Historical Studies in Late Roman Art and Archaeology

Alan Cameron (1938-2017) was one of the most remarkable and wide-ranging classical scholars of recent times. Beyond his central interests in the history and Latin and Greek literature of the later Roman empire, his scholarly work ranged from the Hellenistic age deep into the Byzantine period. But as Jas Elsner demonstrates in the introduction to this book, he also made a substantial contribution to the history of late Roman art. This collection was planned by Cameron himself, and brings together nineteen of his articles on late Roman art and archaeology written between the 1980s and 2017. Marked by Cameron’s witty, accessible, and polemical style, they illustrate his developing views on the ivory diptychs of office holders, and offer fundamental discussions of silver plate, luxury manuscripts, gold glass, and sarcophagi. This book will be of interest not only to art historians, but to all specialists in the late Roman world.