As I was reading through the Roberts Narrative piece and finishing our lines for the week, it prompted me to reminisce on Roberts discussion about the fragmentation of narrative in Rutilius and late antiquity as a whole. His assertion that the fragmentation and episodic nature of the late antique world was not isolated to the literary world led me to think about what I learned in Dr Dyson's "End of Rome, Beginning of Europe" class that I took a while ago. I know that this is a Latin class, but I like to make connections to material culture whenever I can (being an archaeologist at heart!).
Roberts mentions a number of art historical examples, including the hunt mosaics of Antioch, so I wanted to attempt to make my own comparisons.  Off the top of my head, I came to the Arch of Constantine and the idea of spolia. If one were to "read" the monument and the mismatched "episodes" represented, one can see how this very much fits into the "aspect of the aesthetics of late antiquity in general (p. 194)." The spolia are chosen for specific reasons and from specific other monuments, in an attempt to hearken back to the golden age of Rome, much the way Ovid and Virgil are recalled in the poetry of our Rutilius. The disjoinment of the pieces are also quite familiar with respect to the way Rutilius tends to leave out joiners and conjunctions and other frustrating things we have discussed in class. The pieces on the monument often look as though they do not belong together, both in sculptural style and theme. Finally, the heads of the previous emperor's from whose monuments the spolia has been taken are resculpted into the image of Constantine. Again as mentioned by Roberts, the symbolic value of reality but perhaps not actual reality is being represented. This is especially true since the arch does not have Christian symbolism, although Constantine as we know converted and began the process of Christianization the Roman empire, but instead very tightly clings to the ancient values of the golden age, much the way Rutilius gives us his very flowery and loving encomium to Rome at the beginning of his poem.  I found this all to be very fascinating and became perhaps too overly excited about the connections being made here. But hopefully this was equally interesting to some of you as well :)
Also, here is a picture of the Arch for your comparison/reference: