‘Memory defined Roman civilization’ (p. 1). G.'s bold statement opens this collection of essays exploring how Romans remembered in antiquity and how we today remember ancient Rome. The volume publishes papers presented at a conference of the same title held at the American Academy in Rome in October 2011. Memory – or more accurately, the ongoing processes of remembering – permeated Roman society, from institutionalised cults such as Juno Moneta on the Arx to the mnemonic techniques of the ars memoriae. The present volume is not meant to be a handbook of all such instantiations of memory in ancient Rome but instead seeks to illustrate different approaches to Roman memory, in antiquity and today. It succeeds at this task and also raises several themes ripe for further research.
G.'s introduction succinctly surveys the rise in memory studies over the past decades and highlights the challenge of historicising Roman memory. In Part 1, ‘Rome: Memory and Memoirs’, R. Jenkyns and H.I. Flower examine how the physical city and written autobiographies could mediate memories of past events and individuals. Jenkyns contends that although Romans cared deeply about antiquity and age, they did not value the authentic display of these qualities in their city's physical fabric. When it came to architecture, Romans embraced dynamic change, valuing the new over the authentically antique. Flower argues that Q. Lutatius Catulus (cos. 102 b.c.e.) was the originator of autobiography in Roman literature. Catulus' bombastic letter to the Senate requesting his triumph and papyrus recounting his consulship and triumph sought to counteract the prominence of his rival, Marius. These texts formed one part of Catulus' broader programme of self-presentation at Rome, which included a temple in the Campus Martius and a portico on the Palatine.
In Part 2, ‘Memoria in Ancient Rome’, T.P. Wiseman, K.-J. Hölkeskamp and G. Rosati examine what generated historical memory in Rome, and how. Wiseman analyses 47 ancient passages dealing with memory, ranging from Vitruvius to Quintilian, and concludes provocatively that popular memory, as he terms it, resided in what people heard and saw, such as ludi scaenici. Monuments and images, he maintains, cannot transmit historical narratives and memories in the absence of text. Hölkeskamp responds persuasively that monuments could and did communicate messages in nonverbal ways. State reliefs made historical images and narratives available to the same audience that watched ludi scaenici. Images, texts and oral traditions interacted with rituals and other performances to create a Roman ‘memorial culture’ (p. 70). Rosati, in turn, discusses how epic poetry creates traditions and cultural memories through allusive language. Examining the Silvae, he argues that Statius established a foundation myth for the new Flavian dynasty, remedying their lack of a meaningful relationship to Rome's illustrious past.
Part 3, ‘Memoria in Roman Art and Topography’, shifts squarely to Rome's urban space and art. D. Favro argues that movement through public space etched Roman processions, especially the triumph, into individual and collective memories. Like the Memory Walk System fashioned by Roman rhetoricians, processions exploited movement through a familiar environment to inscribe events in memory. Monuments and their images encouraged Romans to move daily along the path of triumphs, for example, shaping how people remembered these triumphs and even creating ‘pseudo-memories’ (p. 97) of triumphs in the minds of people who had not actually seen them. J. Hughes suggests that an individual's existing memories shaped how s/he received the Arch of Constantine's message of legitimating Constantine while simultaneously mythologising his achievements. The arch infused its reused reliefs with a proleptic reading adumbrating Constantine's rise to power. It also presented a relentlessly imperial, male history that could elide republican history and women's involvement in Rome in people's future memories. A. Anguissola argues that Roman copies of Greek artworks possessed enormous potential as aides-memoire because they were recognisable by a wide audience and came to generate certain associations with outward and inner qualities across social classes. Polycleitus' Diadumenus, for example, was so widely remembered as embodying certain moral and physical values that a Roman man could project those values onto himself by having himself depicted on his funerary altar as the famous Greek statue.
Part 4, ‘Ancient and Modern Memories’, examines the interplay between Roman memory in its historical setting and modern memories of ancient Rome. L.M. Mignone argues that people today incorrectly remember the Aventine as the quintessential seat of Rome's plebeian uprisings because stories from the second plebeian secession of 449 b.c.e. (which actually did begin at the Aventine) are the most sensational and thus the most memorable. She also suggests that Gracchus did not flee to the Aventine because it embodied popular uprising but rather that ancients and moderns associate the hill with plebeian secession because Gracchus happened to flee there. B. Frischer argues that virtual archaeology enables scholars and students to travel back in time to ancient Rome, where they can create memories by engaging with models of archaeological sites. Frischer acknowledges the potential risk of creating ‘misleading memory’ (p. 157) with digital models but rightly stresses that virtual archaeologists must present the data that underpins their models and all legitimate viewpoints about their proposed restorations.
The epilogue by architect D. Libeskind discusses the relationship between memorials and museums and memories of traumatic events such as the Holocaust and 9/11. Libeskind's essay about monuments not in Rome can feel out of place in a volume on Roman memory. He does, however, evoke how the material, form and location of architecture – and how people interact with it – influence how we remember historical events, a topic that resonates with ancient Rome.
The contributions can be read individually with great profit, but several provocative themes, all inviting further research, emerge from considering them as a group. The first is the relationship between word and image when it comes to generating and shaping memories – and the extent to which one takes primacy over the other. Wiseman comes down firmly on the side of words as the primary generator of historical memory; Rosati likewise believes that text uniquely evokes memories of the past. Hölkeskamp argues that word and image are interdependent, and Anguissola's discussion of how inscribed titles shift our perception of a replicated statue supports this point. Flower similarly shows that Catulus used literary and material means alike to make his achievements last in people's memories beyond his ephemeral triumph; she notes that his buildings would have reached far more people in Rome than his written autobiographies.
Of course, it is not only word and image that generate memory, but experience as well. Favro and Mignone remind us how movement in the city and personal experience of events can shape memory, whether it be following in the steps of a triumph or having witnessed Gracchus' flight to the Aventine. Jenkyns could have engaged more with this theme of memory's experiential aspects; his essay leaves open questions of how repeated rituals at sites might have created a sense of continuity and history for buildings that were architecturally new.
Another theme that emerges – for example in the essays by Favro, Hughes, Anguissola, Mignone and Frischer – is how the neuroscience of memory can enrich our understanding of Rome and its history and monuments. A. Treves, a neuroscientist, presented a paper at the conference that could not be included in the publication, for reasons beyond his and the editor's control. This absence is regrettable, but the volume still makes a strong case that collaboration between neuroscience and classics can yield eye-opening results.
Handsomely produced and illustrated, this volume offers both an accessible introduction to and a sophisticated exploration of complex questions about how memory worked in ancient Rome and influences Roman scholarship. Students and scholars interested in Roman memory and modern memories of Rome will find that this volume offers provocative answers to some of these questions and, fruitfully, stimulates many more.
