Shaping Memory in Ancient Greece: Poetry, Historiography, and Epigraphy
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SHAPING MEMORY IN ANCIENT GREECE: POETRY, HISTORIOGRAPHY, AND EPIGRAPHY HISTOS The Online Journal of Ancient Historiography FOUNDING EDITOR : John Moles Histos Supplements Supervisory Editor: John Marincola &. Antony Erich Raubitschek, Autobiography of Antony Erich Raubitschek . Edited with Introduction and Notes by Donald Lateiner (-.&/). -. A. J. Woodman, Lost Histories: Selected Fragments of Roman Historical Writers (-.&3). 4. Felix Jacoby, On the Development of Greek Historiography and the Plan for a New Collection of the Fragments of the Greek Historians. Translated by Mortimer Chambers and Stefan Schorn (-.&3). /. Anthony Ellis, ed., God in History: Reading and Rewriting Herodotean Theology from Plutarch to the Renaissance (-.&3). 3. Richard Fernando Buxton, ed., Aspects of Leadership in Xenophon (-.&8). 8. Emily Baragwanath and Edith Foster, edd., Clio and Thalia: Attic Comedy and Historiography (-.&:). :. John Moles, A Commentary on Plutarch’s Brutus (-.&:). ;. Alexander Meeus, ed., History and Narrative in Hellenistic Historiography (-.&;). <. Geoffrey Greatrex, ed., Work on Procopius outside the English-Speaking World: A Survey (-.&<). &.. Paul Christesen, A New Reading of the Damonon Stele (-.&<). &&. C. Constantakopoulou and M. Fragoulaki, edd., Shaping Memory in Ancient Greece: Poetry, Historiography, and Epigraphy (-.-.). SHAPING MEMORY IN ANCIENT GREECE: POETRY, HISTORIOGRAPHY, AND EPIGRAPHY EDITED BY CHRISTY CONSTANTAKOPOULOU AND MARIA FRAGOULAKI HISTOS SUPPLEMENT & & NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE - . - . Published by H I S T O S School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE& :RU, United Kingdom ISSN (Online): -./8-3<84 (Print): -./8-3<33 © -.-. THE INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTORS TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface ...................................................................................................... vii Introduction—Collective Memory in Ancient Greek Culture: Concepts, Media, and Sources Maria Fragoulaki .................................................................................... ix &. Homer and the Question Why Christopher Pelling .................................................................................... & -. Thucydides Homericus and the Episode of Mycalessus (Thuc. :.-<–4.): Myth and History, Space and Collective Memory Maria Fragoulaki .................................................................................... 4: 4. Pindar’s Pythian /: Interpreting History in Song Peter Agócs ............................................................................................. ;: /. History, Ethnography, and Aetiology in Herodotus’ Libyan Logos (/.&/3–-.3) Emily Baragwanath .............................................................................. &33 3. Writing Culture: Historiography, Hybridity, and the Shaping of Collective Memory Joseph Skinner ....................................................................................... &;< 8. Remembering, Forgetting, and Rewriting the Past: Athenian Inscriptions and Collective Memory Polly Low ............................................................................................. -43 :. An Inconvenient Past in Hellenistic Athens: The Case of Phaidros of Sphettos Julia Shear ............................................................................................ -8< PREFACE ow do societies view their past? How does the past—collective and individual—and our relationship with it shape the social, cultural, Hand political context of the present? This volume stems from an Ancient History seminar series engaging with these questions, which took place at the Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London in the summer of -.&- and was co-organised by the editors. The present volume is comprised of chapters based on the papers delivered at the seminar and others specially commissioned for the present collection, which interlocked effectively with the volume’s take on memory, enriching its themes, sources, and methodologies. Memory studies and its application to ancient societies is a diverse and dynamic field of research to which the present volume aims to contribute, building on existing scholarship within and outside of the study of the ancient world. We would like to extend our warmest thanks to the audiences of the seminar; the Institute of Classical Studies and its Director at the time, Professor John North; and the contributors to both the seminar series and the volume itself not only for their illuminating contributions, but also for their collegiality and patience while this volume had been taking shape, a process which proved much more time-consuming than initially