Ancient Mediterranean Art in the Ackland Art Museum presents the collection of ancient art in the Ackland Art Museum at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This collection includes a broad array of works of art that come from many parts of the ancient Mediterranean world, including Egypt and the Nile Valley, Mesopotamia, Iran, Cyprus, Greece, and Italy, ranging in date from ca. 5000 BCE to 1100 CE. The collection contains large- and small-scale sculptures made of marble, bronze, terracotta, limestone, and gold and vessels formed of clay, stone, and bronze. Notable groups of objects include Egyptian amulets made of faience, Near Eastern cylinder seals, Cypriot votive statuary of limestone, Greek and Roman coins, and Roman vessels of glass. Started in 1958, the collection has grown considerably and now includes objects discovered through official excavations in Egypt and the Nile valley and Italy, along with gifts of former faculty members and friends of the University and Museum. From its beginning, the collection was intended to be diverse in scope and was founded to bring to Chapel Hill works of art that would directly support the teaching mission of the university. This volume showcases a significant and valuable collection as never before.

Volume XXIII in the Corinth series is dedicated to the finds from the Gymnasium Area, excavated between 1965 and 1972 by James R. Wiseman and the University of Texas at Austin. Fascicle XXIII.1 presents the marble sculpture, 126 pieces dating between the 6th century B.C. and 5th century A.D. and found in or near a variety of built features, including the ornately decorated Bath-Fountain complex. Among the sculptural finds are portraits of athletes and civic officials and depictions of Dionysos, Hermes, and Aphrodite and the nymphs. Herms and statue bases also form part of the assemblage. This corpus grants us insight into the sculptural practices after the founding of the Roman colony at Corinth, and critical knowledge concerning display context, reuse, and the deposition of sculpture at a gymnasium in a large regional centre of the eastern Mediterranean.

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The remodeling of the theater at ancient Corinth in the 2nd century A.D. included lavish decorations, the chief of which were three dramatic friezes. In publishing them this book presents the most ambitious sculptural program known among theaters on the Greek mainland, and indeed one of the more elaborate decorative schemes among published theaters of the Roman empire. The friezes (the Gigantomachy, the Amazonomachy, and the Labors of Herakles) are presented each in turn with a discussion of its position in Greek art and a stylistic analysis, followed by a catalogue of the pieces arranged as far as possible in the proposed sequence of relief slabs. There follows a discussion of known theater friezes throughout the classical world and of the Corinth scaenae frons as restored by the author.

At the time of its creation in the Hadrianic period, the Corinth Theater presented the most elaborate form of Roman theater architecture to date; a three-storied columnar facade made of multicolored marble. The polychrome architecture did not stand alone, for the scaenae frons was also impressively embellished with painted marble reliefs beneath the columns, with painted statuary between the columns and in the niches, and with painted busts in the pediments. This blaze of color would have conveyed many different messages to ancient audiences since the sculptural complex evoked the Theater's political, religious, and cultural function as well as the self-identification of the city. A colossal seated portrait of the deified emperor Trajan dominated the display, surrounded by other members of the Roman imperial family. However the depiction of Gigantomachy, Amazonomachy, and Herakles scenes on podia and the Greek character of other sculptures around the building made a conscious link to indigenous culture. As the author's reconstruction shows, the entire assemblage, arranged in thematic segments, would have attempted to resolve in symbolic form the real cultural negotiation at the heart of Roman Corinth. This book presents in detail the freestanding sculptures, assembled from fragmentary remains, and reveals an additional group of architectural sculptures as well as figures in niches and between columns. With Corinth IX.2 it completes the publication of sculptures excavated from the theater by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Drawing on over 30 years of study, the author also presents her ideas about sculptural decoration in the Corinth theater and throughout the Roman East. Using epigraphical as well as architectural evidence she explores questions of dedication and patronage to shed important new light on the social role of Roman theater, a forum for far more than just entertainment.