Scholars of the ancient world have shown increasing interest in memory as a topic of study in the last two decades. G.'s richly documented and carefully considered study of the Republic as a mnemonic focus during the Principate offers important contributions to the field. This topic was the basis of A.M. Gowing's Empire and Memory: the Representation of the Roman Republic in Imperial Culture (2005). The present volume differs in the period it covers and has the slightly different analytical aim of exploring specifically the negotiation and active positioning of individual and collective identities within the context of cultural memory. G. limits discussion to the period from the last year of Nero through to the Principate of Trajan (68–117 c.e.), and the chronological parameters cover two focal points where the reshuffling of memories was prime: the end of the Julio-Claudian and Flavian dynasties respectively. The bulk of the book consists of six case studies in which G. places himself in the role of an anthropologist of sorts providing ‘thick description’ of various episodes of memory ‘reactivation’ (p. 8).

In a relatively short introductory chapter, G. lays out the theoretical framework that informs the rest of the book. The intellectual lines drawn, and the theoretical approaches that ground the study more broadly, will be familiar to students of historical studies of memory. Starting from the French sociologist M. Halbwachs's notion of ‘collective memory’, and relying substantially on Egyptologist J. Assmann's concept of ‘cultural memory’, G. argues that just as identities are fungible in the wake of historical change, the social memory that serves to define those identities is necessarily fluid. G.'s principal focus is on the tension created by, on the one hand, the cultural imperatives that insist on the Republic's alterity, and on the other, the social necessity of imagined continuity with that same Republic.

Chapter 1, ‘Freedom’, examines the importance of libertas as a political message employed by Vindex and Galba at the end of Nero's reign. Deeply rooted in the Republican past, libertas was still ‘a value to be fought for and defended in the present’ (p. 14). As such, claims of renewed freedom were served by the reactivation of certain mnemonic markers that specifically recalled Republican exempla. Here, the numismatic evidence is used to great effect. G. demonstrates, with succinct clarity, how coins functioned as efficacious communicators of memory (pp. 26–8). The importance of libertas in framing the relationship between the Principate and the Republic is a thread that is carried throughout the book. While its heuristic importance in questions of elite identity formation under the Empire has had a place in the study of Roman history since at least Tacitus, G. adds much to our understanding by demonstrating the depth to which libertas penetrated the discourse of remembrance. This discussion is among the book's greatest strengths. Libertas lies at the heart of the second chapter, ‘Rebuilding’, in which G. suggests that Vespasian shifted the mnemonic focus of the Capitolium from a site of libertas to ‘the symbolic center of [Roman] imperial power’ (p. 85), following its destruction and subsequent rebuilding in 69 c.e. This chapter might better have been named ‘Reinscribing’ as it is really in the examination of epigraphic material that the importance of the episode becomes clear. Vespasian's decision to replace the name of the original builder with his own in the dedicatory inscription had profound implications for the loss of memory, while the reinscribing of bronze tablets relating to ‘foreign policy’ refocussed the Capitolium's importance as a monument to Roman imperialism. Although this chapter is concerned with a specific site and its construction, archaeological approaches to cultural memory do not play a major role in analysis.

The third chapter, ‘Control’, displays well the ways that opposing forces can utilise cultural memory for their respective causes. G. looks at a fascinating episode in which Domitian attempts (and fails, G. argues) a gesture of Republican morality by having the Vestal Virgin, Cornelia, put to death on a charge of incestum. As G. suggests, Cornelia likewise invoked a Vestal tradition in the manner that she protested her fate. Our understanding of the event is largely predicated on Pliny the Younger's characterisation – almost certainly infused with anti-Domitianic bias (Ep. 4.11; the text and translation is helpfully provided in an appendix). On this point, G.'s suggestion that ‘if we can defer our concerns about the narrow contexts and motivations of the individual authors and simply read their testimony as discrepant reflections of a common reality, these accounts reveal the continuing reverberations of the dissonance that was inherent in the ideology of a “restored republic” under the Principate’ (p. 101) is not wholly convincing. Given the lacunose nature of our sources, it is not possible to say with certainty that we are dealing with a ‘common reality’ – intentional distortion, and complete invention, by ancient authors present problems.

The fourth chapter, ‘Persuasion’, examines the role of memory within lateral power relations, taking as its theme the role of oratory among elites in the Principate. G. focusses primarily on the Dialogus de oratoribus and argues convincingly that Tacitus posits a continuity of rhetorical accomplishment from the Republic, but one in which the moral dimension has been fundamentally altered. The fifth chapter, ‘Inscription’, examines the ways that the contours of cultural memory become blurred with the passing of time. Again, literary works are the basis of study – in this case Silius Italicus' Punica and Frontinus' Strategemata. G. demonstrates well how the res publica as both a distinct historical period and a monument to celebrated exempla ‘came to be situated in a broader context of human history, where they could be viewed with less obligatory chauvinism’ (p. 214). Silius aligns the great men of the Republic with figures from Greek myth, while Frontinus cites examples of proper military action from among Macedonians, Carthaginians and Greeks (as well as Romans) favouring the utility of the Strategemata as a martial manual over explicit encomium of Rome's past.

In the final chapter, ‘Restoration’, G. makes a compelling case for how Trajan's reissue of a series of Republican denarii, when read alongside other elements of the Trajanic cultural programme, reveals the way that the Imperial establishment could highlight certain parallels between Republican values and values of the current regime. For instance, Republican coins depicting famous monuments recalled Trajan's extensive building project (pp. 242–5). This final case study punctuates the work well as it demonstrates the central paradox around which the book is structured. As G. successfully argues, the faithful reproduction of Republican coin types, particularly the references to Republican aristocrats, issued alongside Trajan's own coins, displayed simultaneously the cultural continuity of Republican values and the fundamental reality that all power now resided in a single individual.

The six case studies presented do not add up to a coherent whole – but this is precisely the point. As one discovers in reading the book, but as is only made explicit in the conclusion, the ‘multiplicity of contexts in which the Republican past could be remembered contributed to the basic incoherence of “the Republic” itself as an object of Roman memory’ (p. 251). In bringing to light this tension, the book is successful. While the work does not offer much by way of new theoretical or methodological approaches, it demonstrates with great depth the place of cultural memory within the social context of the Principate. What is more, the clarity with which the book is written, and its strong emphasis on ancient evidence, makes this an excellent foray, for both students and scholars, into the growing literature on historical studies of memory.