Representation

Regarding the role of images in social life, three fundamental categories are to be distinguished: representation, decor, and objects of discourses. Representation was a major aim, because ancient societies consisted not only of their living members but also of two other social groups, their dead ancestors and their gods and heroes. Community life developed in interactions, through rituals and other cultural practices, between these social partners, of which those that were, in fact, absent could be made present by images within the society’s living spaces. Specific groups of images, such as cult statues, votive images, athletes’ statues, and honorary portraits, had their specific places, in sanctuaries, public spaces, and necropolises, where they were dealt with according to specific rules of “living with images.”

Decor

The category of decor concerns a highly controversial aspect of the visual arts that has provoked much perplexity among scholars. Works of “applied art” of very different character—such as the column of Trajan, statue decoration of public architecture, Pompeian wall decoration, or Roman coin series—are designed with elaborate image programs but present themselves with a very reduced visibility. A solution to this paradox is offered in the notion of decor: not in the debased modern sense of meaningless decoration, but in the ancient meaning of adequate form. Decor serves the fundamental purpose of conveying visible value to objects of major cultural significance. As such, it has a certain autonomy as a visual order that creates distinction without close inspection.

Space, Action, and Images

The worlds of ancient Greece and Rome are characterized by a high degree of visuality of their social spaces. A theoretical fundament is laid out by the distinction between experienced and conceptual space, in interrelation with human actions. Fundamental is cultural practice, religious rituals, and political activities in interrelation with public architecture and urban spaces. Social life, as it developed in visually marked spaces, is exemplified in a concentric sequence: civic sanctuaries and agorai/fora, city areas and territories, empires, and liminal zones, comparing different concepts between Greece and Rome.

Time, Memory, and Images

Greek and Roman societies were strongly rooted in and intentionally based on their authoritative pasts, made visible in monuments and “lieux de mémoire.” For a precise understanding of these phenomena, a theoretical distinction is introduced between the knowledge of tradition and the memory of a paradigmatic past, exemplifying both categories by testimonies of the age of Augustus. Specific commemorative capacities are explored, on the one hand, in places of mythical and historical memory in Athens and Rome and, on the other hand, in political monuments from classical and Hellenistic Greece to republican Rome and the Roman Empire. The distinction serves to underline the potentially aggressive character of collective identity based on public memory.

Introduction

The societies of ancient Greek city-states can be defined as communities of “immediate acting” in which all social interaction is brought about in the presence of its members. In this context, seeing and being seen becomes a primary condition of social and political life. The basic thesis of the book is that the world human beings live in, the “Lebenswelt,” is characterized by its visuality, like images, and that the visual world, together with images, constitute the “conceptual reality” the Greeks and Romans lived in.

The Dignity of Reality

Greek art is traditionally considered the birthplace and highpoint of artistic idealism; the same judgment is applied, with the exception of portraits and historical reliefs, to Roman art. In addition, recent art theory strongly emphasizes the fundamentally constructing character of the visual arts. Yet the Greeks and Romans themselves considered their art as basically mimetic. In order to overcome this contradiction, the notions of conceptual realism and conceptual reality are introduced. The real world, as it is formed and perceived by human beings, is conceptually constructed; figurative art is a translation from the medium of conceptual reality into the medium of images.

Person, Identity, and Images

Within the ancient culture of “immediate acting” the visual appearance and behavior of individual persons was of paramount importance. The result was a particularly strong interrelation between persons and images: Greek politicians, Hellenistic kings, and Roman generals and emperors styled themselves into “living images,” whereas portrait statues made these persons corporally “present” in public spaces and served as models of public behavior. Yet, while recent scholarship has underlined the ideal features in Greek and Roman portraiture, exemplifying normative virtues, the aim in this chapter is to reestablish individual features as a basic phenomenon in Greek and Roman art practice.