The beginning of the Roman era was around 510 A.C. when Rome conquered Greece and started to significantly expand its empire to cover most of Western Europe in the West, Greece in the East, and North Africa in the South. In the beginning, Roman culture was strongly influenced by Greek culture, as the Romans adopted many architectural and artistic styles from the Greeks (342). Over the centuries, Rome developed its own artistic styles, such as realistic sculptures of people and frescos (as can be found in Pompeii). However, art in the Roman Empire was also strongly influenced by the cultures of the regions it colonized (344). One of the greatest achievements of Roman culture were their impressive advances in engineering of civil structures (roads, aqueducts) but also buildings such as the Coliseum in Rome.
A significant cultural and political shift occurred in 313 A.C. when the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity. Subsequently, Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to Byzantium, which later became Constantinople (present-day Istanbul, Turkey). Under his and his successors' reign, distinctly Christian art and architecture began to emerge. The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul is an excellent example of the style of churches that were built everywhere in the Empire. During this time artists abandoned naturalistic styles that had been favored during the Roman period and adopted abstracted styles that emphasized the representation of ideas (350). Moreover, during this times icons were introduced, which to this day play an important role in the religious practice of the Orthodox churches. Constantine's successors portioned the vast empire into an eastern half (with Constantinople as its capital) and a Western half with Rome as capital (351).
Due to the continuing siege of Germanic tribes from the North, the Roman Empire fell in 5th century and the Middle Ages began. The early Middle Ages wer...