Home Classical, Ancient Near Eastern & Egyptian Studies Repeat, Remember: Ritual and Literature (Horace; Sappho, Alcaeus; Homer, Sophocles, Epicurus, Callimachus, Vergil)
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Repeat, Remember: Ritual and Literature (Horace; Sappho, Alcaeus; Homer, Sophocles, Epicurus, Callimachus, Vergil)

  • G.O. Hutchinson

    G.O. Hutchinson is Regius Professor of Greek Emeritus, University of Oxford. He has written: Aeschylus, Septem contra Thebas, Edited with Introduction and Commentary (Oxford, 1985); Hellenistic Poetry (Oxford, 1988); Latin Literature from Seneca to Juvenal: A Critical Study (Oxford, 1993); Cicero’s Correspondence: A Literary Study (Oxford, 1998); Greek Lyric Poetry: A Commentary on Selected Larger Pieces (Oxford, 2001); Propertius: Elegies Book IV (Cambridge, 2006); Talking Books: Readings in Hellenistic and Roman Books of Poetry (Oxford, 2008); Greek to Latin: Frameworks and Contexts for Intertextuality (Oxford, 2013); Plutarch’s Rhythmic Prose (Oxford, 2018); Motion in Classical Literature: Homer, Parmenides, Sophocles, Ovid, Seneca, Tacitus, Art (Oxford, 2020); Polybius: Book 8 (Cambridge, 2025). He is working on an OCT of Polybius.
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Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Ancient Greece and Rome
This chapter is in the book Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Ancient Greece and Rome

Abstract

Repetition is often used when someone wants us to remember something; it helps “associative memory”. What is the relation between repeated actions, such as ritual, and one-off moments (e.g., founding of a city) or extended continuity, whether past (a dead person) or permanent (a god)? Thus an inscription from Beneventum tells of a bereaved father setting up a fund so that a continuity (his son) will be lastingly remembered through repeated celebration of a single day (his birthday). In literature the repeated, continuous, and decisive relate in diverse patterns and temporal structures. Examples from a range of authors (especially Horace) show the interplay between one-off events, remembering, and ritual, or ritual-like, happenings. A poet’s combined performances, or books, are less like one repeated ritual, more like a whole sequence of rituals. Lyric here combines attention absorbed in a created world with attention seized by something new.

Abstract

Repetition is often used when someone wants us to remember something; it helps “associative memory”. What is the relation between repeated actions, such as ritual, and one-off moments (e.g., founding of a city) or extended continuity, whether past (a dead person) or permanent (a god)? Thus an inscription from Beneventum tells of a bereaved father setting up a fund so that a continuity (his son) will be lastingly remembered through repeated celebration of a single day (his birthday). In literature the repeated, continuous, and decisive relate in diverse patterns and temporal structures. Examples from a range of authors (especially Horace) show the interplay between one-off events, remembering, and ritual, or ritual-like, happenings. A poet’s combined performances, or books, are less like one repeated ritual, more like a whole sequence of rituals. Lyric here combines attention absorbed in a created world with attention seized by something new.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. Contents VII
  4. Abbreviations
  5. List of Figures XIII
  6. Introduction 1
  7. Part I Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Greece
  8. Into the Woods: Reading the Iliad with Boeotian Cult 17
  9. Epinician Rituals in Pindar’s Fourth and Fifth Olympians: Shaping and Preserving Identities in Song 35
  10. Repeat, Remember: Ritual and Literature (Horace; Sappho, Alcaeus; Homer, Sophocles, Epicurus, Callimachus, Vergil) 47
  11. Ritual, Meter, and Cultural Memories of Megatheism: A New Case for Sarapis as the God of Hyssaldomos’ Verse-Inscription from Mylasa 71
  12. Part II Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Rome
  13. Georgics 4: Vergil on the Rites of Poetry and Philosophy at the Dawn of a New Era 97
  14. Horace’s Ritual Song in Augustan Rome: The Sacred Poet as an alter princeps 119
  15. Divining Identity in Seneca’s Oedipus 139
  16. Part III Performing Identity
  17. Call the Witnesses: Athenian Citizenship Practice at the Crossroads of Memory, Ritual, and Identity 153
  18. Embodied Memory in the Panathenaia 169
  19. Ritual Against Memory: Managing the Ancestors in Ancient Rome 195
  20. Part IV Trauma and Memory
  21. Aeneas’ tropaeum: Collective Trauma and Commemoration in Vergil’s Aeneid 213
  22. Broken Hospitality and Traumatic Memory in the Funerals of Vergil’s Pallas and Valerius Flaccus’ Cyzicus 237
  23. Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Prudentius, Peristephanon and Paulinus of Nola, Natalicia 271
  24. Part V Women, Ritual and Memory
  25. Remembering Female Names: Crisis, Ritual, and Collective Identity Formation in Ancient Greek Epic Poetry 289
  26. Ritual Lament, Memory, and Identity in Euripides’ Trojan Trilogy 307
  27. Memory, Ritual, and the Politics of Closure in Tacitus, Ann. 3.76 323
  28. Part VI Places
  29. Treasuries, Identity, and Politics 337
  30. Ancient Greek Construction Rituals, Tradition, and the Articulation of Communal Identities 355
  31. Ritual, Memory, and Identity: The Case of Theoriae 385
  32. Pomponius Mela’s Hercules: Preserving Phoenician Ritual Memory and Identity 405
  33. List of Contributors 423
  34. Index Rerum
  35. Index Locorum
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111197456-004

