Memoria Romana - Galinsky

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ReseaRching memoRy

in the ancient Rome



31

Fig. 1: Prof Dr Karl Galinsky in the RUB Art Collection.




Research on historical and cultural memory in ancient Rome

memoRia Romana

ed as “memory places”, representing the

idea that the collective memory of a social

group, for instance the French nation, is

focused in particular places that need not

be only geographical; the French ag is a

good example. The term has become op-

erative and commonplace by now, provid-

ing emblems for l’identité française at a time

of massive immigration. Agendas can be a

factor in shaping memories, clearly.

That left other cultural periods open for

exploration and, in my case, that was an-

cient Rome. Rome is a paradigm of a mem-

ory culture. Memory pervades its every as-

pect: history and historical writing, art,

monuments (the very etymology of “mon-

ument” is connected with “memory”), re-

ligion, rhetorical training with its substan-

tial component of mnemotechnics, and

literature, to mention only the most obvi-

ous. Why was that so? Rome was not a cul-

ture that could rely prominently on writing.

Writing materials were either unwieldy (in-

scriptions on stone) or expensive (papyrus),

or of short duration (wax tablets). Literacy

in the Roman Empire has been estimated

at some 15 per cent of the urban population

and we are not talking about the ability to

read long texts. Nor does the memory cul-

ture cease even when writing is more prev-

alent; the Romans explicitly dened histo-

ry and historical writing as the preserva-

tion of memory.

A fascinating array of issues opens uphere. Whose memories are we talking

about? I am deliberately using the plural:

memories. One misconception in memory

studies, wrongly based on the titles of sem-

inal works like Maurice Halbwachs’La mé-

We all know that in our lives, and in

history in general, it is not only facts and

events as such that matter. Rather, it is what

we make of them and how we remember

them. In many ways such memories also

shape our identity. Exactly how does that

process work—for individuals, for groups,

and for nations and cultures? Such ques-

tions and the resulting concern with mem-

ory have been at the forefront of discussion

and research over the last thirty years in

the social sciences, the humanities, media

studies and, by a fortuitous coincidence (if

not convergence), neuroscience and neu-

ropsychology. In other words, the “mem-

ory boom”.

Within the Memoria Romana project, we

research the historical and cultural memo-

ry of ancient Rome. The project was made

possible by funds from the Max-Planck

Forschungspreis für Geisteswissenschaften

(info 1). What have we accomplished so

far? Quite a lot, I am proud to say. The

subject that was specied for the award in

2009 was Gedächtnisgeschichte, i.e. roughly

“history of memory.” That research orien-

tation in Germany had been pioneered by

Jan and Aleida Assmann; Aleida Assmann

in fact was the German co-recipient of the

Max-Planck Preis in 2009 and I respect her

tremendously. Major areas of focus had

been ancient Egypt (Jan Assmann’s Book

on Moses is a classic) and the modern pe-

riod. An impulse for the latter clearly wasthe Holocaust; that generation now is dy-

ing out—how do you preserve the mem-

ory? Instrumental, too, was Pierre Nora’s

seven-volume collection (1984-92) of lieux

de mémoire, which can be loosely translat-

Karl Galinsky

Memories are not stable, but change over time. This is true not only of autobiographical

memories for events from our past, but also for the collective memories of cultures. Bring-

ing together various approaches, including from the social sciences and neurosciences,

Prof Dr Karl Galinsky and his colleagues shed light on the variability of memories that

characterised ancient Rome.



33

moire collective (posthumously published in

1950) and derivatives like Das kollektive (or

kulturelle) Gedächtnis have tended to lead

to the notion that we were dealing witha uniform and stable entity that could be

handed down as a tradition, equivalent to

an archive. As always, the reality is dier-

ent. Halbwachs was right in emphasis-

ing the obvious: memory is a matter not

only of individuals, but of groups. But of

course there are dierent groups with dif -

ferent and often competing and conict-

ing memories. Who controls this process?

When we talk about societies like Rome,

the memories that have mainly been pre-

served are those of the elites. Only they had

the means to build monuments or the abil-

ity to write. They were, however, far out-

numbered by the non-elites and, for lack

of documentation, we have very little ac-

cess to the memories of the latter; that’s a

handicap endemic to the study of Greco-

Roman antiquity.

