Empire and Memory: The Representation of the Roman Republic in Imperial Culture

Description

The memory of the Roman Republic exercised a powerful influence on several generations of Romans who lived under its political and cultural successor, the Principate or Empire. Empire and Memory explores how (and why) that memory manifested itself over the course of the early Principate. Making use of the close relationship between memoria and historia in Roman thought and drawing on modern studies of historical memory, this book offers case-studies of major imperial authors from the reign of Tiberius to that of Trajan (AD 14-117). The memory evident in literature is linked to that imprinted on Rome's urban landscape, with special attention paid to the Forum of Augustus and the Forum of Trajan, both which are particularly suggestive reminders of the transition from a time when the memory of the Republic was highly valued and celebrated to one when its grip had begun to loosen.

Alain Gowing is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Washington. He is the author of The Triumviral Narratives of Appian and Cassius Dio (Ann Arbor, 1992) and is on the editorial board of both the Bryn Mawr Classical Review and Classical Antiquity.

'This is an intelligent and stimulating book. Original, concise and consistently well-written, it also has the theoretical depth which characterises the Roman Literature and its Contexts series.' Sehepunkte