Making and Unmaking Ancient Memory

Martine De Marre, Rajiv Bhola, Martine De Marre, Rajiv K. Bhola

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000572261
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire antique

Making and Unmaking Ancient Memory explores the way in which ancient Greeks and Romans represented their past, and in turn how modern literature and scholarship has approached the reception and transmission of some aspects of ancient culture.

The contributions, organised into three sections – Political Legacies, Religious Identities, and Literary Traditions – explore case studies in memory and reception of the past. Through studying the techniques and strategies of ancient historiography, biography, hagiography, and art, as well as their effectiveness, this volume demonstrates how humanity has inevitably conveyed memory and history with (sub)conscious biases and preconceived ideas. In the current age of alternative facts, fake news, and post-truth discourses, these chapters highlight that such phenomena are by no means a recent development.

This book offers valuable scholarly perspectives to academics and scholars interested in memory, historiography, and representations of the past in the ancient world, as well as those working on literary traditions and reception studies more broadly.

1 Introduction Making and unmaking ancient Mediterranean memory

Gillian Clark

DOI: 10.4324/9780429352843-1

Commemorative statues make headlines when they fall. Before that happens, they may stand for years without attracting notice: they were there as part of history, but became part of the scenery as memories were gradually unmade. Many people knew little or nothing about the events these statues commemorate; others forgot, or were only vaguely aware, because it all happened a long time ago. But memories can be remade. One set of people, in one time and place, wanted a statue in order to honour and preserve a memory which was important to them. The memorial might be a conventional acknowledgement of someone who held office, but it might convey much more about world views and values. Perhaps the statue honours someone who was seen as a hero or a liberator or a benefactor; perhaps it commemorates an event which was seen as a glorious victory or a brave advance into unknown territory. In a different time and place, another set of people wanted those memories replaced by a new history, so that the statue became a symbol of the world view which was now rejected. Sometimes the impulse comes from the top: a new regime sets out to displace the old, and demonstrates its victory by overthrowing a statue which represents the former rulers. Sometimes the impulse comes from a wider change of perspective, in which the hero or liberator comes to be seen as an oppressor; the benefactor made money from exploitation; the glorious victory or brave advance was aggression fuelled by greed. Cicero, in his dialogue de re publica (3.24), made a speaker observe that when a Roman monument bears the inscription ‘he extended the frontiers of empire’, that could not happen unless something was taken from someone else.

Historians contribute to changes of perspective, and their work is also influenced by such changes. Take, for example, the historical claim that the Roman empire fell because it was overwhelmed by barbarians; the sack of Rome in AD 410 was a symbolic moment, in which a war-band of Goths looted the age-old capital of the empire, and an ineffective emperor let it happen. The fall of the Roman empire has often been used as a warning against large-scale immigration and cultural change. But in the later twentieth century, immigration and cultural change were themselves factors in the questions raised by historians and archaeologists. They saw that a statistically small number of new arrivals can be experienced as overwhelming, especially when there is competition for resources and when traditions seem to be under threat. Did the Roman empire actually fall? The eastern empire continued for centuries, and in the west Roman language and culture, law and administrative practice, adapted to new ruling groups. Greek and Roman authors presented barbarians – people who do not speak ‘our’ language – as savage and uncontrolled, so that Goths and Vandals and Huns became bywords for ignorant destruction. It is difficult to counter this, because Greek and Roman writings survive but Gothic and Vandalic and Hunnic writings do not, and material culture cannot easily be identified as belonging to one or another ethnic group. But there is evidence that barbarians served in the Roman army, and some achieved high political and military status. Alongside the evidence for conflict there is evidence for intermarriage and for peaceful coexistence, and some Greek and Roman authors depict Goths and Vandals and even Huns as effective rulers. As for the ‘sack of Rome’ in 410, it was a brief – though terrifying – episode in decades of negotiation and threat. There is no evidence of major destruction. When Jerome, in Bethlehem, heard the terrible news, he quoted Virgil and the Bible, comparing the sack of Rome to the fall of Troy to the Greeks and the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians, and declared that the world perished in a single city. But there has also been change in the status of Jerome as an authority.

When statues fall, and memories are unmade, historians look for explanations. Why was the commemoration made? Was it motivated by fear, or by hope for favour, or by shared belief that this person or this event deserved to be remembered? If there was shared belief, what was its source, and what changed so that the belief was rejected? The task of historians is to research and assess the evidence, to understand why people thought and acted as they did, and how those thoughts and actions have been remembered or misremembered. Research takes place in a particular context, which influences what historians see or fail to see, what they count as evidence, and what they find interesting and important. Others who encounter their work, especially their professional colleagues, will challenge their conclusions and help them to be aware of what they have taken for granted. But it is not only historians who make and unmake memory. Architects and sculptors, poets and philosophers and preachers also shape recollection and understanding. This volume on making and unmaking ancient Mediterranean memory offers a wide range of examples. There are chapters chiefly concerned with historical writing, some of it near in time to the subject matter and some much later, some of it closer to invention than to investigation (compare present-day ‘docudrama’ and ‘fact-based fiction’). Other chapters discuss the survival or adaptation or destruction of material culture: sculpture, architecture, coins, even gemstones, which were intended to commemorate. Still others reflect on reinterpretation of legends and literature.

