This remarkable book is one of a two-volume set that examines the impact of Rome on American artists and writers from the earliest days of the new republic. William L. Vance presents examples of American painting, sculpture, and writings of many different kinds (novels, poetry, travel books, letters, cultural commentary, journalism) that have been inspired by American encounters with Roman places and people over the course of two centuries.

Volume I focuses on the influence of classical Rome, showing how the Forum and the Colosseum inspired American thoughts of ideal republics and powerful empires, how the Campagna was an ambiguous image of Arcadia or wasteland in the aftermath of empire, and how the Pantheon and the galleries of antique sculpture presented a pagan challenge to American ideas of divinity, beauty, and sexuality.