All the critical twiddle-twaddle about style and form, all this pseudo-scientific classifying and analysing of books in an imitation-botanical fashion, is mere impertinence and mostly dull jargon.’ The first thing to say is that Lawrence’s protest deserves honest respect. If one had to make an exclusive choice between that version of ’criticism’ which confines itself to the technical and the typical, and a kind that sees as its task assessment of particulars unfettered by reference, even, to types and to any sort of technical consideration: if one must choose, one must choose the latter. Comparative inarticulacy is preferable to a decreative sophistication. And the second thing to say is that we need not make such a choice. Our ability to confront literature fruitfully - to be creative - requires articulacy; and true articulacy requires the direction of the recreative mind. But must articulacy imply classification and analysis?

Inasmuch as all imagery embodies the temporary displacement of the terminology ’at issue’ in favour of ’extraneous’ terminology, all imagery embodies a deviation from the terminological norm, albeit a familiar kind of deviation. Metaphor alone has the distinction of achieving this deviation through a simultaneous departure from the normal usage of the language as a whole. This, as is well known, is precisely what the so-called ’dead’ or ’faded’ or ’linguistic’ metaphor does not do. Tree in a family tree, for instance, is a ’dead metaphor’ and involves no departure from normal usage.

Political monuments are characterized by visual materiality that allows for and indeed invites engagement; the claim for permanence; and the force of visual presence. Caesar’s monuments, especially on the Capitol, signalled a decidedly new quality of presence irreconcilable with the fine balance of individual achievement and public recognition. The rules behind this balance were flexible, but collective consensus always retained the upper hand. The balance tipped only with Pompey’s enormous theatre complex on the Campus Martius. The complex created a new type of public space, and it set the precedent for Caesar, who took on the challenge of competition with his own Forum project. Such an omnipresent dynamic of increase provoked heavy polemics and fierce conflict, but this violence was not only tolerated but reckoned with as a possibility from the very start. It appeared more appropriate to accept repeated violation of tradition while still affirming it than to develop a fundamentally different, new ‘system’ of norms and behaviours. The mode of permanent transgression was indicative not only of a political culture in crisis but also of a culture of crisis.

Our study has concentrated on the explicit attempts by the ancient historians to convince the reader of their authority to narrate deeds, and to portray themselves as believable narrators of those deeds. We have seen how the dictates of ancient literary criticism enjoined authors to work within a tradition, and to show their innovation within that tradition. As certain historians became accepted models for imitation, their concerns and approach dictated for those who followed the proper way to write history. As the earlier historians were ’authoritative’, so their followers sought to imitate the manner by which those predecessors had constructed their own authority. It was in this way that authority and tradition were closely related, and so long as the belief in imitation held sway, there could be no authority outside of tradition.

The Roman senatorial elite laid claim to all roles of prominence in society. The very notion of nobilitas made prominence an all-inclusive virtue, in office-holding as much as in other public arenas. Indeed, scrutinizing an inherent tension between annual roles as embodied by the honores and more durable, sometimes life long, roles of prominence, Hans Beck argues that the aristocracy’s integrated claim to leadership wielded significant stabilizing impact upon Roman society. L. Quinctius Flamininus was expelled from the senate in 184 BCE but maintained his other social rules, his public standing, and his overall notability. In the century and a half that followed, Beck detects a gradual erosion of inclusive ideals of prominence. The crisis of the Republic is thus understood as a disintegration of social roles. In the era of the great extraordinary commands, the performance of prestige duties of the collective became less and less important. Augustus’ ostentatious unification of these under his watchful guard as princeps propelled a change in role behaviour that could easily be portrayed as a restitution of the Republican outlook.

This book is a study of the explicit attempts by the ancient Greek and Roman historians to claim the authority to narrate the deeds encompassed in their works. The term ’authority’ has many meanings over a range of disciplines, but in this book it is used to refer to literary authority, the rhetorical means by which the ancient historian claims the competence to narrate and explain the past, and simultaneously constructs a persona that the audience will find persuasive and believable. The work is thus a study of certain forms and conventions of persuasion employed by the historians. No attempt is made to evaluate the truth or falsity of historians’ claims; rather, I try to set out the various claims which are part of the construction of the author’s historiographical persona; to see how and why these claims are made; to explain how the tradition of such claims developed; and to show how the tradition moulded the way in which writers claimed historiographical authority.

Most of the ancient historians give some indication to their audience why they embarked upon writing their history. These remarks sometimes concern themselves with the unique nature of the historian’s subject matter; in addition to the greatness of the deeds, historians will frequently explain other circumstances that led them to the composition of their histories. There is, in general, a tendency as time goes on for authors, while not abandoning the magnification of their theme, to present a more ’personal’ call to history, that is, to say something of themselves and the personal experiences that underlay their writing of history.

Martin Jehne looks at the Roman comitia through the lens of their rich symbolism. Set in a demarcated space and sanctioned by the auspices of the gods, the popular assemblies were, in general, integrative: they symbolized the belonging of the citizens to the community as a whole. But the assemblies (comitia centuriata, comitia tributa, and comitia curiata) were far from uniform. Each one, argues Jehne, wielded a different type of integrative force upon its participants. The centuriate assembly emphasized hierarchy and vertical integration; the tribal assemblies had an essentially egalitarian structure. In light of a rapidly expanding body of citizens, the integrating capacities of the popular assemblies ought to have shrunk. Creating a climate of consensus and communality, those capacities were preserved in the assemblies’ roles as referential quantities that embodied ideas of hierarchy and equality vital to the libera res publica.

Monuments hold a special significance for the shaping and the perpetuation of historical memory. The past is discussed in terms of the conceptual, idealized past of public monuments; the local past of ancient sites from the early days of the community; the genealogical past of homes and tombs; and the unifying past of historiography. Noting that the historical memory of the Romans will only transpire if these different forms of memory are synthesized, each one with due recognition to the institutions and situations in which memory were deployed, Tonio Hölscher argues for a certain hierarchy: prioritization of material expressions of the past leads him to regard Roman historiography as an offshoot of historical memory with limited social impact; monuments, on the other hand, powerful and with vast visibility in the centre of the city, wield inescapable impact upon Roman society. The essay concludes with Hölscher expressing his opinion on the place and design of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, the planning of which had become the focus of a major public debate in Germany at the time.