Social Memory in Athenian Public Discourse: Uses and Meanings of the Past

Preface

Preface Prompted by the abundant historical allusions in Athenian political and diplomatic discourse, this book analyzes the uses and meanings of the past in fourth-century Athens, using Thebes’ role in Athenian memory as a case study. It explores how Athenians learned about their past and what this past meant to them. It examines how individual speakers operated within this complex memorial framework and to what extent these shared images of the past influenced the decision-making process in fourth-century Athens, where a free citizenry publically debated its foreign and domestic policies in the assembly, the law courts, and other democratic institutions. This study is based on the premise that Athenian social memory, that is, the shared and often idealized and distorted image of the past, should be viewed not as an unreliable counterpart of history but as an invaluable key to the Athenians’ mentality. Against the tendency of viewing the orators’ references to the past as empty rhetorical phrases or propagandistic cover-ups for Realpolitik, it argues that the past constituted important political capital in its own right. Integrating literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence with recent scholarship on memory, identity, rhetoric , and international relations, it contextualizes the orators’ historical allusions within the complex net of remembrances and beliefs held by the audience and thus tries to gauge their ideological and emotive power. The concept of social memory is a very useful analytical tool, since it allows viewing the manifestation and transmission of a shared image of the past as a dynamic process that leaves room for contestation, acknowledges the interdependence between ideology and social memory, and regards the past as a repository for future decision making. By examining various “carriers” of social memory, this study assesses how deeply a specific memory was rooted in Athenian historical consciousness and how persuasive it ultimately was. It explains vi • Preface common distortions in its transmission and determines the leeway orators had in departing from predominant versions. I approach these questions from two different angles. After establishing my methodological framework, I first explore thematically the different “carriers” of social memory available to the speakers and their audience and then turn to one exemplary case and examine the role of Thebes in Athenian social memory and public discourse. Historical references to Thebes cluster around four particular events: the mythical story of the burial of the fallen Argives, Thebes’ collaboration with the Persians in 480, the Theban proposal to eradicate Athens in 404, and Theban aid to the Athenian democrats in 403. Since these collective memories were frequently evoked in debates about Athenian-Theban relations, this study will also help us to better comprehend some of the policy choices both poleis made during the fourth century BC. Historical memory in ancient Greece continues to attract much scholarly attention. Since the completion of this manuscript, six important books have been published that share many of my concerns and engage with some of the same issues. In The Greeks and Their Past (Cambridge, 2010), Jonas Grethlein charts the field of literary memory in fifth-century Greece and, employing a phenomenological model that connects memory and temporality, examines the differences and communalities in the attitude toward the past in various poetic genres, oratory, and historiography. Peter Hunt’s War, Peace, and Alliance in Demosthenes’ Athens (Cambridge, 2010) uses the political speeches of the Attic orators to give us a more nuanced understanding of the complex factors that influenced Athenian foreign policy decisions. In Polis and Revolution (Cambridge, 2011), Julia Shear draws on theories of remembering and forgetting to elucidate the Athenians’ responses to the oligarchic regimes of 411 and 404/3. Die griechische Welt: Erinnerungsorte der Antike (Munich, 2010) and Griechische Heiligtümer als Erinnerungsorte (Stuttgart, 2011), edited by Elke Stein-Hölkeskamp and Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp and Matthias Haake and Michael Jung, respectively, explore the memorial functions of important physical and symbolic places in Greece as lieux de mémoire. Finally, Intentional History: Spinning Time in Ancient Greece (Stuttgart, 2010), a collection of essays edited by Lin Foxhall, Hans-Joachim Gehrke, and Nino Luraghi, studies Greek collective memory and features several papers on topics related to my monograph . Unfortunately, these studies appeared too late to be adequately taken into account in the present study. In a book on memory, I ought not to forget to acknowledge the people who helped me along the way. This project originated during my time at the University of Michigan, where Ruth Scodel and David Potter provided the best guidance...