This very interesting and thought-provoking volume is the publication of sixteen papers originally presented at the sixth A.G. Leventis conference held at the University of Edinburgh in 2009. The goal of the conference was to explore Greek concepts of the past leaving aside the works produced by ancient Greek historians. Topics range from the Archaic to the Classical age and contributors deal with several forms of representation of the past in different textual genres (epic and lyric poetry, tragedy and comedy, oratory, law and philosophy), in political assemblies and inscribed documents, in cult rituals, and in artefacts of material culture and visual arts (sculptural monuments, grave stelae, vase-paintings and working tools).
In the introduction Marincola explains the theme of the volume with a critical analysis of Jacoby's concept of the development of Greek historiography and the important role attributed to Herodotus within it. M. contests the ‘unrealistic tidiness and teleology’ of Jacoby's model and focuses on the historical activity before Herodotus. In order to understand the origins of Greek historical thought, M. shows the need to go beyond the evidence of historiographic texts and consider many other sources, given that boundaries between genres were not fixed as they are nowadays in literary criticism and ‘historical’ activity was practised by many different writers and media.
In the first two papers J. Grethlein, ‘Homer and Heroic History’, and B. Currie, ‘Hesiod on Human History’, reflect on the historical perspective in epic poetry. Grethlein individuates three elements of the representation of the past of Homeric heroes still present in Classical historiography: the relationship with the present of the performance, the use of media and material objects as bearers of memory and authority, and the reference to theodicy as a way ‘to envisage human life in time’. Currie offers a diachronic and synchronic interpretation of Hesiod's myth of the races, where humankinds represent not only past realities, but also present possibilities and ‘ethical alternatives’ available to human beings in their contemporary lives.
The relationship between the past and lyric poetry is addressed by D. Boedeker, ‘Helen and “I” in Early Greek Lyric’, E. Bowie, ‘Stesichorus and Ibycus: Plain Tales from the Western Front’, and M. Pavlou, ‘Pindar and the Reconstruction of the Past’. Boedeker explores the treatment of Helen by Stesichorus, Alcaeus, Sappho and Ibycus, who reveal various interactions with their audience that are not very different from those of early historians, even if the lyric ‘I’ allows more freedom in presenting the past and justifying the context of the present song. Bowie considers Stesichorus and Ibycus as test cases for detecting relations between past and places in Western archaic poetry. The result of the analysis is negative because these authors seem to be more attached to their literary genre and more Panhellenic than modern scholars would like them to be. Pavlou underscores an overall lack of temporal perspective in Pindar, which is primarily due to his focus on the analogies between past and present and the emphasis on their continuity. Pindar seems to be critical with his sources and to assign to the tradition a role previously covered by the Muses, in order to legitimise and confer authority on his discourse.
R. Scodel, ‘Debating the Past in Euripides’ Troades and Orestes and in Sophocles' Electra', and A. Romano, ‘Euripidean Explainers’, examine fifth-century tragedy. Scodel compares tragic characters of Euripides and Sophocles with Herodotean figures who present divergent accounts about the past in order to justify their present beliefs. Euripides and Sophocles seem to reflect on the difficulty of ascertaining historical truth when presenting different versions of past events, and their tragedies put the spectator into a similar situation to a historian who has to interpret different reports. Romano argues how historiographic claims have conditioned modern interpretations of Euripides' expressions of aetiology. Given that Euripides is not a historian, his aetiologies should not be read with historiographic categories and as expressions of the authors' voice, but as distinctive voices of different characters operating in various situations and multiple functions.
J. Anderson, ‘Old Comedy and Popular History’, analyses four plays by Aristophanes (Acharnians, Peace, Knights and the Lysistrata) that illustrate peculiar approaches to the past as elements of the author's response to contemporary issues. Such examples raise many questions about the relationship between fifth-century comedians and past events, and show how comedies can be read as reflections of popular history and demonstrations of the public importance of past events and their interpretation.
H.A. Shapiro, ‘Attic Heroes and the Construction of the Athenian Past in the Fifth Century’, and L. Foxhall, ‘Family Time: Temporality, Gender and Materiality in Ancient Greece’, explore the role played by visual arts and material objects in rewriting the past, bearing temporal information and shaping relations in a gender perspective. Shapiro focuses on the saga of Theseus and observes that many different media (genealogical poetry, tragedy, sculptural monuments and drinking cups) contributed to writing Athenian early history much more than historians. Foxhall explores the notion of materiality, ancient Greek notions of kinship and their importance for constructing families and memories, and relationships between women as they can be revealed through the material evidence of weaving tools used in textile manufacture.
J. Hesk, ‘Common Knowledge and the Contestation of History in some Fourth-Century Athenian Trials’, investigates appeals to the past in Athenian speeches from public trials between 345 and 330. He explores the function of historical examples in the Athenian courts and asserts that jury members were much more aware of the ‘manipulative potential’ and ‘rhetoricity’ of historical paradeigmata than many scholars admit.
K.A. Morgan, ‘Plato and the Stability of History’, analyses the function of historical discourse in four Platonic dialogues (Statesman, Timaeus, Critias and Laws) and underscores the overlapping of historical narrative and myth. In particular narrative of cataclysm shows how Plato adopts many historiographical gestures producing at the same time a different ‘interpretative universe’.
Two papers are devoted to the use of the past in Athenian inscriptions. S.D. Lambert, ‘Inscribing the Past in Fourth-Century Athens’, presents a collection of 33 inscribed laws and decrees between 403 and 321 as evidence for the study of developing attitudes of the Athenians to the past, while J.L. Shear, ‘The Politics of the Past: Remembering Revolution at Athens’, investigates the role played by honorary decrees as part of the strategies used in re-establishing the democracy after the revolution from Demetrios Poliorketes in 286.
The last two papers deal with religion and representations of the Persians. E. Kearns, ‘“Remembering the Ancient Way of Life”: Primitivism in Greek Sacrificial Ritual’, explores connections between cult practice and the past in the Hellenistic period with a particular reference to sacrificial and dietary norms of past ages. L.-J., ‘The Great Kings of the Fourth Century and the Greek Memory of the Persian Past’, concentrates on vase-painting and relief sculpture for exploring less familiar images of the Great Kings and the Persians in the fourth century, when the Greeks ‘filtered the Graeco-Persian past into a contemporary understanding’.
The last chapter includes three critical commentaries on the topics of the volume written by S. Goldhill, S. Saïd and C. Pelling, who were present at the conference as discussants. As it is possible to infer also from the conclusions, this volume is an important contribution to our understanding of Greek representations of the past. Every paper includes deep critical analyses of ancient sources, inviting us to reconsider our concepts of Greek history and historiography, and to reflect on the historical self-consciousness of ancient peoples and on the close relation and interconnecting mechanism between past and present.
