The visual arts of Greece and Rome are a tangible and accessible link with the foundations of Western civilisation. Successive generations of poets and artists have returned again and again to classical art for inspiration, and it was a passionate enthusiasm for Greek and Roman art that drove collectors of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to amass the magnificent pieces now in museums throughout the world.
One of the richest collections is in the British Museum, spanning over three and a half thousand years and encompassing not only some of the finest works of the Greeks but the remarkable arts of neighbouring areas under Greek influence, including pottery and bronzes from Cyprus and monumental sculptures from Lycia and Caria. The author's daily contactwith these masterpieces has enabled her to trace the story from the Greek Bronze Age, through the Geometric, Classical and Hellinistic periods and the Etruscans  of pre-Roman Italy, to the Romans themselves, whose power and influence extended throughout the Mediterranean and beyond.
The many illustrations include well-known pieces such as the Parthenon sculptures and the Portland Vase as well as the less familiar Lycian tomb monuments, fine Etruscan jewellery and the miniature arts of coinage and engraved seal-stones.

Lucilla Burn is a curator in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities in the British Museum, where she specialises in Greek vases and terracottas. She has participated in excavations in Britain and elsewhere, lectures widely and has written several articles and books on classical subjects, including The Meidias Painter and Greek Myths.