This volume is the product of a conference held in October 2011 at the American Academy in Rome, itself a result of Karl Galinsky's project ‘Memoria Romana: Memory in Roman Civilization’, which was initiated in 2009 and funded by a Max-Planck Prize for International Cooperation. Inspired by the intense interest in cultural and collective memory over the last thirty years across the disciplines of history, social sciences and cognitive science, the prize funded a number of doctoral and post-doctoral projects. Accordingly, this volume brings together younger scholars and established academics specializing in the history, literature and material culture of ancient Rome.

The volume opens with an introduction by G., who briefly discusses the important rôles which memory played in the context of ancient Rome, before outlining in detail the contents and arguments of each contributing chapter. Memoria Romana follows roughly the same structure as the conference on which it is based, with ten essays divided between four sections. The first, ‘Rome: Memory and Memoirs’, opens with Richard Jenkyns stripping away modern romanticisms concerning Rome in an attempt to uncover how the ancient inhabitants of the city perceived and valued its antiquity. Jenkyns convincingly argues that, in a city in a state of constant flux and reconstruction, the aesthetics of age were appreciated less than the venerability of the ‘pure potency of place’ (22). In the section's second contribution, Harriet Flower goes on to explore the question of when — and in what social, political and cultural contexts — autobiographical writing first emerged in Republican Rome, particularly how a background of intense aristocratic competition and the impact of Hellenism contributed to experimentation in self-memorialization.

Part II, ‘Memoria in Ancient Rome’, centres on a confrontation between Peter Wiseman and Karl Hölkeskamp as to the value of using theoretical approaches to understand ‘collective’, ‘cultural’ and ‘monumental memory’ in ancient Rome. Shifting focus from metaphorical concepts, Wiseman favours the term ‘popular memory’, and underlines the importance of a close reading of ancient literary evidence (of which he employs an impressive quantity and range) in understanding the processes which created historical tradition in Rome. Highlighting the central rôle which accompanying inscriptions played in the creation and curation of memory in both public and private spheres, Wiseman emphasizes the importance of oral traditions in creating histories which held relevance beyond élite literary circles. In his response, Hölkeskamp proposes a framework of methodological and theoretical approaches, based on the seminal work of scholars such as Pierre Nora and Clifford Geertz, to aid in our understanding of how collective memory was cultivated in monumental contexts. The section closes with a chapter in which Gianpiero Rosati explores how Statius exploited cultural memory in his Silvae to negotiate the networks of political power in Flavian Rome.

Part III focuses on Roman material culture. Diane Favro's vividly written chapter examines the kinetic aspects of the Roman triumph: how its re-performance and depiction in the ‘curated reproductions’ (93) of monuments shaped the collective memories of state and people, of the past, present and the anticipated future. Jessica Hughes, the only contributor who ventures into Late Antiquity, builds on the already substantial scholarship on the Arch of Constantine through an effective demonstration of how modern approaches to visual memory can aid our understanding of how spolia was interpreted in ancient Rome. In a similar vein, Anna Anguissola tackles the phenomenon of the mass copying and replication of Greek masterpieces in Roman times, specifically the rôle that these widely recognized visual quotations played in storing, reproducing and shaping collective memory when placed in new contexts.

The fourth and final section, ‘Ancient and Modern Memories’, takes the focus forwards, with Lisa Mignone using the example of the ‘plebeian secessions’ on the Aventine Hill to explore how geographical locations become infused with ideological significance, and how the potency of place can be used in modern times to evoke memories for political effect. In the section's second chapter, the virtual archaeologist Bernard Frischer introduces case studies to illustrate how digital modelling might be used to reconstruct damaged or lost monuments of Rome's past.

In place of a conclusion, there is an epilogue written by the Polish-American architect Daniel Libeskind, in which he discusses the spaces which he has created in Europe and the USA which curate the memory of some of the most traumatic events of the past two centuries. This is an important and illuminating piece in its own right, though its content is neither explicitly linked to the city of Rome, nor to any of the contributing chapters. Consequently, the volume ends on a somewhat disjointed note. However, as G. emphasizes in his introduction, the overall aim of this project was to demonstrate the wealth of approaches and responses that a focus on Roman memory culture could foster, and in this he has undoubtedly succeeded. Despite the sometimes tenuous links between some of the case studies, the chapters are all of a very high standard, and therefore make significant contributions to their individual subject areas, whilst demonstrating the potential of memory studies in opening up fresh interpretive avenues in research into the ancient world.