*Art.* Roman art found its chief inspiration in, and remained in close contact with, Roman public life. The artists of the principate may well have been Greeks, but they wrought for Romans and had to satisfy Roman standards of taste. Realism and careful attention to details may be said to be the two great characteristics of Roman art. This is true both of Roman sculpture, which excelled in statues, portrait busts, and the bas-reliefs depicting historical events with which public monuments were richly decorated, and of the repoussé and relief work which adorned table ware and other articles of silver, bronze and pottery. The Roman fondness for costly decorations is well illustrated by the elaborateness of the frescoes and the mosaics of the villas of Pompeii, and other sites where excavations have revealed the interiors of Roman public and private buildings. The erection of the many temples, basilicas, baths, aqueducts, bridges, amphitheatres and other structures in Rome, Italy and other provinces supplied a great stimulus to Roman architecture and engineering. It was in the use of the arch and the vault, particularly the vault of concrete, that the Roman architects excelled, and their highest achievements were great vaulted structures like the Pantheon and the Baths of Caracalla. The most striking testimony to the grandeur of Rome comes from the remains of Roman architecture in the provinces—from such imposing ruins as the Porta Nigra of Trèves, the theatre at Orange, the Pont du Gard near Nîmes, the bridge over the Tagus at Alcantara and the amphitheatres of Nîmes in France and El-Djemm in Tunisia. But, like the literature, the Roman art of the principate in time experienced a loss of creative power. It reached its height under the Flavians and Trajan and then a steady deterioration set in.