These volumes are the second and third of three conference publications generated by Professor Karl Galinksy's four-year Memoria Romana project, initiated in 2009 and funded by a Max-Planck International Research Prize in the Humanities (http://www.laits.utexas.edu/memoria/). The project's first conference, which was held in Rome in October 2011, resulted in the first published proceedings focused on the rôles of memory in the city, Memoria Romana: Memory of Rome and Rome in Memory (2014), reviewed by the present author in JRS 105 (2015), 419–20. Likewise, Cultural Memories in the Roman Empire is based more or less faithfully on the conference from which it derives, which took place in the Getty Villa outside Los Angeles in April 2013, and spread the net of enquiry wider across the Roman Empire. Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity, by contrast, does not appear to reflect an actual event. Instead it brings together recipients of research grants from the Memoria Romana project with other scholars whose work has been inspired by the so-called ‘memory boom’, the intense interest in ‘cultural’, ‘collective’ and ‘social’ memory sparked across the disciplines of history, social sciences, religious studies and beyond over the past thirty years.

Cultural Memories in the Roman Empire is a beautiful book, lavishly illustrated throughout with maps, site plans, reconstructions and images of sculptures, mosaics, inscriptions and other objects. It opens with an introduction by G. which provides a very brief overview of scholarship on memory, setting out the background and aims of the volume and introducing a handful of short case studies. From the outset, G. sets the tone as looser and less theory-dependent than Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity, which he states is designed to avoid ‘theoretical straitjackets’ (3), instead bringing together a wide range of source material and approaches with an aim to explore the richness of the field, as well as stimulate further research.

The volume is divided into four sections, the first of which, ‘Concepts and Approaches’, opens with a beautifully written chapter by Susan Alcock, whose work on the Greek world under the Roman Empire was one of the first in Classical Studies to promote an active engagement with memory scholarship. Alcock uses three case studies from the Greek East to illustrate the creative ways in which material environments could be made to evoke or reject the past, thus introducing the volume's most thought-provoking theme, namely the adaptation of local memories and identities to the realities of Roman imperial domination. This leads on to Rachel Kousser's contribution, which explores politically motivated image destruction (‘damnatio memoriae’) in the Hellenistic world, and how Republican and later Imperial Romans drew upon these earlier precedents. Tim Whitmarsh then further considers the issue of identity under Roman dominance, comparing the very different conceptions of space and memory found in two Greek travel writers of the second century c.e. In doing so, he rejects the monolithic view of Hellenic cultural memory presented as the ‘Second Sophistic’, arguing for greater complexity and plurality in reactions, and ones which combined remembering with selective forgetting to achieve disparate ideological ends.

Part II, ‘Imperial Memories and Local Identities’, develops this theme further. It begins with John Weisweiler tracing shifts in how the governing élite were memorialized in statue dedications from the Republic to later Empire, linking them to wider developments across this time-frame, such as the growth of a more transregional conception of citizen subjects. Carlos Noreña then explores the phenomenon of the worship of Hellenistic rulers in the new political realities of the Roman Empire. Though the evidence for this is admittedly scanty, Noreña argues that it should not be seen as anachronistic, but indicative of vibrant local cultures which had evolved to complement and legitimate new imperial powers. Jaś Elsner, in the volume's only unillustrated chapter, complements Whitmarsh's earlier contribution in a case study on Philostratus’ account of the practices of the mystery cult of Palaemon at the Isthmus near Corinth. Elsner illustrates how Philostratus combines selective memory with deliberate amnesia, passing over the fact of the city's destruction at the hands of Mummius’ troops in 146 b.c.e. to portray a religious and cultural continuum. Finally, Ann Marie Yasin examines the range of strategies exploited in the renovation of three ecclesiastical complexes (in Rome, Cimitile-Nola and Poreč), illustrating the inventive ways in which previous incarnations of these churches were rhetorically conceptualized and materially recycled, reconstructing their pasts to serve the needs of their present.

The volume's third part, ‘Presence and Absence of Memory in the Roman East and West’, opens with a chapter from C. Brian Rose examining the tourism and memory industry which grew up around the site of Ilion in north-western Turkey, tapping into Rome's promotion of its Trojan ancestry, as well as later imperial visits to the town. The focus then moves west, where we encounter the challenge of a lack of literary sources with which we can contextualize surviving material evidence. Zena Kamash tackles these issues in Roman Britain, using small finds and structural remains of religious sites to offer some micro- and macro-perspectives on how both individuals and collectives could adapt the past to meet their current needs, particularly in terms of negotiating the shift towards Christianity. Alicia Jiménez then considers a case study of Baelo Claudia, a town in southern Iberia where unique funerary statuettes illustrate an intriguing situation in which Italic settlers fused their practices with local traditions. Felipe Rojas’ chapter moves eastwards once more, where he examines how the Lydian landscape, and lakes in particular, were used to claim authority over the history and territory of the region from Hittite times onwards.

The volume's final part focuses on the city of Rome, a slightly puzzling deviation considering that this was the intended focus of the first Memoria Romana volume (2014), and one which undermines the delineation of this book as one with an empire-wide focus. It opens with an original contribution from Greg Woolf which argues that the iconographic programme of the Forum of Augustus should be read within the context of its status as a sanctuary, and therefore a place of ritual and learning, and a space which was reinterpreted over the process of time. Steven Rutledge then considers the issue of ‘alternative memory’, namely the ways in which a plebeian history was constructed in areas such as the Aventine Hill, with the Temple of Concordia in the Forum ultimately being subsumed into imperial identity through its rebuilding under Tiberius. In the book's final chapter, Elizabeth Marlowe unpicks Filippo Coarelli's established reading of the Vicennalia Monument in the Forum Romanum as a Tetrarchic monument to naval victory. Incorporating a critical engagement with Pierre Nora's influential work on ‘sites of memory’ (lieux de m émoire), Marlowe proposes a more nuanced reading of the subtle and creative ways in which urban space could be used, ultimately arguing that we should look for the monument's patrons amongst Rome's senatorial élite rather than the emperors themselves.

