Chapter 2 looks at the continuities in perception of the city between antiquity and the later period, looking at representations (images) and panegyrics. In terms of how cities were represented (especially in painting and sculpture), there is striking continuity in the emphasis on the wall circuit with gates and towers as the defining element of the city. The extensive tradition of panegyrics of individual cities (laudes urbium), the models set by Greek and Roman rhetorical manuals, was followed into the Middle Ages. The principal contrast lies in religion, but the economy, politics, and physical structures of the city are treated as belonging to a continuous tradition, and later cities are celebrated for the imitation of antiquity and, above all, of Rome.