This volume contains eight papers under a common focus: the complexity of image- and role- construction in classical Athens. The development of democracy came along with a growing importance of the political order; equality among all citizens was the most important aim, while women and metics were excluded from the political institutions. But besides politics, traditional social structures persisted, having their peculiar inclusions/exclusions and hierarchies. The resulting tensions are analyzed with regard to textual and archaeological sources, reflecting also the specific rules of different media.

Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli’s seminal article on the “Arte plebea” (1967) voiced the requirement that classical archaeology be pursued in a new way, as a critical discipline with an explicit historical orientation. In Germany this desideratum was substantiated and gained currency mainly thanks to the work of Paul Zanker. Since then the analysis of the relationship between form, content, and the social locus of ancient works of art defines broad sectors of classical archaeology. The ten papers collected here, which were delivered on the occasion of Zanker’s 70th birthday, illustrate several perspectives of this field of research; they devote particular attention to the imagery of Pompeii, but also to ancient Greek art as well as Roman provincial art. In this way they underscore the ongoing relevance of the issues related to the arte plebea and to similar formal phenomena, also across times. Using the questions formulated since 1967 and the 1970s as a starting point, these selected case studies manage to disclose further perspectives of research for classical archaeology understood as a form of socially oriented art history.