Paintings mimicking an architectural frieze, with figures flattened into a plane parallel to the picture plane. Used deliberately by Ferdinand Hodler and others.
von Klenze
A battle in which the Romans were overwhelmingly defeated, used later as an icon of German nationalism. And the vicious murder of the wife of the emperor Claudius.
A successful general and much-loved statesman, he was responsible for building the Parthenon and Acropolis. Yet he gave his wife to another man, and lived with a courtesan who ran a brothel.
Classical history paintings are rarer than those of myth. Even fewer show the most anomalous of classical societies: the Spartans.
The Eclectic Light Company 