The Origins of Roman Historical Commemoration in the Visual Arts

This book analyzes the mentality that required the invention of history to commemorate the achievements of aristocrats at the dawn of the Roman Empire. By investigating classical literary sources as well as the visual arts, this book helps us understand how the Romans justified their action to themselves and to their conquered subjects. It investigates how the Romans interacted with the artistic traditions of the ancient Greeks, Etruscans, and other Italian peoples. Using recent archaeological discoveries and theoretical debates, Peter Holliday explores the ways in which Roman commemorative art constructed a narrative for the ancient viewer. Considering how style worked with narrative and demonstrated political significance, he examines what images tell us about Roman achievements and the Republic that they served. Roman patrons also exploited the visual arts to convey messages about history whose immediacy no text could rival. In this study, Peter J. Holliday explores the development of Roman history painting and sculpture in an effort to broaden our unders Holliday's study sharpens our understanding of the kinds of narrative that the Roman elite wished to convey through images and what these images tell us about their achievements and the Republic that they served."--Jacket Providing a survey of this subject that takes into account recent archaeological discoveries and theoretical debates, he also considers how style worked in tandem with narrative and had political significance "History was an important element of Roman Republican culture, as revealed by the numerous historical accounts and panegyrics written during this period