This volume publishes the proceedings of a conference held in Lausanne in 2011, focused on places of memory in the imperial Greek East. It consists of nineteen short papers, the majority in French, with three in English. The introduction by Gangloff reviews the recent bibliography on cultural memory studies, outlining especially recent work on places of memory in the Roman world, and the link in the Greek world between sacred places and the creation of memory. A short paper by Jequier, outlining the concept of ‘places of memory’ in modern scholarship and practice since the work of Pierre Nora in the late ’70s and ’80s, is followed by the conference papers, grouped into five thematic sections.
Section One on the imaginary geography of Greek memory comprises two papers on Philostratus. Bowie demonstrates how Philostratus constructs his own image of Greece through the places visited by Apollonius or mentioned in the Life of Apollonius, privileging cities which reflect the Classical past over those of Hellenistic fame. Mestre discusses the Heroikos, and the way in which it puts place as the guarantee of tradition, transferring authority away from Homer towards material landscape as the proof of Protesilaos' history and continuing presence.
Section Two turns to the construction of places of memory in rhetorical and iconographical discourse. Gómez discusses the place of Marathon in the Greek imagination, through a discussion of Lucian and Plutarch, while Billault turns to Dio's Borysthenic Oration (36), examining how Dio presents Borysthenes both as a souvenir of its own history and also as a living embodiment of Greek culture, albeit in a Scythian frame. The third paper in this section, by Michaeli, turns to art, looking at allusions to the Nile in ancient art in Israel. Though she presents an interesting collection of images, it is less clear how the Nile here acts as a place of memory, rather than as a more general allusion to the ideals of fertility and abundance.
Section Three, on places of memory and civic identity, comprises three papers. Bérard discusses the rôle of epigraphy in creating civic memory, focusing on the Heroon of Opramoas at Rhodiapolis in Lycia. The tomb of this wealthy benefactor also acted as civic archive, bearing on its walls a series of inscriptions which underlined Opramoas' own wealth and importance, as well as the successes of his city. Horster turns to Eleusis, looking at the honorific monuments and inscriptions which were visible in the imperial period. She argues that these represent a conscious selection from the past, which presented a particular picture of the previous centuries, as well as showing changes in commemorative patterns in the imperial period. Gengler turns to the sanctuaries of the southern Peloponnese, questioning the evidence of Pausanias, and looking at how a confluence of interests allowed local élites as well as emperors to support certain sites and maintain them as spaces imbued with the presence of the past.
The first paper in Section Four (Sacred Topographies), returns to the reliability of Pausanias. Jacquemin looks at the buildings and monuments of Delphi which are archaeologically attested but missing in the literary sources, most notably Pausanias and Plutarch. Strikingly, the rebuilding of the Temple of Apollo, and individual monuments such as that of Daochos, are omitted by these writers, a lacuna which Jacquemin suggests may be due to their particular agenda. Raschle's paper turns to a different sanctuary of Apollo, that at Daphne near Antioch. Tracing its history in the fourth century a.d., he shows how the sanctuary became a site of conflict between pagans and Christians, transforming the sanctuary from a site of pagan religious memory to one commemorating the Christian defeat of the emperor Julian. Christian memory is explored further in the paper by Caillou, which looks at the traditions regarding the burial site of Christ.
The final section addresses the involvement of emperors in places of Graeco-Roman memory. The first two papers form a pair focused on the city of Nicopolis and its Aktia festival. Guerber looks at the significance of city, monument and festival for Augustus, while Hoët-van Cauwenberghe and Kantiréa focus on Nicopolis' enduring importance for later emperors in the creation of memories of both triumph and philhellenism. The next two papers look at the significance of Cilicia as a place of memory. Lebreton looks at the associations held by the Gates of Cilicia as a mental frontier, not least due to its associations with the campaigns of the Alexander the Great, while Blonce analyses the commemoration of Septimius Severus' defeat of Pescennius Niger at Issos. The memory of Alexander also provides the focus for the final paper in this section: Bérenger's examination of Caracalla's homage to places imbued with the memory of Alexander. A final paper by Bielman provides an excellent synthesis of the book, drawing out some common conclusions and observations and identifying interesting areas for further research.
The collection works well as a whole with several strands binding the papers together. Several consider the agenda of our literary sources, and the ways that writers like Philostratus (Bowie, Mestre), Pausanias (Jacquemin, Gengler), or Dio (Billault) use space as a way to create their own Hellenic memory map, and for the creation of their own self-image. Others consider the rôle of place in interactions between individual and group identities (Bérard, Horster, Raschle, Caillou). The rôle of festivals and sanctuaries as spaces for memory is another repeated theme (Horster, Gengler, Guerber, Hoët-van Cauwenberghe and Kantiréa, Blonce).
Overall this is a most stimulating collection. The individual papers are detailed and insightful and add greatly to our understanding of the importance of place in the creation of memory. Memories of the past were especially important in the imperial Greek East, as studies on the so-called Second Sophistic have shown so well. It would have been useful to have a more specific engagement with this scholarship in the introduction, to justify and explain the parameters of the conference. Despite this, the collection makes a real contribution to our knowledge of the thought-world of the Greek East in the imperial period, and the ways in which individuals and groups could invest places with the memory of a past tailored to their specific self-interests and identities.
