Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity

Edited by Karl Galinsky

Presents an exploration of an interdisciplinary range of subjects from the perspective of important concepts and issues in memory studies
Engages with memory scholarship and theory, providing a comprehensive overview to the field
Considers a broad historical view, encompassing ancient Rome and early Christianity
Includes a contribution from a leading neuroscientist on how memory actually works

Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity

Edited by Karl Galinsky

Description

What and how do people remember? Who controls the process of what we call cultural or social memory? What is forgotten and why? People's memories are not the same as history written in retrospect; they are malleable and an ongoing process of construction and reconstruction. Ancient Rome provided much of the cultural framework for early Christianity, and in both the role of memory was pervasive. Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity presents perspectives from an international and interdisciplinary range of contributors on the literature, history, archaeology, and religion of a major world civilization, based on an informed engagement with important concepts and issues in memory studies. It offers a selective exploration of the wealth of topics which comprise memory studies, and also features a contribution from a leading neuroscientist on the actual workings of the human memory.

Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity

Edited by Karl Galinsky

Preface
List of Figures
List of Contributors
Introduction, Karl Galinsky
Part I: Memory and Roman Writers
1:Memory as Motive in Tacitus, Alain Gowing
2:Forgetful Theseus and Mindful Aeneas in Catullus 64 and Aeneid 4, Brigitte Libby
3:Knowledge of Religion in Valerius Maximus' exempla: Roman Historiography and Tiberian Memory Culture, Jörg Rüpke
Part II: Memory and Roman Emperors
4:Augustan Reconstruction and Roman Memory, Eric Orlin
5:Qualis artifex pereo: The Generation of Roman Memories of Nero, Charles Hedrick, Jr.
Part III: Roman Honorific Statues: Memory or Just Honour?
6:In the Web of (Hi)stories: memoria: Monuments and Their Myth-historical 'Interconnectedness', Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp
7:Marius, Sulla, and the War over Monumental Memory and Public Space, Elke Stein-Hölkeskamp
8:Monuments, Memory, and Status Recognition in Roman Asia Minor, Diana Ng
Part IV: Memory in Roman Religion and Early Christianity
9:The Crafting of Memory in Late Roman Mortuary Spaces, Nicola Denzey-Lewis
10:Memory, Performance and the Sayings of Jesus, John Kloppemborg
11:Sweet Memory: Archaeological Evidence of Jesus in Jerusalem, Jodi Magness
12:Moving Peter to Rome: Social Memory and Ritualized Space After 70 CE, Milton Moreland
Part V: A Perspective from Neuropsychology
13:The Neuroscience of Memory, Ann-Kathrin Stock, Hannah,Gajsar, and Onur Güntürkün
Index

Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity

Edited by Karl Galinsky

Author Information

Edited by Karl Galinsky, Floyd A. Cailloux Centennial Professor of Classics and University Distinguished Teaching Professor, University of Texas at Austin

Karl Galinsky is Floyd A. Cailloux Centennial Professor of Classics and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

Contributors:

Nicola Denzey Lewis, Brown University
Karl Galinsky, University of Texas at Austin
Alain M. Gowing, University of Washington
Onur Güntürkün, Ruhr-University Bochum
Ann-Kathrin Stock, Universitätsklinikum Carl Gustav Carus Dresden
Hannah Gajsar, Ruhr-University Bochum
Charles W. Hedrick, Jr., University of California, Santa Cruz
Karl-J. Hölkeskamp, University of Cologne
John Kloppenborg, University of Toronto
Brigitte Libby, Harvard University
Jodi Magness, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Milton Moreland, Rhodes College
Diana Y. Ng, University of Michigan
Eric Orlin, University of Puget Sound
Jörg Rüpke, University of Erfurt
Elke Stein-Hölkeskamp, University of Duisburg-Essen

Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity

Edited by Karl Galinsky

Reviews and Awards

"Karl Galinsky is not a scholar to embrace such rigid or facile dichotomies. In a lifetime of scholarship on Augustus, classical reception, and now, on social memory, Galinsky has consistently and vocally advocated the need to tear down conceptual walls ... This book succeeds in telling a powerful story ... anyone who values dialogue — between science and the humanities, classics and religious studies, or among people of faith learning more about their own religious traditions — will recognize its implication: memories that have been acquired through learned behavior can, with some difficulty, be unlearned, too." - Douglas Boin, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

"I found this book very interesting. Galinsky, I believe, has provided historians of Ancient Rome with an intriguing collection of essays on the role of memory. The essays as a whole demonstrate the viability of this field of study." - Stephen Campbell, Sheperds

"Similarly, perhaps the most unique and interesting feature of this book is the final essay; one does not frequently encounter neuroscientific discussions of memory, neuronal networks, and brain plasticity in books on Roman or early Christian history! Between these two bookends, Libby's discussion of memory and intertextuality, Hedrick's quadrangular model of memory, history, experience, and fantasy, Stein-Hölkeskamp's prefiguration of the collapse of the Republic in Sulla's take-over of Roman monumental memory, and Denzey Lewis' presentation of a pagan response to the Empire's Christianization stand out as especially read-worthy ... these essays provide an admirable example of the uses to which historians of antiquity are putting the amorphous field of memory studies." - Rafael Rodríguez, Enoch Seminar