The passage from Imperial Rome to the era of late antiquity, when the Roman Empire underwent a religious conversion to Christianity, saw some of the most significant and innovative developments in Western culture. This stimulating book investigates the role of the visual arts, the great diversity of paintings, statues, luxury arts, and masonry, as both reflections and agents of those changes. Jas' Elsner's ground-breaking account discusses both Roman and early Christian art in relation to such issues as power, death, society, acculturation, and religion. By examining questions of reception, viewing, and the culture of spectacle alongside the more traditional art-historical themes of imperial patronage and stylistic change, he presents a fresh and challenging interpretation of an extraordinarily rich cultural crucible in which many fundamental developments of later European art had their origins. This second edition includes a new discussion of the Eurasian context of Roman art, an updated bibliography, and new, full colour illustrations. "Jaś Elsner's ground - breaking account discusses both Roman and early Christian art in relation to such issues as power, death, society, acculturation, and religion ... he presents a fresh and challenging interpretation of an extraordinarily rich cultural crucible in which many fundamental developments of later European art had their origins." -- Mark Beumer, Kleio-Historia "Elsner's innovative goal was to address "the movement of aspects of Roman art into the east, and the presence of some aspects of Asian material culture in the Roman world" (xv), and he succeeds in doing so." -- Fred S. Kleiner, Boston University, Journal of Roman Archaeology Jas Elsner is Professor of Late Antique Art at the University of Oxford, Humfrey Payne Senior Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and Visiting Professor of Art and Religion at the University of Chicago. In 2009 he was elected a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and since 2013 has been Principal Investigator in the Empires of Faith Project . He is married with four children and lives in Oxford.