The legacy and afterlife of Antiquity and especially the Roman Empire in the Middle Ages is an ever-recurring theme across medieval studies.1 This holds especially true for the political, ethnic, and religious categories and dichotomies scrutinised in the previous chapter. Therefore, Chapter 2 will substantiate this critique through detailed case studies of significant works of art from the early medieval period. In an article published in 2013, ‘The Fading Power of Images’, von Rummel argues that the great divide between Romans and barbarians slowly ceased to exist in the course of late Antiquity.2 In a clear reference to Zanker’s The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus,3 von Rummel argues that the powerful Roman ‘image’ of Romans juxtaposed against their barbarian adversaries slowly but steadily faded into oblivion. This chapter, however, is devoted to those images – figural, not figurative – that endured in late Antiquity, and continued to permeate post-Roman art and material culture. As case studies, I will mostly draw on widely discussed pieces that represent the transformation of the Roman imperial image from across early medieval western and northern Europe, including gold bracteates, the Niederdollendorf Stone, rider imagery from Hüfingen, Hornhausen, and Ennabeuren, the Trossingen lyre, and related images from the Vendel and Sutton Hoo helmets. I will especially scrutinise the scholarly discussions of these artefacts in light of the dichotomies outlined in Chapter 1 and also investigate the active role of the images found on these items in the post-imperial West. The main argument is that early medieval images played active roles in the transformations of post-Roman Europe. Before explaining this approach in more detail, the following section will scrutinise gold bracteates and their interpretation in German scholarship.