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. Contents VII
  4. Abbreviations
  5. List of Figures XIII
  6. Introduction 1
  7. Part I Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Greece
  8. Into the Woods: Reading the Iliad with Boeotian Cult 17
  9. Epinician Rituals in Pindar’s Fourth and Fifth Olympians: Shaping and Preserving Identities in Song 35
  10. Repeat, Remember: Ritual and Literature (Horace; Sappho, Alcaeus; Homer, Sophocles, Epicurus, Callimachus, Vergil) 47
  11. Ritual, Meter, and Cultural Memories of Megatheism: A New Case for Sarapis as the God of Hyssaldomos’ Verse-Inscription from Mylasa 71
  12. Part II Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Rome
  13. Georgics 4: Vergil on the Rites of Poetry and Philosophy at the Dawn of a New Era 97
  14. Horace’s Ritual Song in Augustan Rome: The Sacred Poet as an alter princeps 119
  15. Divining Identity in Seneca’s Oedipus 139
  16. Part III Performing Identity
  17. Call the Witnesses: Athenian Citizenship Practice at the Crossroads of Memory, Ritual, and Identity 153
  18. Embodied Memory in the Panathenaia 169
  19. Ritual Against Memory: Managing the Ancestors in Ancient Rome 195
  20. Part IV Trauma and Memory
  21. Aeneas’ tropaeum: Collective Trauma and Commemoration in Vergil’s Aeneid 213
  22. Broken Hospitality and Traumatic Memory in the Funerals of Vergil’s Pallas and Valerius Flaccus’ Cyzicus 237
  23. Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Prudentius, Peristephanon and Paulinus of Nola, Natalicia 271
  24. Part V Women, Ritual and Memory
  25. Remembering Female Names: Crisis, Ritual, and Collective Identity Formation in Ancient Greek Epic Poetry 289
  26. Ritual Lament, Memory, and Identity in Euripides’ Trojan Trilogy 307
  27. Memory, Ritual, and the Politics of Closure in Tacitus, Ann. 3.76 323
  28. Part VI Places
  29. Treasuries, Identity, and Politics 337
  30. Ancient Greek Construction Rituals, Tradition, and the Articulation of Communal Identities 355
  31. Ritual, Memory, and Identity: The Case of Theoriae 385
  32. Pomponius Mela’s Hercules: Preserving Phoenician Ritual Memory and Identity 405
  33. List of Contributors 423
  34. Index Rerum
  35. Index Locorum
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