Chapter Two argues that the interest in and definition of late antique art promoted by Franz Wickhoff and Alois Riegl was in part spurred by political conditions in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Chapter Five considers the definition of mimesis in the visual arts to argue that ancient ideas of visual imitation encompassed a wide range of styles, among them formal solutions modern observers would consider abstract. It posits that the stylistic language deployed by Hermogenes of Tarsus in his rhetorical treatise Peri Ideon can be applied to the description of late antique visual art.

Chapter Seven considers images that depict ceremonial events in the wider context of the narratives in which they were embedded. Using Hermogenes of Tarsus’s rhetorical categories as an interpretive model, it discusses the historical frieze from the Arch of Constantine in Rome and the imperial panels depicting Justinian and Theodora in the church of San Vitale, Ravenna.

The introduction argues that the current understanding of late antique style as abstract and spiritual is not supported by the evidence. It surveys the trajectory of this idea in the literature of late antique art and proposes an alternative approach based on concepts of style outlined in late antique rhetorical theory.

Chapter Eight considers the interpretation of late antique portraiture in its broadest sense by examining fourth- and fifth-century honorific sculpture and early Christian icons from the period before Iconoclasm.

Chapter Six looks at strategies of visual narrative in works such as the sixth-century Vienna Genesis and the fifth-century mosaic cycle in the Roman church of Santa Maria Maggiore using Hermogenes of Tarsus’s rhetorical categories of style as an interpretive model.

The Conclusion proposes that the visual arts may be grouped among the ancient arts of persuasion.

Chapter One outlines the first definitions of late antique art proposed by Franz Wickhoff in Die Wiener Genesis (1895) and Alois Riegl in Die Spätrömische Kunst-Industrie (1901).

Chapter Three traces responses to Franz Wickhoff’s and Alois Riegl’s work over the first two decades of the twentieth century.

Horse hybrids reveal a wide range of meanings. Since riding requires control of an animal much more powerful than the rider, it was a psychologically charged experience that found expression in hybrid figures of riders fused to their horses. Pegasos, the horse with wings, is the hero Bellerophon’s companion and makes it possible for him to slay another hybrid, Chimaira. The best-known horse hybrid is the centaur, but centaurs come in different varieties. Some are human to their toes, with a horse’s rear end jutting out of the middle of the creature’s human back. Others exhibit a human head and torso rising from the horse’s withers. Since the centaur is frequently used as a symbol of unrestrained lust, the change in form forces the viewer to consider uncomfortable questions regarding sexuality and animality. Yet centaurs are more than the embodiment of rampant sex drives, since the opposite of licentious behaviour is embodied by another centaur: Cheiron, the tutor of heroes. The centaur expresses the kaleidoscopic nature of being and identity in the Archaic Greek world.

Human/snake hybrids played a significant role in the Athenian imagination: the snake’s connections with the earth expressed the Athenian claim to autochthony. This claim was complicated. For some aristocratic gene, autochthony marked them as superior to more recent arrivals, but the foundational myth of Athens, involving Hephaistos’ attempted rape of Athena, was tinged with incest and pollution, indicating some ambivalence towards autochthony. Traditions of snake-bodied kings reflected a conception of the past that was conceptually both near and far from the present. The hybridity of the snake-figured ancestor connected them to a deep past but also bridged the gap that separated the present and connected past from the plupast. This was a particular concern in the sixth century, as new notions of Athenian identity were taking shape. Bluebeard, the famous pedimental sculpture from the Archaic Akropolis, embodies this. Bluebeard can be identified as the Tritopatores, ancestral deities of the Athenians. These hybrids signify the continuous irruption of the deep past into the current world, a condition that produced a creative tension between order and chaos.