anticipated. We are grateful to the Histos team, who provided its excellent and hospitable online platform, and the Supplementary Volumes editor John Marincola for his great editorial care and support; the reviewers of the individual chapters for insightful comments and suggestions; last but not least, Simon Hornblower, who read and made valuable comments on individual chapters and on the volume as a whole. Christy Constantakopoulou Maria Fragoulaki Histos Supplement ( ) ix–xliv INTRODUCTION: COLLECTIVE MEMORY IN ANCIENT GREEK CULTURE: CONCEPTS, MEDIA, AND SOURCES ∗ Maria Fragoulaki . Memory Studies and the Present Volume ultural or collective memory defies a stable definition. It can be viewed as an interdisciplinary space where different and at times Coverlapping terms, media, and methodologies speak to each other, casting new light on the multifaceted phenomenon of collective remember- ing or ‘the interplay of present and past in socio-cultural contexts’. 1 In the study of ancient societies this interdisciplinary dialogue can be particularly illuminating in exploring the dynamic and negotiable character of the memory of the past. Memory can be better observed through the symbiotic relationship of a variety of media (texts, objects, places, forms) and through different periods and genres, as a process of constant redefinition and reconfiguration, based not only on storing, inscribing and recording, but also on forgetting, effacing, destroying, and losing for ever. Τhe chapters of the present volume explore aspects of the shaping (and reshaping) of collective memory in ancient Greece, viewing it as a holistic cultural phenomenon, mobile, transformative and transformable. The volume contains different types of sources, media of memory and theoretical approaches, exploring boundaries, dialogues and interactions: literary works (Homer, Pindar, Herodotus, Thucydides, and significant intertexts), oral traditions and folktale, inscriptions, material culture, funerary epigrams and statues, ethnography. Its chronological scope encompasses the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods. Some chapters (Pelling, Fragoulaki, Agócs, Baragwanath, Shear) zoom into a specific source (literary work or inscrip- tion), whereas others (Skinner, Low) provide more general and all- encompassing discussions. Themes and frameworks of memory explored in this volume are: kleos (‘fame’) and commemoration; praise as memory and media of praise; intertextuality and/as memory; the relationship between historiography, mythography, and ethnography; the interaction between ∗ I use the following abbreviations: CT I–III = Hornblower ( CC – D); PMG = Page ( CE ). 1 Erll ( D) . x Maria Fragoulaki textual and physical places of memory; and the centrality to ethnicity of collective memory. This introduction does not provide a systematic charting of the rich theoretical field of memory studies and its application to the study of ancient societies and cultures. Major points of reference to one or another extent in all discussions in the field are figures such as Maurice Halbwachs, Paul Ricoeur, Jan Assmann, Pierre Nora, or Arjun Appadurai, and the chapters of this volume are no exception. In addition to this theoretical stratum, the present volume is also, like other recent studies in the field of Classics, informed by memory studies. 2 Here, I would only like to pause at the centrality of myth and the mythistorical perspective of the past in Greek culture—an overarching methodological premise of this volume—, making a brief mention of Aleida and Jan Assmann’s distinction between ‘communicative’ and ‘cultural memory’. 3 ‘Communicative memory’ is associated with non-institutionalised forms of memory and is more limited chronologically, covering about eighty to a hundred years, consisting of the historical experiences of contem- poraries. It is a memory framework based primarily on forms of everyday interaction, in which everyone is considered equally capable of remembering the common past. ‘Cultural memory’, on the other hand, ‘comprises that body of reusable texts, images, and rituals specific to each society in each epoch’ 4 and is central to a group’s identity, sense of belonging, and collective knowledge. This memory framework is primarily ceremonial, ritualistic, consisting of fixed contents and meanings, whose sources are often specialists and figures of intellectual or religious authority, such as priests, professors of history, or poets. Foundational narratives of a past recognised ‘as ours’, festivals, symbols, and institutions cohabit and construct cultural memory. That said, ‘communicative’ and ‘cultural memory’ are interdependent, and distinctions are far from unambiguous. For example, as has been pointed out, ‘in the age of the Internet and formats such as Wikipedia there is an increased blurring of the distinction between specialists