Social Memory in Athenian Public Discourse: Uses and Meanings of the Past by Bernd Steinbock (review)

“Memory is a dynamic force. By its very nature, it is inconsistent.” This is the conclusion to Steinbock’s careful, balanced, and frequently illuminating study of Athenian social memory, and it usefully encapsulates both the value and the challenge of the project he has undertaken. To claim that individual memory is a fundamental part of human existence is uncontroversial; and it is now (in most circles) equally unproblematic to say that societies and communities also participate in some form of collective or social memory. It also seems inherently plausible that these memories will play a role in shaping the ideology and identity of both individuals and groups: that memory, in other words, is dynamic. But memory, whether individual or collective, is also both transient and elusive. Even scholars of recent or contemporary societies can struggle to find ways to isolate and describe the memories, or memory cultures, of the people(s) they study; attempting to track the shifting memories of a historic society is, obviously, a still more demanding task.

Steinbock tackles this task in a highly methodical fashion, and it is this rigour which is the key to the success of his project. His study is grounded in modern studies of social memory, from which he draws two guiding principles: namely, that “both the communicative aspect of sharing memories of the past and their social relevance for the members of the group [are] constitutive elements of the concept” (28, emphasis original). Focus on the communication of memory allows Steinbock to explore the complex problem of the relationship between individual and collective memories in a clear and rational way, and to steer a sensible route between, on the one hand, attributing to the Athenians a kind of “monolithic group mind” (13), and, on the other, assuming that individual speakers had almost complete freedom to present (or invent) their own versions of the past. The emphasis on social relevance, meanwhile, provides a coherent framework within which to track the ways in which memory shifted over time: the process, as Steinbock shows very clearly here, is not so much one of simple invention of the past but rather a constant shifting of focus, as different aspects of the past become relevant to present concerns.

The concerns—past and present—which Steinbock focuses on in this book are all connected with one theme: Athens’ relationship with the neighboring city of Thebes. The choice of Thebes is a good one, not only because the relationship is, at least on the Athenian side, relatively well-documented, but also because it was particularly volatile: at various points during the classical period, Thebes was both Athens’ most useful friend and her most bitter enemy. If the fluidity of social memory, and the ways in which that fluidity is shaped by contemporary concerns, is going to be visible anywhere in Greek history, then, it should be visible here. It is probably worth emphasizing, too, since the book’s title and subtitle do not really give this away, that this volume is also an important contribution to the study of Athenian-Theban relations: anyone interested in this aspect of Greek political history will want to read this work.

Before embarking on his sustained case-study, Steinbock provides a helpful survey of the “carriers” of social memory (chap. 1): that is, the people, places and institutions in which memories were communicated by and to Athenians. Some of what is discussed here (the theater, the public funeral, and so on) already occupy a fairly well-established position in discussions of Athenian sites of memory. Less conventional, but extremely important, is Steinbock’s emphasis on the importance of sub-polis groups as potential shapers of Athenian collective memory and his insistence on the potential role of groups which cross polis boundaries: the institutions of xenia and proxenia, he suggests, provided a mechanism by which non-Athenian views of the past might, given the...