Another important perspective is that

historical/cultural/social memory is not a

hard drive. Like autobiographical memo-

ry, it is in a constant state of construction

and reconstruction. We all experience this

in our daily lives. Each time, for instance,

you think about the party on your 18th birth-

day, you have to piece together the events

of that day, unconsciously adding little de-

tails here and there—many from later con-

versations—while leaving out or forget-

ting about others. Thus, each time you re-

member that party, your memory of it will Fig. 2: On a palimpsest, several texts were written over each other.

change a bit. There are also false memo-

ries—in some famous psychological ex-

periments the rate was as much as 25 per

cent—and there is “source amnesia”, i.e.people infusing, unintentionally, ction-

al elements (from lms or novels, for in-

stance) into memories of their lives; Ron-

ald Reagan is a paradigm (info 2). At RUB,

it has been incredibly stimulating to be in

contact with experts like Denise Manahan-

Vaughan and Onur Güntürkün who have

pointed me to current research in neuro-

science and neuropsychology in such areas.

Likewise, we could always deduce this from

accounts such as those dealing with Rome’s

“history” and especially, though not only, its

max-Planck awaRd

Until 2008, I did not know that there existed a Max-Planck For-

schungspreis für Geisteswissenschaften. It is awarded every four

years to two scholars, one in Germany and the other in a foreign

country; the topic is specied and each German university can no-

minate one individual in each category. Football coaches, who are

the sages of modern times, emphatically deny that there is anything

such as blind luck; instead, they dene luck as “preparation mee-

ting opportunity.” Be that as it may, the opportunity was brought to

my attention by Dr Wolfgang Polleichtner whose Doktorvater I was

at the University of Texas at Austin and who then moved to RUBas a Research Assistant to Professor Reinhold Glei (Classical Phi-

lology), whom I had known for many years. They shepherded the

application through the various committees at RUB and substan-

tially drafted the proposal (I was limited to a short outline of how I

would use the award) that ultimately won the prize. At that point,

of course, I was asked for much more detail and a budget plan.

It is a substantial award, 750,000 Euros. I allocated the lion’s

share of the funds for doctoral fellowships and research grants

mostly for younger postdocs on an international basis. The support

of younger scholars is an important priority for me, RUB, and the

Max-Planck Society. In addition, the project has nanced interna-

tional conferences and workshops and release from teaching for

four semesters from my home university; for four years, from 2009

to 2012, I divided my time between Austin and Bochum to buildup and administer the project Memoria Romana, Standort RUB.

Further information: www.utexas.edu/research/memoria and

www.mpg.de/mpForschungspreis

info 1




early history. They were a continuing work

in progress—there were memories, coun-

ter-memories and, not in the least, oblivion

and eorts to forget. Memory is an ongoing

process. Layer is piled upon layer; Freud,

for good reason, used the metaphor of a

palimpsest, a piece of papyrus on which

several texts were written over each other

(g. 2), for Rome and then for the layers of

the human psyche.The essential purpose of the Memoria Ro-

mana project has been to acquaint especial-

ly younger classical scholars with the many

strands of memory studies and to employ

and test some perspectives, methods, and

Fig. 3: The Arch of Constantine in Rome. The imageon the top shows a detail of the monument.

impulses from current work on Gedächtnis-

geschichte over a broad spectrum of Roman

phenomena. No nachbeten (meaning, spe-

cically, “parroting the high priests of thememory cult”), then, but to bring some of

this research orientation and its method-

ologies into our work on Roman subjects

in conjunction with other approaches. The

project has funded 31 grantees, including

14 doctoral students, on an international

basis. Their nationalities include Canada,

the U.S., Colombia, Germany, France, the

U.K., Italy, Switzerland, and Turkey. They

remain at their home institutions, but we

have brought most of them together at con-

ferences and workshops in Bochum, Aus-

tin, and Rome. The range of their inves-

tigations (and resulting publications) has

been impressive and I am delighted to pre-

sent some examples because it’s clear that

they go beyond the commonplace—schol-

arship on Gedächtnisgeschichte has its am-

ple share of insights into the obvious—that

Rome has as many, if not more, memory

layers as archaeological strata, that the past

reaches into the present, etc.

