Attitudes Towards the Past in Antiquity. Creating Identities
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ACTA UNIVERSITATIS STOCKHOLMIENSIS Stockholm Studies in Classical Archaeology 14 Attitudes towards the Past in Antiquity. Creating Identities Proceedings of an International Conference held at Stockholm University, 15–17 May 2009 edited by Brita Alroth and Charlotte Scheffer ACTA UNIVERSITATIS STOCKHOLMIENSIS Stockholm Studies in Classical Archaeology 14 Attitudes towards the Past in Antiquity Creating Identities Proceedings of an International Conference held at Stockholm University, 15–17 May 2009 edited by Brita Alroth and Charlotte Scheffer Stockholm 2014 ACTA UNIVERSITATIS STOCKHOLMIENSIS Stockholm Studies in Classical Archaeology 14 Editor: Arja Karivieri Institutionen för arkeologi och antikens kultur SE-106 91 STOCKHOLM The English text was revised by Dr. Janet Fairweather Published with the aid of grants from Professor Birgitta Bergquist’s Fond, Granholms Stiftelse and Gösta and Marie-Louise Säflund Foundations Abstract Brita Alroth & Charlotte Scheffer (eds.) Attitudes towards the past in Antiquity. Creating identities. Proceedings of a Conference held at Stockholm University 15–17 May 2009. Stockholm Studies in Classical Archaeology, 14. Stockholm 2014, 325 pp., 129 figs. and 6 tables in the text. ISBN 978-91- 87235-48-1. This volume brings together twenty-eight papers from an International conference on attitudes towards the past and the creating of identities in Antiquity. The volume addresses many different approaches to these issues, spanning over many centuries, ranging in time from the Prehistoric periods to the Late Antiquity, and covering large areas, from Britain to Greece and Italy and to Asia Minor and Cyprus. The papers deal with several important problems, such as the use of tradition and memory in shaping an individual or a collective identity, continuity and/or change and the efforts to connect the past with the present. Among the topics discussed are the interpretation of literary texts, e.g. a play by Plautus, the Aeneid, a speech by Lykurgos, poems by Claudian and Prudentius, and of historical texts and inscriptions, e.g. funerary epigrams, and the analysis of the iconography of Roman coins, Etruscan reliefs, Pompeian and Etruscan frescoes and Cypriote sculpture, and of architectural remains of houses, tombs and temples. Other topics are religious festivals, such as the Lupercalia, foundation myths, the image of the emperor on coins and in literature, the significance of intra-urban burials, forgeries connected with the Trojan War, Hippocrates and Roman martyrs. Keywords: The past, identities, memory, tradition, continuity and/or change, mythology, religious festivals, funerary inscriptions, forgeries, Trojan War, Hippocrates, Lykurgos, Etruscans, the François Tomb, Caecilius Iucundus, Athens, Rome, Britain, Crete, Cyprus, Phrygia, Capitolia, Christian martyrs. Cover illustration: Part of Roman sarcophagus relief, c. A.D. 300. NM Sk 185. © Medelhavsmuseet. Photo: Ove Kaneberg. © Respective authors and Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis 2013 The publication is available for free on www.sub.su.se ISBN 978-91-87235-47-4 (electronic) ISBN 978-91-87235-48-1 (print) ISSN 0562-1062 Typesetting and layout: Textgruppen i Uppsala AB Printed in Sweden 2014 Edita Bobergs AB, Falun CONTENTS CHARLOTTE SCHEFFER, Preface . 7 The past of early Greece CAROLYN HIGBIE, Greeks and the forging of Homeric pasts . 9 JOHANNES ENGELS, Lykurgos’ speech Against Leokrates. Creating civic identity and educating Athenian citizens . 21 LONE WRIEDT SØRENSEN, Creating identity or identities in Cyprus during the Archaic period . 33 Etruscan pasts CHARLOTTE SCHEFFER, The Etruscans—in the eyes of Greeks and Romans. Creating a bad memory? . 47 ANNETTE RATHJE, Self-representation and identity-creation by an Etruscan family. The use of the past in the François Tomb at Vulci . 55 MARJATTA NIELSEN, In the mirror of the past: the three “key-note” ash-chests in the Purni Tomb of Città della Pieve . 67 Displaying the past ARJA KARIVIERI, Mythic, public and private memory: creation of a Pompeian identity in the House of Caecilius Iucundus . 87 The past and mythology PETER SCHERRER, Hunting the boar—the fiction of a local past in foundation myths of Hellenistic and Roman cities . 113 DAVID M. POLLIO, Nec te Troia capit: re-creating the Trojan War in Vergil’s Aeneid . 121 Material culture and the past NASSOS PAPALEXANDROU, Messenian tripods: a Boiotian contribution to the symbolic construction of the Messenian past? . 127 ANNA KOUREMENOS, A tale of two Cretan cities: the building of Roman Kissamos and the persistence of Polyrrhenia in the wake of shifting identities . 139 HADWIGA SCHÖRNER, Revival of the intraurban burial in Greek poleis during the Roman imperium as a creation of identity . 151 INGRID EDLUND-BERRY, Archaeological evidence for Roman identity in ancient Italy . 163 Religious settings CATHERINE MORGAN, Archaeology of memory or tradition in practice? . 173 RABUN TAYLOR, The cult of Sirens and Greek colonial identity in southern Italy . 183 KALLIOPI KRYSTALLI-VOTSI and ERIK ØSTBY, The temples of Apollo at Sikyon . 