The time range begins in the fifth century BCE, with the making and unmaking of reputations. ‘Tyrant’ has come to mean an oppressive ruler who has seized or monopolised power, but in archaic Greece a turannos could be a monarch, legitimated by descent, who was effective rather than oppressive. Richard Evans observes that Thucydides, in his rapid survey of early Greek history, was not impressed: he said (1.17–18) that the turannoi of the Greek mainland were preoccupied with the security and advantage of themselves and their families, so they achieved nothing great and were eventually put down by Sparta. He excepted Sicily, whose tyrants achieved great power. Evans asks why Dionysius I and Dionysius II, tyrants of Syracuse in the late fifth and early fourth centuries, were not remembered among notable military leaders, even though the later narrative of Diodorus Siculus provides evidence of their success. He argues that this unmaking of memory depends on the assumptions and interests of the authors who are our sources. Some historians were themselves enmeshed in politics, or perhaps were unduly influenced by Thucydides’ dismissal of tyrants; Cicero and Plutarch were interested in the moral condition of tyrants and in the stories which linked Plato to the tyrants of Sicily. Frances Pownall, in contrast, sees conscious manipulation at work in memories of Gelon and Hieron, who were tyrants of Syracuse earlier in the fifth century. She argues that their naval victories against the Carthaginians and Etruscans were exalted or diminished as later rulers saw fit. Gelon, who made Syracuse the centre of a wealthy empire, duly commemorated his defeat of the Carthaginians in the naval battle of Himera. His brother and successor Hieron presented this victory as part of the panhellenic struggle against barbarians, in the year when the Persians were defeated at Salamis and Plataea. Hieron linked Himera with his own naval defeat of the Etruscans, allies of the Carthaginians, and commemorated these victories with dedications at Delphi and an ode commissioned from Pindar. Diodorus Siculus once again transmits memories of heroism, but, Pownall suggests, they were undermined by the historian Philistus, who supported the claim of Dionysius I to have achieved far greater victories.

From the tyrants of Sicily to two of the most famous Mediterranean rulers: Alexander and Augustus. Adrian Tronson observes that the great Alexander has often been co-opted as a link with a marginal society which he encountered on his wide-ranging (and sometimes imaginary) travels. Is that what happened when Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews, described a visit of Alexander to Jerusalem in 332 BCE? After the destruction of the Temple, Josephus, writing in Greek and living in Rome, wanted to communicate Jewish history and tradition, drawing especially on Greek translations of Hebrew scripture and on scholarly debate about interpretation. Alexander’s campaign of 332/1 BCE, from Tyre through Syria to Egypt, was a plausible context for a meeting in Jerusalem with Jewish leaders. Greek and Roman histories do not mention it: that silence may demonstrate that for them, Jews were indeed marginal, or it may show that Josephus invented or at best improved a memory which was irresistible to Jewish and Christian tradition. There are problems in his account, notably the connection he makes with a dispute between Jews and Samaritans which happened some 80 years earlier. But Tronson argues that Alexander did indeed visit Jerusalem, and Josephus and others developed their narratives of Alexander in accordance with their own purposes.

Augustus tried to present his exceptional power as a continuation of the history of Rome. To his subjects in the eastern Mediterranean it was immediately obvious that he was a king, but his Res Gestae, a Roman monument carved in stone, claimed that he had rescued Rome from the domination of a faction and thereafter held office in accordance with Republican tradition. Tom Stevenson considers the Forum Augustum, an immense architectural project which connected the Julian family and its divine ancestors with the history of the republic and which presented Augustus as father of the family and of Rome. Stevenson’s analysis of design and imagery shows how differently the Forum might be experienced by people who visited it. Court hearings took place there, and the temple of Mars the Avenger was the location for many ceremonies, especially those connected with war. People could watch events and meet friends, perhaps without taking much notice of honorific statues in the splendid colonnades which provided shade or shelter. The Forum reinforced the Augustan message of fatherhood and family, victory and peace: but how far did it influence the collective memory of a people who had lived through civil war?

