The ancient visual environment was packed with instances where words and images appeared side by side: statues with dedicatory inscriptions, labels on paintings or mosaics, or complex juxtapositions of images and engraved texts on funerary monuments. In the past these elements have often been divorced from one another and studied in isolation. In this volume art historians and epigraphers have come together to look at the complex ways in which images and words interacted with one another, illustrating, explaining or reinterpreting each other or, conversely, making competing demands upon the viewer. Their essays range widely in their focus from archaic Greek pottery through Hellenistic honorific statues and Pompeian wall-paintings to Late Roman mosaics. The insights that emerge contribute to our wider picture of the relationships between art and text in the ancient world, as well as illuminating the complexity and variety in ancient material culture.
