Introduction:The art of art history in Graeco-Roman antiquity

To what extent can we talk about Greco-Roman processes of making, viewing, and writing about images as "art history"? How did ancient concepts of image-making resemble those used in other cultural spheres? What role do post-Enlightenment systems of aesthetics continue to play within the study of (what some prefer to call) ancient "visual culture"? The introduction to this guest-edited volume explains why these questions are so pressing. Concepts of "art" have long shaped the study of "classical art history" in the past. But debates about the historicism or essentialism of "art" must also determine the future of the discipline and its place within "classics," "archaeology," and "art history" at large