Imagery and iconography served specific functions in public, private, and ritual spheres in the Roman world. State-sanctioned imagery communicated politically charged ideas through an often-complex pictorial language, composed of emblems and attributes that signaled aspects of policy.
In the private sphere, imagery communicated ethnic, social, and religious identities through specific signs, symbols, and forms, and through the emulation of state-sanctioned art.

This volume focuses primarily on visual imagery in the Roman world, examined by context and period, and the evolving scholarly traditions of iconographic analysis and visual semiotics that have framed the modern study of these images. Among other subjects, essays touch on iconography and style in republican and early imperial art, public sculpture and social practice in the Roman Empire, coin iconography, funerary imagery, imagery in ritual use, and images and interpretation of Africans in Roman art.

The Oxford Handbook of Roman Imagery and Iconography is an important reference work for both the communicative value of images in the Roman world and the tradition of iconographical analysis.