Making and Unmaking Ancient Memory

Making and Unmaking Ancient Memory explores the way in which ancient Greeks and Romans represented their past, and in turn how modern literature and scholarship has approached the reception and transmission of some aspects of ancient culture.

The contributions, organised into three sections – Political Legacies, Religious Identities, and Literary Traditions – explore case studies in memory and reception of the past. Through studying the techniques and strategies of ancient historiography, biography, hagiography, and art, as well as their effectiveness, this volume demonstrates how humanity has inevitably conveyed memory and history with (sub)conscious biases and preconceived ideas. In the current age of alternative facts, fake news, and post-truth discourses, these chapters highlight that such phenomena are by no means a recent development.

This book offers valuable scholarly perspectives to academics and scholars interested in memory, historiography, and representations of the past in the ancient world, as well as those working on literary traditions and reception studies more broadly.

Martine De Marre is an associate professor of ancient history at the University of South Africa. Her research to date has focused on the social history of Roman North Africa, particularly on issues of power and empowerment during the Roman period up to the wars of Justinian.

Rajiv K. Bhola was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Macquarie University. He currently teaches in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa. He specialises in the life and reign of the Emperor Constantine and the literature of Eusebius of Caesarea.