This paper is the attempt to describe the theoretical field of collision between mimesis and imagination. If for the Antiquity and the Renaissance the mimesis priority as the basis of art was undoubted, already romantic theories of art could give priority to an imagination. In positivist concepts of the beginning of the 20th century we can find this preference of imagination too (Gabriel Tarde). The relevance of this "dispute" became a reason for a number of researches (for example, Hans-Georg Gadamer gave preference to mimesis).
For the description of the problem field of this dispute of concepts of genesis of art we analyze the work of the Elder Philostratus, who was the prominent author of the Second Sophistic. Except that “The Imagines” in itself are the first-class material for the analysis of the problem facing us, matter also that the grandson and Philostratus's imitator – Philostratus the Younger – is one of the first antique authors writing about art who decided to compare imagination and mimesis.
At all conceptual differentiation of mimesis and imagination taking place in antique theories of art, imitation and imagination could not be opposed to each other. The theory of mimesis excellently described as the border dividing natural and artificial and area of artificial as itself. This theory quite convincingly explained a possibility of creativity, which proceeds from the power of imitation to open the nature of things in the course of creation of copies. So (in an example of Philostratus's Ekphrasis) neither, most likely, the nonexistent gallery, nor, most likely, the unsaid speech of Philostratus are not, nevertheless, actions of imagination, but quite keep within a mimesis as activities for disclosure of the nature of the copied reality. From this we draw a conclusion that formulation of the question about a priority of mimesis or imagination as the driving force of art is irrelevant for the Antiquity.