Roman Sculpture: From Augustus to Constantine

Eugenie Strong (nee Sellers, 1860-1943) studied classics at Girton College, Cambridge, and then classical archaeology in London. Her translations of Schuchardt’s account of Schliemann’s excavations at Troy, and of Furtwangler’s Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture, are also reissued in this series. Among other distinctions, she was the first female student of the British School at Athens, and in 1909 (partly as a result of the 1907 publication of this book) was appointed assistant director of the British School at Rome. Roman sculpture had consistently been regarded as the ‘poor relation’ of what was seen as the superior art of Greece, but in this highly illustrated work, covering the period from Augustus to Constantine, Strong argues both for its particular aesthetic qualities and also for its importance as occupying a special place ‘at the psychological moment when the Antique passes from the service of the Pagan State into that of Christianity’.