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Ritual, Memory, and Identity: The Case of Theoriae

  • Ewen L. Bowie

    Ewen L. Bowie was Praelector in Classics at Corpus Christi College (1965–2007), and successively Lecturer, Reader, and Professor of Classical Languages and Literature in Oxford University. Now an Emeritus Fellow of Corpus, he has been Visiting Professor at Stanford, Michigan, and Edinburgh. He has written on Greek elegiac, iambic, and lyric poetry, Herodotus, Aristophanes, Hellenistic poetry, and Greek culture under Rome; co-edited Philostratus (2009) and Archaic and Classical Choral Song (2011); edited Herodotus. Narrator, Scientist, Historian (2018); and published a commentary on Longus (2019). Two volumes of his collected Essays on Ancient Greek Literature and Culture have appeared (CUP 2021, 2023).
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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

The chapter examines the ways in which theoriae to sanctuaries might be remembered and how their memory reinforced cities’, sanctuaries’, and individuals’ constructions of their identity. It focuses chiefly on the epigraphic memorialization at Claros of theoriae sent by numerous cities between ca. 120 and ca. 240 CE, highlighting only two from Laodicea ad Lycum and one from Perinthus (out of over four hundred surviving texts, more than forty concerning Laodicea) and suggesting how their naming of young singers and of adult religious officials contributed to constructing the identity of individuals named, of their families and their city, and of Claros itself. To support the possibility of (unattested) commemoration at Laodicea, it adduces honors at Athens for Pythaïstae, and at Cos and Ephesus for θ∊ωροί. Philocleon’s mention of a theoria to Paros in Aristophanes’ Wasps and Plutarch’s visit to the Thespian Erotidia recalled in his Amatorius exemplify recollection in private contexts.

Abstract

The chapter examines the ways in which theoriae to sanctuaries might be remembered and how their memory reinforced cities’, sanctuaries’, and individuals’ constructions of their identity. It focuses chiefly on the epigraphic memorialization at Claros of theoriae sent by numerous cities between ca. 120 and ca. 240 CE, highlighting only two from Laodicea ad Lycum and one from Perinthus (out of over four hundred surviving texts, more than forty concerning Laodicea) and suggesting how their naming of young singers and of adult religious officials contributed to constructing the identity of individuals named, of their families and their city, and of Claros itself. To support the possibility of (unattested) commemoration at Laodicea, it adduces honors at Athens for Pythaïstae, and at Cos and Ephesus for θ∊ωροί. Philocleon’s mention of a theoria to Paros in Aristophanes’ Wasps and Plutarch’s visit to the Thespian Erotidia recalled in his Amatorius exemplify recollection in private contexts.

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/10.1515/9783111197456-020

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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