Next come two official acts of unmaking memory. Nero, fifth and last of the Julio-Claudian emperors, and Domitian, third and last of the Flavians, were both subject to official condemnation. Damnatio memoriae may overthrow statues and erase names from inscriptions, but it does not erase memory. Martin Szöke discusses how the younger Pliny sought to rewrite his personal history. Four years after Domitian was assassinated, Pliny gave a public speech of thanks to the emperor Trajan, in which he acknowledged that his own career was advanced by Domitian, but claimed to have distanced himself before Domitian’s reign descended into tyranny. But Pliny’s letters, and an inscription at his home town, show that he continued to hold office. Perhaps he kept a low profile, but how could he misrepresent the facts in front of people who were likely to know them? Szöke suggests that Pliny’s remaking of his career could not easily be challenged by others who were also implicated in Domitian’s reign and who also wished to remake memory. There is also the question of what needs to be said in a public speech. Three centuries later, Augustine, bishop of Hippo, remembered (Confessions 6.6.9) his time as public orator for the imperial court: ‘I was preparing to declaim praises to the emperor. In them I would tell many lies, and those who knew would approve of me as I told them.’

Eric Varner demonstrates the long-lasting complexity of Nero’s reputation. Some damage to coins and images, including a gemstone portrait, suggests powerful hatred; but more often Nero’s image – especially his hair – was reworked for his successors. Written texts represent Nero as a monster of self-indulgence and cruelty, and Christians, in particular, remembered him as the first imperial persecutor or even as the Antichrist who would some day return. (Varner notes a more positive Syrian tradition, perhaps owed to Nero’s dealings with Armenia and Parthia.) But visual memory was different. The brilliant architecture of the Baths of Nero, and the gilded Colossus of Nero, continued to bear his name; even in the late fourth century, commemorative medallions linked his image to the Circus Maximus where they were distributed. Varner shows how medieval legend continued both to present Nero the bad emperor and to link his name with sites in the city of Rome; how representation changed with antiquarian research in the early renaissance; and how Nero the tyrant and persecutor continued into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

From the first century, we fast-forward to the early fourth century to examine another complex figure: Constantine I. Inasmuch as this emperor took charge of his own portrayal during his reign, his true legacy laid in the hands of those who sought to use the memory of him to serve their own ideological agendas. Here, Hartmut Ziche takes us through the conflicting depictions of Constantine by the contemporary apologist Eusebius of Caesarea, to whom we owe much of what we know about the emperor’s life, rule, and motivations; and the historiographer Zosimus, writing in the early sixth century well after the collective memory of the first Christian emperor had been established. As Ziche prudently reminds us, history and memory are not synonymous. Where these authors differ is in the significance of historical facts and in the rhetorical images they construct from them. For Eusebius, Constantine was an innovator but nevertheless a traditional Roman ruler, fusing ‘Christian’ and ‘Roman’ identities into an ideal ruler-type. On the other hand, Zosimus advances an interpretation that challenges the compatibility of ‘Christian’ and ‘Roman’ identities in the assessment of an emperor’s suitability to rule.

John Chrysostom, the focus of the next three chapters, takes us to a major transformation of memory. In the times of Nero and Domitian, Christians were a small and suspect group. By the late fourth century, when John Chrysostom was bishop of Antioch and then of Constantinople, Christians had experienced decades of imperial support from Constantine and his successors, except when the emperor Julian, in what proved to be a brief reign, made explicit his return to traditional religion. Christian writings dominate the textual record of late antiquity, because Christians had the motivation and the resources to copy and transmit treatises and letters and sermons and records of church councils. Judaeo-Christian scripture offered a new history, the history of God’s dealings with humanity; Christians who had died rather than renounce their faith offered new models of heroism. Wendy Mayer shows how martyrs exemplify conflicts of memory and interpretation. Christians built memorial shrines for martyrs, celebrated the days of their deaths, and narrated the details of their sufferings. Some non-Christians, like Julian, reacted with disgust. Julian believed, with many others, that the immortal and incorporeal divine power which governs the universe has no connection with mortality and decay. Dead bodies are pollution, especially when they died by violence, so the corpse of the martyr Babylas contaminated the oracle at Daphne through which the god spoke to mortals. John Chrysostom counter-argued that corpses do not pollute: it was Julian who polluted, because the fumes of his blood sacrifices attracted demons, and because he violated the law against grave robbing when he relocated the martyr. The new shrine of Babylas was a remedy for the famine and desolation caused by Julian. Chris L. de Wet discusses the commemoration of John himself as a martyr, in a speech which was made before it was certain that the stress of his exile from Constantinople had caused his death. In it John becomes a hero: his care for the poor and sick, and his non-violent stand against barbarians and heretics, counter memories of v...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• Notes on contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: making and unmaking ancient Mediterranean memory
• Political legacies
• Religious identities
• Literary traditions
• Index