Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction / Jaś Elsner -- Before sarcophagi / Glenys Davies -- Habent sua fata : writing life histories of Roman sarcophagi / Janet Huskinson -- Tragedy's forgotten beauty : the medieval return of Orestes / Francisco Prado-Vilar -- The Roman sarcophagus 'industry' : a reconsideration / Ben Russell -- Multimethod analyses of Roman sarcophagi at the Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome / Frances van Keuren, Donato Attanasio, John J. Herrmann, Jr., Norman Herz, L. Peter Gromet -- In the guise of gods and heroes : portrait heads on Roman mythological sarcophagi / Zahra Newby -- Man or woman? Cross-gendering and individuality on third century Roman sarcophagi / Stine Birk -- Myth and visual narrative in the second sophistic : a comparative approach : notes on an Attic Hippolytos sarcophagus in Agrigento / Björn C. Ewald -- Image in distress? The death of Meleager on Roman sarcophagi / Katharina Lorenz -- Borrowed verse and broken narrative : agency, identity, and the (Bethesda) sarcophagus of Bassa / Dennis Trout -- Image and rhetoric in early Christian sarcophagi : reflections on Jesus' trial / Jaś Elsner -- 'Houses of the dead'? Columnar sarcophagi as 'micro-architecture' / Edmund Thomas.

Description based on print version record.