the majesty of the Christian ruler, for example, or the believer's triumph over death – and to assert ties to Rome's glorious past.