2,000多年来，希腊和罗马的艺术已成为西方文明的核心。本书再现了最初创作它的艺术家们的激动。它描述了那些挑战传统智慧，探索新观念的艺术家们的大胆创新；它描述了雕塑家和画家们为描绘（首次）人类外形的复杂性和人类情感的丰富性而进行的英勇斗争。

随着时间的流逝，太多东西遭遇了毁坏，以至于希腊和罗马艺术似乎只由令人印象深刻的废墟和破碎的碎片组成。然而，希腊人的创造性成就及其遗产，经过罗马人的改造，从未失去其力量。

For more than 2,000 years the art of Greece and Rome has lain at the heart of western civilization. This book recaptures the excitement of the artists who first created it. It traces the daring innovations of those who, defying traditional wisdom, explored new ideas; it describes the valiant struggles of sculptors and painters to portray - for the first time - both the complexities of the human form and the richness of human emotions.

So much has been destroyed by the ravages of time that Greek and Roman art seems to consist only of impressive ruins and broken fragments. Yet the creative achievements of the Greeks and their legacy, as adapted by the Romans, have never lost their power.