Though comparable in its geographical and chronological coverage, Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity demonstrates a different approach to using memory studies to explore the Classical world, one that is far more dependent on theory, occasionally at the expense of substantive content. It is structured in five parts, though these vary significantly in size (Part IV has four chapters, whilst Parts II and V have only two and one respectively). A sense of structural imbalance is also created by the fact that two of the chapters, those of Karl-J. Hölkeshamp (ch. 6) and John S. Kloppenborg (ch. 10), both expanded versions of previously published articles, are twice the length of the other contributions.

G.’s introduction provides a valuable summary of the wide field of memory studies in a way which is specifically linked to the Roman world, before outlining the volume's structure and chapters. Part I, ‘Memory and Roman Writers’, begins with Alain Gowing's investigation into the ways in which Tacitus used the memory of recent (and, to a lesser extent, more distant) deeds as a motivating factor in his characters’ behaviour. Brigitte Libby's chapter, which is far more reliant on theories of ‘collective’ and ‘cultural’ memory, uses these discussions to reinterpret intertextuality in Dido's abandonment in Aeneid 4. In the section's final chapter, Jörg Rüpke examines the ways in which Valerius Maximus used memory to demonstrate how religious knowledge was exemplified by virtuous men, creating a continuity from Republican to Imperial times.

Part II, ‘Memory and Roman Emperors’, has two chapters. The first, by Eric Orlin, considers the ways in which the figure of Augustus reshaped the built environment of the southern Campus Martius in Rome, creating new associations and memories which were then played out in rituals such as the Triumph and calendar events. Charles Hedrick then uses the topic of ‘false Neros’ as a spring-board into a wide-reaching discussion of the ways in which an emperor could tangle the lines between history, memory and fantasy, with the variety of different reactions to his death illustrating conceptual approaches to memory.

Part III tackles honorific statues, the archetype of Roman monumentalized memory. Karl-J. Hölkeshamp emphasizes how such statues should not be viewed in isolation but as part of wider web of associations, particularly in a site as dense in monuments and meanings as the Forum Romanum, and one which orators such as Cicero could draw upon when they performed in this space. Elke Stein-Hölkeshamp explores this further in the case of Sulla, examining how the dictator imprinted himself on the memorial landscape of the city in a way which both engaged with and rejected the established rules of aristocratic display. The section's final chapter, by Diana Ng, represents both a geographical and a conceptual jump, which stands a little at odds with the first two contributions. Considering cases of monumental display from Asia Minor against the backdrop of an in-depth consideration of social and cultural memory theory, she demonstrates how easily the application of such terms and approaches is in reality fraught with complications.

The largest section, Part IV, considers the rôle of memory in early Christianity, a welcome avenue of investigation which benefits from the already established use of such theories in New Testament studies. In the first chapter, Nicola Denzey Lewis uses recent theoretical approaches to offer a reinterpretation of the imagery on a chamber of the Hypogeum on the Via Latina in Rome. Viewing it as the product of the cultural and religious environment of the mid- to late fourth-century city, she demonstrates how pagan art could be shaped against the backdrop of an increasingly Christian empire. John S. Kloppenborg's chapter argues at length against the assumption that the sayings of Jesus were recounted with reliability, maintaining that they should instead be viewed as a corpus that was variably condensed and embellished in the course of transmission, thus modifying and adapting the content for every performance. Jodi Magness’ chapter complements this viewpoint, illustrating how the Gospel of John, which was written a relatively long time after the events it described, elaborated descriptions of physical places in order best to achieve its own contemporary theological purposes. In the section's final chapter, Milton Moreland demonstrates how the destruction and forced abandonment of the Temple in 70 c.e. prompted Christian communities to reimagine their collective traditions. The course of the second century witnessed the significant locations being dispersed from Jerusalem across the Empire at large, particularly in Rome itself, where the cult site of Peter, as well as the traditions surrounding him, were adapted to fulfil the shifting ideological needs of the present.

By way of a conclusion, Part V introduces a neuropsychological perspective, provided by Onur Güntürktün, Professor of Biopsychology at Germany's Ruhr-Universität Bochum, along with a research assistant (Hannah Gajsar) and a postdoctoral researcher (Ann-Kathrin Stock). Though starkly different in both style and content, this chapter on how memory actually works in the brain provides some valuable perspectives on the theory, such as the fact that, on a neurological level as well as a conceptual one, memories only remain static when they are stored, but change significantly every time they are remembered and relived.

Though aesthetically very different, the publication of these volumes on memory a year apart invites comparison between the two. Both illustrate the broad range and thought-provoking directions in which such enquiries can be taken. But the benefits of memory studies can also be its curse. The spectrum of pieces represented in these volumes, some of which fully mobilize memory theory, but others which could easily have been written without any at all, raises wider questions about the value of such applications in the field of Classical Studies. Whilst a monograph offers a single homogeneous ‘vision’, an edited volume can become disjointed when different approaches, placed side-by-side, can clash and undermine rather than complement. In this sense Cultural Memories in the Roman Empire, with its looser application of theory and more closely bound coverage, is undoubtedly the more successful of the two. Nevertheless, both volumes succeed in G.’s purported aim, namely to illustrate the plethora of applications which such approaches can provide, as well as to inspire further reflection and research.