An instructive example of bringing cog-

nitive research on memory to bear on a

Roman monument is the sculptural deco-

ration of one of Rome’s best-known land-

marks, the fourth-century Arch of Con-

stantine (fig. 3). There are two kinds of

relief sculpture on it: roundels and small

segments, which were actually removed

from earlier monuments, and a continu-

ous frieze created specically for this arch

at the time it was built and representing

scenes from the time of Constantine (g.

3 top). These scenes are woven into a se-

quential narrative whose participants are

not static but moving forward. Of course

layers are in evidence here: one layer from

the time of Constantine, another from

earlier times. The earlier sculptures fea-

ture previous Roman emperors, such as

the “good” emperors Trajan and Hadrian,

whose memory Constantine wanted to re-

call and with whom he wanted to associ-

ate himself. The juxtaposition between a

historic past and a more recent past also

has an analogy with human autobiographi-cal memory. Even in antiquity writers were

aware that childhood and adult memories

are characterised by different qualities.

Cognitive science studies have elaborated

on this phenomenon: besides being often



35

vidual icons with images of the city’s ear-

lier life. Were the designers of the mon-

ument conscious of this? Certainly not, I

would say, to the full extent of our cogni-

tive insight into memory today. Their aim

was to represent two dierent kinds of re-

membrance. To view their procedure in

light of our more complete knowledge of

human autobiographical memory brings

out an additional dimension of their work

and leads to a yet fuller understanding of

its impact even on contemporary viewers

of the monument.

As I said above, monuments, just by

their etymology, were meant to be carriers

of memory. Like Roman god Janus, theyface in two directions: they aim to preserve

memories of the past and also shape mem-

ories for the future. That is no different

from memorial sites today; at our confer-

ence at the American Academy in Rome in

stronger and more visual than adult mem-

ories, childhood memories also are more

like single snapshots that are unconnect-

ed to a broader narrative context. In this

they contrast with adult memories of re-

cent life events, which tend to be part of

a larger whole and can easily be woven to-

gether into a continuous narrative, even if,

as I have emphasised earlier, such stories

are constantly reconstructed and reshaped

in the process of remembering. Applying

this analogy to the Arch of Constantine, the

continuous narrative in the frieze is simi-

lar to adult memories, while the roundels

and segments from earlier times resemble

childhood memories.It is certainly striking that the presenta-

tion of history on the Arch of Constantine

breaks down along these lines: the con-

nected, linear narrative of recent events

versus the fragmented and discrete indi-

Fig. 4: Map of the Roman Empire in 120 AD




Fig. 5 on the left: Bronze portrait of Emperor Severus Alexander in the RUB Art Collection.

On the right: Marble portrait of Emperor Augustus’ wife Livia

2012, Daniel Libeskind, who gave the con-

cluding address, illustrated precisely that

point. A paradigm in ancient Rome is the

building activity generated by Roman lead-

ers who celebrated the state’s highest hon-

our, the triumph. They built temples from

the spoils of their conquests and they had

these buildings placed in such a manner

that future triumphal processions would

pass by them. And here is another wrinkle:

the Arch of the emperor Septimius Severus

(third century) in the Roman Forum was

crowned by his gure in a triumphal char-

iot and there are reliefs showing a trium-

phal procession – but none of our histori-

cal sources mention such a triumph. Not

source amnesia, but an attempt to make

future onlookers think he did? It’s an in-

triguing example with many open ques-

tions, but the attempt to shape memory

is obvious in ancient Rome and ts into

the larger picture of what the recently de-

ceased English historian Eric Hobsbawm

called “the invention of tradition.”

Not only was Rome full of such inven-

tions, but the paradigm also appears in the

various parts of the Roman empire. The

Romans were military imperialists, but

not cultural imperialists and the so-called

“Romanisation” of the empire in fact pre-

sents us with a tremendous range of ad-

aptations and responses. There was not

just one “cultural memory” but there were

many of them. Many are hybrids, just like

the architecture around the Roman Medi-

terranean, but in quite a few places indig-

enous traditions and memories were re-

vived—and, at times, invented—in order

to maintain a sense of local and regional

identity alongside the larger imperial di-

mension (g. 4). A reciprocal process oc-

curred at Rome which became a multi-cul-

tural city: festivals and anniversary dates

were disconnected from their earlier con-

junction with purely local, Roman history.

