Entering any major city of the Roman Empire, a traveler encountered within its walls a panorama of gods and heroes. In the wealthy and well-preserved, but by no means atypical, city of Brescia in Northern Italy, for instance, a visitor to the city's monumental public spaces saw a martial yet sensuous Victoria in the forum, an acrolithic Minerva in the Capitolium, and Jupiter Ammon as architectural decoration in the theater (figs. 1-3). Arriving at the market, the traveler handled the same images on coins he exchanged for goods; visiting friends in the luxurious townhouses of the city's residential quarter, he saw the gods as marble statuettes in gardens, as vivid yet durable mosaics adorning floors, and as brightly colored and finely detailed wall paintings (figs. 4, 5). And as he left the city, he saw them yet again on the markers for tombs. For the ancient viewer, these images of the gods were omnipresent; they permeated the public and private spaces of the empire as they do the rooms of modern museums.

In Brescia, and throughout the Roman Empire from Syria to Spain, viewers recognized these divine and mythological figures not only through their display contexts but also through their familiar visual formats and styles, inspired by Greek models in monumental painting and statuary. For Roman audiences, these familiar and indeed self-consciously retrospective images were not denigrated as derivative copies.