Monumental Absences in Ancient Historiography
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Lydia Spielberg
Lydia Spielberg topos of ‘what was actually said’ in Roman historiography, and discussing questions of authenticity and authority in that genre. In addition to quotation and transcription, she also engages with intertextuality, fictionality, panegyric and ‘court’ literature, as well as the reception of ancient imperialism and despotism.
Abstract
This article demonstrates that ancient historians did not simply draw upon inscriptions and statues as sources, but also subverted the original messages of these artefacts by placing their own spin on events. These readings ‘against the grain’ take place both where the historical monument exists and has been seen by the historian, as in Thucydides’ digression on the Peisistratids’ inscriptions and decrees, and where the monument is either inaccessible or nonexistent (e. g. Livy’s discussion of the 493 BC Latin treaty and Tacitus’ analysis of the senate-decrees issued for Germanicus’ funeral). By reinterpreting monuments, historians enable sources to transcend their semiotic function and elevate them into commemorative objects. However, this process of reframing and negotiation does not only occur to individual monuments; as this chapter demonstrates, Classical historiography also includes more general commentary on the usefulness of material sources as transmitters of the past.
About the author
Lydia Spielberg is Assistant Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on Roman historiography and historians’ presentation of their genre’s social and political agency. Her current monograph-in-progress, based on her doctoral dissertation (University of Pennsylvania, 2018), engages with these themes by highlighting the topos of ‘what was actually said’ in Roman historiography, and discussing questions of authenticity and authority in that genre. In addition to quotation and transcription, she also engages with intertextuality, fictionality, panegyric and ‘court’ literature, as well as the reception of ancient imperialism and despotism.
Acknowledgements
The comments and questions posed by participants at the Intermediality Workshop where this paper was originally presented have improved it tremendously, as have the helpful criticisms and suggestions of both the editors of the collection and the anonymous reviewers. All errors that remain are the author’s own.
© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Introduction
- Sensorial Intermedialities in Roman Letters: Cicero, Horace, and Ovid
- Quotations in Roman Prose as Intermedial Phenomena
- Monumental Absences in Ancient Historiography
- Inscriptional Intermediality in Livy
- Intermediality in the Metamorphoses
- The Touch and Taste of War in Latin Battle Narrative
- Stories from the Frontier: Bridging Past and Present at Hadrian’s Wall
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- Index Rerum
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Introduction
- Sensorial Intermedialities in Roman Letters: Cicero, Horace, and Ovid
- Quotations in Roman Prose as Intermedial Phenomena
- Monumental Absences in Ancient Historiography
- Inscriptional Intermediality in Livy
- Intermediality in the Metamorphoses
- The Touch and Taste of War in Latin Battle Narrative
- Stories from the Frontier: Bridging Past and Present at Hadrian’s Wall
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- Index Rerum
