During this period, artistic production was stimulated by the encounter between Greece and Rome and fueled by the desire of the kings of Pergamon to emulate the past glories of fifth-century Athens. Statuary in relief and in the round, often at monumental scale, was created in a variety of styles. Ridgway attempts to determine what can be securely considered to have been produced during the second century B.C. In the course of her exploration, she critically scrutinizes most of the best-known pieces of Greek sculpture, ultimately revealing a tentative but plausible picture of the artistic trends of 200–100 B.C.

Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway is Rhys Carpenter Professor Emerita of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College. An authority on Greek sculpture, she has written many books on the subject, including Hellenistic Sculpture I: The Styles of ca. 331–200 B.C., Hellenistic Sculpture III: The Styles of ca. 100–31 B.C., and Fourth-Century Styles in Greek Sculpture, all published by the University of Wisconsin Press. She is the recipient of the Gold Medal for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement from the Archaeological Institute of America.