191 J. RASMUS BRANDT, Blood, boundaries, and purification. On the creation of identities between memory and oblivion in ancient Rome . 201 Different Roman pasts TATIANA IVLEVA, Remembering Britannia: expressions of identities by ‘Britons’ on the continent during the Roman Empire . 217 MARIETTA HORSTER and THORALF SCHRÖDER, Priests, crowns and priestly headdresses in Imperial Athens . 233 LYNN E. ROLLER, Attitudes towards the past in Roman Phrygia: survivals and revivals. Extended abstract . 241 SARAH E. COX, Innovative antiquarianism: the Flavian reshaping of the past . 243 IDA ÖSTENBERG, War and remembrance: memories of defeat in ancient Rome . 255 The literary production of the past in Rome EWA SKWARA, Hannibal ante oculos! A comic image of an enemy . 267 MATEUSZ ŻMUDZIŃSKI, The image of Emperor Gallienus in ancient historiography— between manipulation and narrative . 273 Aspects of Graeco-Roman memories ANDRZEJ WYPUSTEK, Beauty and heroization: the memory of the dead in Greek funerary epigrams of the Hellenistic and Roman ages . 277 JULIUS ROCCA, Present at the creation: Plato’s ‘Hippocrates’ and the making of a medical ideal . 285 The Late Antique world BRUNO BUREAU, Idealised past and contested tradition: Claudian’s Panegyric for the sixth consulate of Honorius and Prudentius’ Contra Symmachum . 301 DENNIS TROUT, From the elogia of Damasus to the Acta of the gesta martyrum: re- staging Roman history . 311 INGRID EDLUND-BERRY, Attitudes towards the past in Antiquity: creating identities. A summary of themes and ideas . 321 PREFACE In 2008, the staff at the Department of Classical Archae- The conference was made possible by grants through ology and Ancient History at Stockholm University de- Professor Birgitta Bergquist’s Fond and Granholms Stif- cided to celebrate the centenary of our subject being telse. Many thanks also go to the staff of the department taught in Sweden with a conference in 2009. In Lund for their excellent work, especially to Dr. Lena Sjögren, and Uppsala the subject has been taught since 1909, now lecturer and senior research fellow at the depart- while Stockholm University had to wait till 1932. In ad- ment, to Janet Fairweather who corrected the English dition, the conference would honour our first professor, language of the volume and to Dr. Brita Alroth who, as Gösta Säflund. After much discussion we named the usual, did the final editing and saw the book through the conference ‘Attitudes towards the past in antiquity. Cre- press. ating identities’. The subject we chose turned out to be very interesting. The conference took place on May 15–17, 2009 and As we had expected, the past was used to honour your gathered many scholars. After the conference, 28 own people and to show contempt towards the defeated speakers submitted their papers for a collected volume. enemies. A summary of themes and ideas, written by Professor Ingrid Edlund-Berry, provides a good view of the many Charlotte Scheffer, Prof. em., head of the department at interesting papers given at the conference. the time GREEKS AND THE FORGING OF HOMERIC PASTS BY CAROLYN HIGBIE Abstract acceptance of the past as manifested in objects which be- Because of the importance of the past in Greek thought, objects longed to the prominent figures of the past made poss- which were found in the landscape, usually temples or graves, ible the forgery of antiques. For this preliminary investi- could be identified as belonging to heroes of the Trojan War gation into forgeries, I would like to use three Homeric and other adventures. Authors like Pausanias and Ampelius de- antiquities which caught the attention of antiquarians in voted much attention to the description of such votives, weap- ons, documents, and even bones, and depended on the Homeric the first and second centuries AD. Two of these antiqui- epics to identify these objects and their owners. This promi- ties were written documents, one an object. I have cho- nence of the past in the Greek world led to the fraudulent identi- sen these three, not because they are unique, but because fication of objects and their forgery: the letter of Sarpedon, the we have enough information reported about them that journal of Dictys, and the scepter of Agamemnon form the basis we can draw some conclusions about their significance for this preliminary investigation into ancient frauds. How forg- ers created and authenticated their forgeries, how Greeks re- to Greeks and Romans in the Hellenistic and imperial sponded to such objects and argued for or against their authen- Roman worlds. ticity, and the significance of these forgeries in the world, from In a history of papyrus,1 Pliny describes a letter which the Hellenistic era through the Second Sophistic, are the subject the Roman consul and antiquarian Mucianus had seen in of this essay.* a Lycian temple (13.88):2 Sometime in the late second century or the early third, praeterea Mucianus ter cos. prodidit nuper se legisse, Ampelius wrote a pamphlet dedicated to the emperor cum praesideret Lyciae, Sarpedonis ab Troia Macrinus which catalogues many of the wonders, both scriptam in quodam templo epistulae chartam, quod natural and human, of the world.