Instead, they came to focus on the emper-

or and his achievements because the em-

peror was the emperor for all. Traditional

scholarship has bewailed this as a power

grab and ignored the dimension of mem-

ory: Rome had many inhabitants from all

over the empire for whom specically Ro-

man cultural memories were too narrow,not to say irrelevant. Rome’s rst emper-

or, Augustus—the Art Collection at RUB

houses some excellent portraits of his fam-

ily (g. 5 on the right)—recognised this and

opened up wider horizons. Such process-

a famous case of souRce amnesia

In his book Searching for Memory , the renowned memory researcher Daniel L. Schacter

described a famous case of source amnesia: “In the 1980 presidential campaign, Ro-

nald Reagan repeatedly told a heartbreaking story of a World War II bomber pilot who

ordered his crew to bail out after his plane had been seriously damaged by an enemy

hit. His young belly gunner was wounded so seriously that he was unable to evacuatethe bomber. Reagan could barely hold back his tears as he uttered the pilot‘s heroic

response: ‘Never mind. We‘ll ride it down together.’ … this story was an almost exact

duplicate of a scene in the 1944 lm A Wing and a Prayer . Reagan had apparently re-

tained the facts but forgotten their source.”

info 2



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Fig. 6: Illustration from Vergil’s Aeneid

es of negotiation never stood still and had

their own dynamic—just like the constant

construction of memory in our brain and

the “performative” memory of individualsand groups. The resulting issues of cultural

memory, some of which have been studied

by some of our grantees, will be the subject

of our nal international conference at the

Getty Villa Museum in Malibu, California,

in April 2013.

Let me conclude with two further ex-

amples where perspectives from memory

studies have led to productive new insights.

Vergil’s Aeneid , written in the rst decade

of Augustus’ reign, cannot be tted into the

usual matrix of glorifying “national epic.”

Instead it was largely modelled on the Ili-

ad and the Odyssey of Homer, which have

a more comprehensive human dimension.

Yet from the very beginning Vergil makes

it clear that he is looking at this dimen-

sion dierently: he invokes the Muse not

to “sing of” or “tell” the story as the Greek

poet did, but to “recall it into memory” (g.

6). Accordingly, memory plays a huge role

in the Aeneid in all kinds of ways. They have

never been much explored, but two of our

dissertation Fellows—one French, the oth-

er American—have done so, from dier-

ent perspectives, and their revised disserta-

tions are in the process of being published,

one by the renowned Cambridge Universi-

ty Press. In so many words, a major aspect

of the Aeneid is the (re)construction of Ro-

man cultural memory.

Similarly, a more precise approach us-

ing memory methodologies has helped to

change another traditionally held view, this

time in regard to Roman portrait art. There

the term damnatio memoriae (“damnation

of memory”) has loomed large in the schol-

arship on disgraced emperors whose por-

traits were recongured after their deaths.

Unless their faces were very thin, they

could be reworked into those of other, bet-

ter emperors instead of being simply de-

stroyed. Marble was an expensive commod-

ity and the Romans were practical people.

Now, the label damnatio memoriae is anoth-

er example of an invented tradition, this

time by art historians: the Romans neverused that term. And when they re-cut those

portraits, they deliberately left enough trac-

es of the old portrait in order to highlight

the contrast between the old and the new.

In this way reworked, marble portraits

have their own memorial dynamic, where-

as bronze portraits could be only mutilat-

ed; RUB’s Art Collection owns a good ex-

ample (g. 5 on the left).Memoria Romana has been an exciting

and innovative project. I am profound-

ly grateful to its grantees and the partici-

pants in its conferences and programmes

at scholarly meetings for their energy and

accomplishments. My special gratitude

goes to my colleagues in several disciplines

at RUB and to Rektor Weiler and Prorek-

tor Eysel for providing a superior environ-

ment in which we could get so much work

done in a relatively short time. RUB has

done well in establishing itself as a Standort

(place) for research on memory, in neuro-

science, the social sciences, and the hu-

manities.

Prof Dr Dr hc Karl Galinsky, Seminar for

Classical Philology

Memoria Romana - Galinsky

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