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Very little of ancient Greek art survives. We know it primarily from copies made by their Roman conquerors. Artists and philosophers were brought to Rome. Greek plays were performed in Roman theaters. Roman artists made copies of Greek sculptures and decorated their homes with Hellenistic murals. While little is known of the individual artists who created the master pieces of ancient Greece and Rome, Phidias was one individual who stood out in the visual arts. When the Romans replaced the Greeks as the conquerors of the Mediterranean world, they freely adopted aspects of Greek culture and art. It is through Roman copies that Greek art was preserved. Roman genius seems to have been focused in other areas: engineering, architecture, law and military science. Roman culture appears to be a combination of the monarchy social order of the ancient world and the democratic innovations of the ancient Greeks. It combined an agricultural economy with the commercial, maritime economy of Greece. Rome began as a republic: a representative form of government led by senators. It evolved, however, into a centralized empire led by an Emperor, who could be declared a god. Nonetheless, the absolute power of the Emperor was tempered by the power of the Roman people to remove an Emperor at will with the intervention of the army.
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