INTRODUCTION

This period (193 to 337) is one of the most significant in the history of Roman art, yet paradoxically it is perhaps the most elusive to evaluate: the sources are patchy, the art itself varied and often apparently discontinuous in style and form, and scholarly opinion on it frequently divided. In short, the sum of its parts does not always seem to match the importance of the whole.

In art historical terms its importance derives from the fact that this is a transitional period: it follows the high-point of the mid-second century and ends just before the full consolidation of the late antique art in the later fourth and fifth centuries (described in the following volume). But its forms and styles are more heterogeneous than in either of these periods, which makes them more problematic to discuss. First, there is a risk of doing so primarily in terms of what came before or after, particularly since the period contains elements which are the conclusions of certain trends, and others which are beginnings. A case in point is the crucial question of how to evaluate the shifts in form and style from naturalism to abstraction which occur increasingly in later Roman art, that is whether they signify artistic decline or, more positively, changed priorities. As discussed more fully in CAH XIII (Elsner (2000) 739–42), this debate is central to the evaluation of art in the later fourth and fifth centuries, yet it inevitably draws on examples from this period in its arguments, often colouring them with its teleology.