obviously dates from about 30 uh to about 300ish ce which overlaps the byzantine period and of course constantine is the fellow who's going to straddle these two time frames so one of the things we're looking for as we move out of the roman period and into the christian era in western europe is this understanding of the evolution of the floor plan of the church which you got a sense of when we're looking at roman temples we'll want you to be able to spot the symbols of early christian iconography and to be able to when presented with two images tell me which one is byzantine and which one is early christian and why we want you to be able to spot the difference between an early christian religious space and a byzantine religious space we want you to be able to describe the new art making processes we see come into play at this time so each time period has a set of themes and motifs and restrictions especially in that early time frame the where do christians get their ideas for art from how do you decide that you're going to join this new religious group the founder of which being christ is dead you never saw him what did he look like how are you going to behave with those images in relationship to how other religious groups treat their images so the first thing that's going to happen during this time of early prosecution is that they're going to choose symbols that already exist in roman pagan culture and they're going to adapt them sometimes they'll choose religiously neutral images things considered decorative but now we'll have a christian meaning we'll see narratives based on images imagined from popular bible stories and then ultimately as you move farther along the story we will see images of christ of mary and saints i don't want you to get the idea that christians were always persecuted they were persecuted initially and sometimes quite cruelly but not forever and by the 300s the christians were just another bunch of people running around the roman empire as you will see there was wide acceptance of a variety of faith backgrounds and ethnicities it was okay and of course it also helps that constantine is going to convert to christianity in fact by the three that pax romana period it becomes the official religion of the roman empire why are images so popular why are they needed well p folks are illiterate people aren't writing things down and it's going to give them a chance to communicate a chance to have a shared set of icons and things that will be meaningful in the early christian period will morph and change over time early christian art is simple and it is humble in both presentation and in subject choice the place where we see the most of early christian iconography are in wall paintings in roman catacombs and relief carvings on sarcophagi most of these are made in rome and these are pre-constantinian forms of art don't worry about this laundry list it's just here as a reference what's more interesting is what's going on over on the right these are tomb covers so we're going to show you some subterranean catacombs and when you see those they just look like big carved out niches but what would happen is the remains would be put into these niches and then they would be covered by a marble plaque this is what the pagans did this is what the roman christians will do and so here are examples that we'll discuss in detail in a minute but these picking up every average everyday images for example here we've got the alpha and omega the beginning and the end life and death and centered in the composition is the cairo symbol the ike the monogram of christ in greek letters and down below a bird a dove holding an olive branch above you see the two fish with the anchor in between so these are super neutral people are not necessarily going to recognize them as symbols of christianity there are several excellent catacombs to look at we're going to look at just one the catacomb of priscilla and we'll look at the frescoes shortly but i want to start with this evolution of the fish some of you may have seen this symbol on the back of somebody's car called an ixus which is greek and here you see carved in the front of a sarcophagus lid i x theta upsilon sigma or iota chi theta upsilon sigma so those are the greek letters and it forms an acrostic so you come over here the i stands for jesus the c for christ the theta for son of god savior now it doesn't translate straight forward in contemporary english i think the other thing that's interesting to note is this little wheel that you see over here do you remember what the bread loaves looked like at pompeii remember that they were discs with those wedge shapes scored across the top what's bread got to do with christ well you know very well don't you it's everything to do with communion and the body of christ so these are the earliest of christian symbols and it was all that was required initially many times roman cultures of this time period are considered to be an iconic or without icon because there were different prohibitions about replicating humans or replicating people who were considered holy and that is not universal but it comes and goes throughout this time and so these symbols were things that you could have that would let other christians know that they were in your company and we'll see how this rolls out in the future