Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Ancient Greece and Rome

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Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Ancient Greece and Rome

Edited by: Vassiliki Panoussi and William Hutton

Language: English

Published/Copyright: 2025

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This book is in the series

Volume 190 | Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes

About this book

The essays in this volume consider the triptych of memory, ritual, and identity in ancient Greece and Rome. The issue of identity has recently dominated the arena of public discourse with renewed urgency, and in antiquity as in the current day, identities were created through an amalgamation of multivalent views and values. Individual identities were inextricably linked to collective identifications and informed by shared memories and experiences; these in turn shaped the narratives and practices that perpetuated connections within the community. Ritual played a foundational role in this process, as a deeply felt, iterative action that brought members of a community together to form powerful memories through which they negotiated their relationships with one another and with society at large. With contributions on ancient Greek and Roman literature, politics, religion, and material culture, and with a chronological scope ranging from archaic Greece to early Christendom, this volume examines the synergy of memory, ritual, and identity from multiple disciplinary perspectives and provides both an illustration of the variety of configurations that synergy took in Greco-Roman antiquity and how they persisted and evolved over time.

Author / Editor information

Vassiliki Panoussi and William Hutton, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg VA, USA.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	I
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	VII
Abbreviations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed
List of Figures Publicly Available Download PDF	XIII
Introduction Vassiliki Panoussi and William Hutton Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	1
Part I Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Greece
Into the Woods: Reading the Iliad with Boeotian Cult Richard P. Martin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	17
Epinician Rituals in Pindar’s Fourth and Fifth Olympians: Shaping and Preserving Identities in Song Lucia Athanassaki Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	35
Repeat, Remember: Ritual and Literature (Horace; Sappho, Alcaeus; Homer, Sophocles, Epicurus, Callimachus, Vergil) G.O. Hutchinson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	47
Ritual, Meter, and Cultural Memories of Megatheism: A New Case for Sarapis as the God of Hyssaldomos’ Verse-Inscription from Mylasa Brett Evans Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	71
Part II Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Rome
Georgics 4: Vergil on the Rites of Poetry and Philosophy at the Dawn of a New Era Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	97
Horace’s Ritual Song in Augustan Rome: The Sacred Poet as an alter princeps Chrysanthe Tsitsiou-Chelidoni Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	119
Divining Identity in Seneca’s Oedipus Stavros Frangoulidis Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	139
Part III Performing Identity
Call the Witnesses: Athenian Citizenship Practice at the Crossroads of Memory, Ritual, and Identity Danielle L. Kellogg Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	153
Embodied Memory in the Panathenaia Jessica Paga Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	169
Ritual Against Memory: Managing the Ancestors in Ancient Rome Greg Woolf Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	195
Part IV Trauma and Memory
Aeneas’ tropaeum: Collective Trauma and Commemoration in Vergil’s Aeneid Vassiliki Panoussi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	213
Broken Hospitality and Traumatic Memory in the Funerals of Vergil’s Pallas and Valerius Flaccus’ Cyzicus Helen Lovatt Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	237
Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Prudentius, Peristephanon and Paulinus of Nola, Natalicia Philip Hardie Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	271
Part V Women, Ritual and Memory
Remembering Female Names: Crisis, Ritual, and Collective Identity Formation in Ancient Greek Epic Poetry Andromache Karanika Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	289
Ritual Lament, Memory, and Identity in Euripides’ Trojan Trilogy Ioanna Karamanou Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	307
Memory, Ritual, and the Politics of Closure in Tacitus, Ann. 3.76 Sophia Papaioannou Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	323
Part VI Places
Treasuries, Identity, and Politics Judith M. Barringer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	337
Ancient Greek Construction Rituals, Tradition, and the Articulation of Communal Identities Andrew Farinholt Ward Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	355
Ritual, Memory, and Identity: The Case of Theoriae Ewen L. Bowie Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	385
Pomponius Mela’s Hercules: Preserving Phoenician Ritual Memory and Identity Georgia L. Irby Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	405
List of Contributors Franco Montanari and Antonios Rengakos Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	423
Index Rerum Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed
Index Locorum Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed

Publishing information

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

eBook published on:

December 15, 2025

eBook ISBN:

9783111197456

Hardcover published on:

December 15, 2025

Hardcover ISBN:

9783111197319

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

Front matter:

14

Main content:

446

Illustrations:

25

Coloured Illustrations:

19

Tables:

2

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111197456

eBook ISBN: 9783111197456

Hardcover ISBN: 9783111197319

Keywords for this book

Ancient Greek Religion; Ancient Roman Religion; Ancient Social History

Audience(s) for this book

Scholars and advanced students in Classics, Ancient History, Art History, Archaeology, Late Antiquity, Cultural Studies

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Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Genthiner Straße 13
10785 Berlin
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Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Ancient Greece and Rome

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About this book

Author / Editor information

Topics

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