The use of images: visual history and ancient history

Abstract

This chapter explores the visual aspect, a territory shared with archaeology and art history. The Greek and Roman world poured an astonishing amount of its surplus into expensive monuments and elaborate public images, and their study is naturally an important part of classical archaeology. Unlike many other archaeologies, this subject studies a world extremely well documented by abundant and diverse literary and textual evidence, and it is thus part of the wider classics project. The discussion explores some of the great gains made by recent work in this area and some of the remaining deficiencies. Gains have resulted from application of historically based questions, while deficiencies arise from the still largely untheorised nature of this subject's research and discourse.