Includes bibliographical references (p. 223-240) and index.

"The Parallel Worlds of Classical Art and Text is the first study to consider the relationship between artists and texts throughout Classical Antiquity and to cover the entire range of illustrated text from traditional literary to technical works. By systematically applying new and objective criteria to judge the fidelity between picture and text, Jocelyn Penny Small makes it clear that artists illustrate stories, not texts. Small argues that artistic transmissions follow the model of oral, not textual, transmission, where the variant rules and there is no original. Pictures on vases, she demonstrates, should not be used to reconstruct lost literary works. Finally, Small offers an analysis of literary sources on pictures in texts to prove that the appearance of the first illustrated literary classical texts occurred at the end of the Late Roman Republic."--BOOK JACKET

What does it mean to illustrate a text? -- The evidence from Archaic and Early Classical Greek art -- The evidence for Greek plays -- The evidence from Hellenistic and Roman art -- Illustrated text from antiquity -- There is no original!