The past several decades have seen an increase in historical studies, inspired by Assmann's conception of cultural memory and Gehrke's ‘intentional history’, centred on how the Greeks conceived of their past and how these conceptions produced (and were products of) contemporary ideologies (see most recently the excellent J. Marincola et al. [edd.], Greek Notions of the Past in the Archaic and Classical Eras: History Without Historians [2012]). The present edited volume collects essays on this topic from the Seminario Permanente di Storia Antica of the Università degli Studi di Trento, which was originally established by Maurizio Giangiulio, whose influence is felt throughout the contributions. The thirteen papers (ten in Italian, three in English, all with English abstracts) are separated across three thematic divisions (anthropologically informed approaches to Greek memory; cross-cultural interaction in Roman Greece; and the function of memory in oral and semi-oral cultures), and employ various approaches to the question of Greek memory and identity formation, including several comparative accounts of orality in Aboriginal Australian contexts. This book usefully draws together previous work in the field of Greek historical memory and suggests several areas for furthering this field of study.

P. sets the tone for the first section with a succinct survey of the most important developments in the theoretical approach to Greek identity, in particular Barth's notion of ethnic boundaries and Assmann's cultural memory. The latter, she argues, is less useful for archaic Greece (pp. 18–19), though the idea of ‘hot memory’, a type of history which constructs an identity for a group, allows some access to the Greeks' engagement with their past. She concludes by addressing Greek ethnic identity, stressing that it is best conceived as a ‘situational construct’ dependent on historical context. Drawing on these methodological considerations, F. investigates a specific instance of identity formation, the archaic battle of Hysiae. She argues that the account, only preserved by Pausanias, is best understood as an instance of ‘us-identity’ formation by Argive elites in a Second Sophistic context, comparable to the identity that Spartans constructed for themselves in the face of Roman rule so as to situate themselves in a position of leadership in the Peloponnese. The first section concludes with an account by P. tracing current trends in studies of Messenian identity, drawing attention to the impact of Luraghi's use of anthropological approaches (see esp. The Ancient Messenians: Constructions of Ethnicity and Identity [2008]), which have exposed the cracks in the traditional continuist/discontinuist dichotomy.

The second section is less methodologically unified, though it offers several diverse perspectives on the malleability of Greek identity after the Roman conquest. F. Camia lucidly discusses the integration of imperial cult into the traditional pantheons of the Greek poleis. This inclusion, primed by the advent of Hellenistic ruler cult, acts as a form of reconciliation to Roman rule and is reflected by priesthoods, festivals and existing temples of the traditional Greek pantheons being combined with those of the imperial cult. While the imperial cult may not have been actively celebrated in all places where there is evidence of such integration, the addition of the divinised emperor to traditional pantheons represents deference to Roman rule. E. Migliario interrogates the references to Greek rhetors in Seneca the Elder (catalogued in an appendix). These references, she argues, signal a high degree of cross-linguistic fluency among the Roman upper classes of the Augustan period. Both Greek and Latin were studied in the rhetorical schools, and the employment of a shared set of exempla, including some based on Roman historical events, employed by both Greek- and Latin-speaking declaimers is emblematic of a shared cultural (and rhetorical) background. F.'s second contribution addresses a textual crux at Chariton 7.3.11; she convincingly argues that Ὀθρυάδου, one of the alternatives already proposed by the novel's first editor D'Orville, is to be preferred to Μιλτιάδου or the manuscript's Μιθριδάτου on the basis of the historical parallels between Leonidas and Othryades and their frequent pairing throughout the rhetorical tradition, as well as in Herodotus, which is on her reading an important intertext for the novel. L. Fioravanti reconsiders four senatus consulta from poleis which supported Rome in the First Mithridatic War; she notes the early development of a Greek technical vocabulary for these decrees, though the renderings of certain formulas (e.g. the patronymic) are inconsistent. This discussion would have been much enriched by attention to other bureaucratic translations throughout the Greek-speaking world as well as to the Res Gestae, though the observable linguistic variance in the small sample given here is indicative of a broader trend in Graeco-Roman linguistic interactions, as it anticipates later developments and offers a framework for exploring the historical contingencies behind such legal translations. V. Gheller examines an external construction of Greek identity, analysing the reception of Arianism in the polemics of Nicene bishops during the doctrinal conflicts of the fourth century a.d. Instead of focusing on the analytical elements of Greek philosophy that informed their theology she argues that these attacks depict the Arians as Greek sophists in contrast to the Nicene, Roman, bishops.

The final section addresses historical approaches to oral and semi-oral cultures, bringing research on Greek topics into dialogue with contemporary discussions of Oceania. P. surveys anthropological frameworks for studies of orality and Greek cultural memory, focusing especially on their impact on Herodotean studies, and briefly summarises several specific cases to which such anthropological approaches may be profitably applied. F. brings certain of these elements to bear on the Argive legend of Telesilla; her reconstruction of the tradition, largely indebted to that of Jacoby, suggests that an earlier, orally-circulating folk-motif of female warriors was mapped onto the Argive accounts of the battle of Sepeia no later than the fourth century b.c., rather than interpreting Telesilla as a wholesale invention by post-Herodotean local historians. This theoretical approach is enlightening and nuances the standard interpretation of the social context of the legend's development, as detailed by L. Scott, A Historical Commentary on Herodotus Book 6 (2005), pp. 571–9. In the following chapter F. and S. Girola take a comparative approach, examining how interpretative mistakes in both the Oceanic and ancient Greek contexts represent meaningful constructions of identity using the model of ‘creative misunderstandings’. In the case of ancient initiation wars, F. argues that our interpretation of these events is clouded by two levels of such misunderstandings: on the part of our historical sources and of modern scholars, who attempt to interpret events by applying models derived from other contexts that appear analogous but instead serve to distance our interpretations from historical reality. The last two chapters deal solely with Australian Aboriginal studies. K. Massam highlights the importance of the oral medium for visualising Aboriginal relationships between people and the environment, as well as the role (and agency) of oral historians in such studies of cultural memory. The book concludes with a description of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Data Archive by M. Galassi which, while doubtless of use to scholars of Oceania, feels rather out of place in a volume dedicated to Greek history.

This collection brings together several approaches to the dynamic of Greek identity formation and suggests several intriguing areas for further research of such social memory. Several essays in this collection are particularly useful for the overviews of recent methodological developments which they provide and directions they suggest, though these chapters are perhaps less revelatory to those familiar with recent trends in Greek historical research. The media through which such memory was developed and disseminated provide another area to explore these questions, though the editors succeed in bringing a range of interdisciplinary approaches into dialogue. The book presents a useful introduction to modern theoretical paradigms for those interested in anthropological and comparative approaches to Greek history, especially thanks to the inclusion of the illuminating parallels offered by the Aboriginal material.