Living with Myths: The Imagery of Roman Sarcophagi

by Paul Zanker, Bjorn C. Ewald, Julia Slater

Roman sarcophagi have fascinated posterity since the Middle Ages, largely because of their mythological reliefs. Living with Myths provides a comprehensive introduction to this important genre, exploring such subjects as the role of the mythological images in everyday life of the time, the messages they convey about the Romans' view of themselves, and the reception of the sarcophagi in later European art and art history. The volume is fully illustrated with high-quality photographs, which enable readers to appreciate the artistic quality of the reliefs and to explore for themselves the messages they convey. Together with the text, which includes analyses of specific sarcophagi, the pictures open up a panorama of Roman cultural history in the 2nd to the early 4th centuries CE.

440 pages, Hardcover

First published August 15, 2011

About the author

Paul Zanker is the professor of Storia dell’Arte Antica at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. Previously Zanker was professor of classical archaeology at the University of Munich (1976–2002) and the University of Göttingen (1972–1976). He is a noted expert on Roman art and archaeology and a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, of the Academia Europaea, of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, the Pontifical Academy of Archaeology and of the German Archaeological Institute. From 1990 to 1991 he was the Sather professor of the University of California at Berkeley. Zanker is head of the German Commission for the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum.