History and Silence

Cover

Download PDF (151.8 KB)
 

Title Page, Copyright

Download PDF (46.9 KB)
 

Contents

Download PDF (50.0 KB)
 

List of Illustrations

Download PDF (41.2 KB)
pp. ix-

Preface

Download PDF (79.3 KB)
pp. xi-xxiv

In 1757 Giovanni Battista Piranesi published the final edition of his collection of etchings of the ruins of ancient Rome, Le antichita` Romane. The frontispiece to that edition shows a palimpsested inscription: the original letters have been erased and over them a new...

Acknowledgments

Download PDF (110.2 KB)
pp. xxv-xxvi

The best thing about publishing a book is that it provides an opportunity to acknowledge publicly the debts that have been incurred in writing it. I first began working on the inscription rehabilitating Virius Nicomachus Flavianus more than a decade ago in a seminar on Roman...

1. A PALIMPSEST

Download PDF (51.9 KB)
pp. 1-5

In A.D. 431 a statue was erected in the Forum of Trajan in honor of an eminent Roman of the past, Virius Nicomachus Flavianus. The base of the statue has survived: it is about a meter and a half tall and three-quarters of a meter wide, and although the back of the base has been...

2. CURSUS AND CAREER

Download PDF (146.8 KB)
pp. 6-36

The inscription of rehabilitation begins, as almost all Roman honorific inscriptions do, with a formulaic prescript which provides a dedicatory statement, reasons for the dedication, and an account of the career of the person honored, in Latin a cursus honorum. In this...

3. UNSPEAKABLE PAGANISM?

Download PDF (213.7 KB)
pp. 37-88

Modern scholars know Flavian best for his religious activities. If the generalist knows of him at all, it is as the intransigent (or reactionary) champion of Roman paganism against the new religion of the empire, Christianity. From De Rossi’s initial publication...

4. REMEMBERING TO FORGET: The Damnatio Memoriae

Download PDF (195.4 KB)
pp. 89-130

The inscription does not speak of certain of the positions held by Flavian and his son, nor does it allude to Flavian’s religious attitudes. What these omissions mean, or if they mean anything, must be a matter for discussion: there are silences in any text, and the...

5. SILENCE, TRUTH, AND DEATH: The Commemorative Function of History

Download PDF (172.9 KB)
pp. 131-170

The first line of the imperial letter rehabilitating Flavian is remarkable in a variety of ways. It appears to invoke the authority of the Roman tradition of historiography and biography. It also alludes to the commemorative function of writing, which the rehabilitation...

6. REHABILITATING THE TEXT: Proofreading and the Past

Download PDF (184.0 KB)
pp. 171-213

A metaphor running through the imperial letter suggests an equivalence between the rehabilitation of Flavian and the correction (emendatio) of texts. Most immediately the metaphor alludes to the comparability of a political rehabilitation and the practice of...

7. SILENCE AND AUTHORITY: Politics and Rehabilitation

Download PDF (240.2 KB)
pp. 214-246

Many of the problems addressed in this book are traditional, if controversial. The activities of the Roman senatorial class have long been regarded as having played an important part in the transition from the later Roman world to the medieval period, the...

APPENDIX: Concerning the Text of CIL 6.1783

Download PDF (86.4 KB)
pp. 247-258

Notes

Download PDF (183.6 KB)
pp. 259-295

List of Abbreviations

Download PDF (39.9 KB)
pp. 297-300

Secondary Works Cited

Download PDF (105.5 KB)
pp. 301-320

General Index

Download PDF (64.3 KB)
pp. 321-330

Index of Passages Cited

Download PDF (49.9 KB)
pp. 331-338