An article (Japan Times) about an exhibition (Vixerunt Omnes: Romani ex Imaginibus) at Japan's National Museum of Western Art highlights personality cult and the currency of these ancient images:
These funerary monuments, produced to mark the passing of folk from all walks of life, often lack artistic refinement, but they possess a vigor and liveliness that reaches through the centuries. In that sense, many of these ancient artifacts speak more clearly to us than images from centuries nearer our own: starchy Renaissance portraits, for example, or formal Victorian-era photographs.[UPDATE: Also see RogueClassicism for a longer excerpt]