Bloomsbury (2024) p/b 209pp £23.99 (ISBN 9781350408579)
Remembering and recording constitute the very stuff of history but it is only in the last twenty years or so that their modes and uses have become a self-conscious area of historiography. ‘Memory studies’ is now well on the way to becoming an established discipline with its own thiasos of followers, a growing technical vocabulary, and an acknowledged group of Founding Fathers— scholars like Jan Assman, Maurice Halbwachs and Pierre Nora. Its influence has already contributed to some remarkable historical successes—David Reynolds’ study The Long Shadow for instance—and the present volume certainly deserves attention as the first instalment of a very ambitious six-volume project which follows the ‘cultural history’ of memory from antiquity to the present day.
The editor of the present book, Beate Dignas, opens with a careful, well-grounded Introduction which admits the difficulties of her task and acknowledges that in effect ‘antiquity’ here means for the most part ‘Greco-Roman’ antiquity—a serious limitation as it turns out, since other great and documented ancient civilizations like China and Egypt scarcely get proper attention. She does however map out with skill and learning how some sophisticated modern developments in memory studies are already intersecting with aspects of the Greek and Roman world and successfully sets the scene for what follows.
The first chapter by Boris Chrubasik is entitled ‘Power and Politics’. He begins with three case studies: the expulsion of the Tyrants from Athens, the development of a Hellenistic kingdom with the dynasty of Seleucus and his family, and the establishment of the Augustan settlement. The first of these (which owes acknowledged debts to Rosalind Thomas) illustrates how two different memories of the same events which served different purposes could nevertheless co-exist. Both Seleucus and Augustus developed and enrolled various types of memory-producing strategies such as marking by regnal years on official records, portrait coinage accompanied by pictorial or verbal messaging, large-scale and attributable architectural developments and the conscious and selective assimilation of tradition. The chapter ends with two examples of memory adjustment: C. Sosius, the commander of Antony’s fleet at Actium who later became a respected office-holder in Augustan society, and Tlepolemos, originally from Iran, who later had a distinguished career in the service of the Ptolemies.
The second chapter, ‘Time and Space’ by Stephane Benoist and Ilaria Bultrighini, explores how spatial and temporal classifications and perceptions helped at various stages to establish a Roman collective identity, and in a wider perspective how the peoples of ancient city-states negotiated a world consciously shared between men and gods, later modified by the demands of monotheism. Reforms of the calendar and the re-naming of months, the role of performed ceremony in so many festivals, the adjustment of foundation legends, the restoration of temples and monuments with fresh intentions were all parts of this process—and there is a timely reminder that the damnatio memoriae was not solely a political phenomenon.
Chapter three, ‘Media and Technology: Mediatic Frameworks of Memories in Ancient Times’ by Elena Franchi starts with a survey of modern writing on mediatic memory studies as a background to some of her case studies, reminding us that changes of medium often trigger a process of remediation—the medium may be the message but the message may change. She cites two examples: first, the three monuments erected by the Phocians, the Boeotians and the Pieres (a Thracian tribe)—all participants in the Sacred War but now in the same area at Delphi, commemorated and partly united on sacred ground.
Then there is the Temple of Concord at Rome—at its foundation a sign of a concord between plebeians and patricians, but, when restored in 10 BC, it became the Temple of Concordia Augusta. Written memories, monumental memories and performative memories are all potential contributors to fostering ‘a common sense of belonging within a group’. Three further examples are taken from the two Locrian communities, the well-known Elogium of Marius, and the uses of coinage as a memory promoter.
The fourth chapter ‘Writing as “External Memory” and its role in Ancient Science’ is by Han Baltussen. He takes four points of focus in the ‘Greco-Roman literate age’, first, Homer and the oral tradition, next, the Hippocratic works as examples of the first scientific discipline, then, Aristotle as the pioneer of biology, and finally, in the Roman era, authors like Pliny the Elder and Galen who collected and organized data on a grand scale. His summary of recent work on the transition from orality to partial literacy is quite brief and his remarks on Plato are overtaken by Castagnoli’s masterly account in the following chapter. He rightly emphasizes the crucial advances in reliably organized collections of data and newly methodical procedures like the habitual taking of notes on medical cases and their treatment. The area under discussion in this chapter is of undoubted importance to the overall theme of the book but the result is a little disappointing.
