The height of Greek art's classical period, or its Golden Age, was heavily influenced by the aesthetic ideal of human beings as a perfect expression of the divine, an ideal integral to the culture of this time period that was further developed by great minds such as Sophocles, Euripides and the young Socrates. Art from this era depicted the idealized individual, a style best reflected in the temple sculptures of the Athenian Acropolis.
After Rome conquered Greece in 146 B.C., the naturalism and realism of ancient Roman art, reflected in the early Roman sandstone tomb effigies and terra cotta busts, started to merge with Greek art's focus on divine, harmonized order. The merger of these artistic styles amid the Roman Empire's emphasis on allegiance to the state produced portrait-sculptures such as the Augustus of Prima Porta.
As the Roman Empire grew, its art increasingly reflected the rise of the empire's idealization of loyalty to the state, in the form of large monuments. By the 300s, Rome was struggling to maintain order of its vast empire, as pressure from conquered tribes and economic difficulties weakened the central government's reach. The reliefs of the friezes from the Arch of Constantine, Rome (c.315), are regarded as the last great example of monumental Roman sculpture.