The author of the fifth chapter, Luca Castagnoli, is an unashamed, joyful Platonist and he bases his contribution on ‘the original and deeply influential ways in which Plato shaped ancient philosophical discourse on memory’. The title of the chapter, ‘Ideas: Philosophy, Religion and History’ perhaps promises something more, but, if anyone seriously wants to know what Plato wrote—probably thought and meant too—on and around the subject of memory, this chapter of absolutely first-rate scholarship is for them. There is also a brief, tantalizing postscript sketching different ways of looking at memory from Aristotle to Augustine.
The sixth chapter, ‘High Culture and Popular Culture’ by Anne Gangloff, sufficiently announces its purpose in the title. Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological and political analyses have been hugely influential, and this chapter (with some of the political sting removed by adjusting the terms to ‘elite/non-elite cultures’) is an attempt to see how far the uses of memory in the Graeco-Roman world can be identified as contributors to a social divide. She takes as her stalking horses two familiar figures—Trimalchio (Petronius) and Calvisius Sabinus (Seneca’s Letters). Both are wealthy freedmen aiming at admission to elite culture but failing to get there—as always, it is the subtler touches which open the doors. Here lies the difficulty, for we simply do not have enough evidence of the subtler and exclusive aspects of elite culture beyond rather obvious things like recorded ancestry, busts of the family, public tributes and honours, dedicated buildings and the like. But the author’s questions were worth asking and she deals expertly with what we know.
The seventh chapter is by the editor of this volume, Beate Dignas, under the title ‘The Social: Rituals, Faith, Practices and the Everyday’ and it opens up one of the richest fields for memory studies. The author warns that it is one in which tempting generalizations too easily abound, the more so because it was so obviously a central part of ‘the everyday’ in ancient societies. The chapter is a judicious guide to a vast array of detailed work on ancient religion (Greek religion in particular) and unsurprisingly often cuts across the material and arguments of earlier chapters. She takes four main themes: religious memory media (with enlightening details like votive lists and their functions), the commemoration of the dead as cultural memory, religious festivals and the uses of the past, and the role of religion in interstate and interfaith relations. The chapter is quite a tough read but what emerges is a nuanced and provocative account of how the remembrance and commemoration of a real or imagined past can be an illuminating part of trying to understand the processes of cohesion and differentiation which characterized ancient societies.
The final chapter, ‘Remembering and Forgetting’ by Elizabeth Minchin, starts from Assmann’s three-fold distinction between the kinds of memory—inner, social and cultural. She offers three case studies to demonstrate not only how the past was remembered in the ancient world but also how it could be forgotten (or not). Her first example looks to the Homeric epics—how concerned the heroes are with how they will be remembered and consumed with anxiety lest they may be forgotten, and conversely, the dire situation when a vital champion refuses to forget. The second case study is a reminder of what a huge step Herodotus took in moving away from the old oral epic view of the past. The Muse as the fons et origo of historical truth is replaced by personal, individual evaluation based on investigation subject to quite consistent standards of evidence. The third study takes examples of the wilful blocking of memory in order to negotiate a changed situation: there is the fine imposed on the tragic poet Phrynichus for reminding Athenians in one of his works of the disastrous capture of Miletus by the Persians, and, more seriously, the so-called ‘amnesty’ (ban on remembering) of the events of 403 BC at Athens. A modest, clear chapter.
In summary, what is to be said about this inaugural volume? It is well produced and has uniformly excellent black-and-white illustrations. A lot of thought has gone into planning the series—but is it ‘a cultural history’? Well, honestly, no. If by ‘a history’ is meant a coherent and reasonably comprehensive narrative of understanding, this book must fail the test. The publishers and General Editors have obviously tried to suggest a skeleton structure which will give a pattern to this and subsequent volumes in the series, but what has emerged is a collection of papers of varying quality which owe allegiance to a particular mode of historical understanding and which cover a very wide span of time but a much narrower span of cultures. That is undoubtedly a valuable thing to have done, and the distinction and enterprise of the contributors are self-evident—but you must not call it ‘a history’.
John Muir
King’s College London