The use of the term ―remembrance‖ in the Greco-Roman world echoes different rhythms from that of the ancient Near East and Mesopotamia. In the Greco-Roman world, the term is synonymous with cognitive meaning. According to Richard Sorabji (1972:5), Plato believes that memory is ―an art of imprint‖, which is similar to the formation of a mental picture. The Platonic school has always made people to believe that memory ―involves a mental or physical image‖. Aristotle on the other hand, believes that memory pertains to the past and not to the present (Aristotle, Dem. 449b:4), since the present cannot be remembered. Therefore for the past or an object to be remembered there must be a thinking process that takes place within the human faculty (Aristotle, Dem. 450:1-7). The same idea might have infiltrated the Greco-Roman world during the period in question. This is due to the fact that the duo (Plato and Aristotle) influenced the thinking of their world greatly.
31 Price believes that the act of remembering in Israel during the intertestamental period was strongly dependent
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The Greco-Roman world used art as a means whereby an individual is kept alive in the memory of the living. Sometimes the writing of a will was pertinent so as to remind the reader of the need to do a specific event in honour of the patron. Patronage32 was one of the acts that called for remembrance in the Greco-Roman world. Remembrance was done through reflection, by mental articulations. In his De Memoria, 450a
, Aristotle uses a metaphor of a seal-ring to illustrate his theory of mental impression, an internal expression of an external command; the external command has the object of impression which is the seal- ring.33
The literature of the Greco-Roman world are vivid in demonstrating the way in which remembrance was used, apart from that of Plato and Aristotle. Elogia34 was one of the means
by which the Greco-Roman world kept their memory alive. It was an inscription that meant to commemorate and preserve the memories of their heroes and heroines in order to foster them to posterity (Barton, 2004:323). While those who did not deserve their memory to be preserved, were mutilated and destroyed from any known inscriptions. This process of destroying or mutilating these images was known as damnatio memoriae (Barton, 2004:323). One of the oldest examples of commemoration in Greco-Roman society is found in the writing of Caesar Augustus in Res Gestae Divi Augusti:
In my sixth and seventh consulships, after I had extinguished civil wars, and at a time when with universal consent I was in complete control of affairs, I transferred the republic from my power to domination of the senate and the people of Rome. For this service of mine I was named Augustus by the decree of the senate, and the door-post of my house was publicly wreathed with bay leaves and a civic crown was fixed over my door and a golden shield was set in the Curia Julia, which, as attested by the inscription thereon, was given me by the senate and the people of Rome on account of my courage, clemency, justice and piety. After this time I excelled all in affluence, although I possessed no more official power than others who were my colleagues in the several magistracies. In my thirteenth consulship the senate, the equestrian order and the whole people of Rome gave me the title of Father of my Country, and
32 Due to the importance remembrance played during the Greco-Roman world in the understanding of memorial,
the work will focus on it in Chapter four.
33 Aristotle‘s idea of memorial is more psychological than sociological.
34 A succinct example of this is the work on Caesar Augustus, Res Gestae Divi Augusti: the achievement of
Divine Augustus edited by P.A. Brunt & J.M. Moore (1967). Elogia could be authored either by the person
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resolved that this should be inscribed in the porch of my house and in the Curia Julia and in the Forum Augustum below the chariot which had been set there in my honour by the decree of the senate. At the time of writing I am in my seventy-sixth year (Brunt and Moore, eds. 1967:35-36).
The achievement of Augustus seemed to have motivated the senate to grant and honour him with a written inscription on a bronze tablet which was set up in front of his mausoleum. Copies of this inscription were later found in both Latin and Greek, in what was then known as Galatia. The Greco-Roman world had a way of commemorating and preserving memorial for posterity. Such memorials were written in documents as eulogia. The purpose was to preserve the remembrance of great achievers for coming generations. Thus, there is no doubt that remembrance played an important role in classical antiquity. Men and women who wanted to be remembered by posterity expended much time and wealth in order to preserve remembrance in their honour, even beyond death. Sometimes, festivals were done in their remembrance (Barton, 2004:324).
As earlier noted in this study, while other people‘s memories were honoured and preserved, some were mutilated and destroyed; the reason was to erase their remembrance from the minds of the people and even from his or her posterity. With regards to this Eric R. Verner (2001:41) points out that,
When an emperor was overthrown or an individual was accused of maiestas or perduellio there were many humous sanctions available. Names and titles could be expurgated from official lists (fasti) and commemorative inscriptions; wax masks (imagines) representing the condemned could be banned from public display at aristocratic funerals, books authored by the condemned could be confiscated and destroyed … disfigured, destroyed, and reconfigured.
The damnatio memoriae was done by the recommendation of the emperor, senate or the army. Verner mentions in his work that not less than twenty-four women suffered such condemnation in the empire. The reason for doing this could be that they wanted to suppress and silence the voice of womanhood in the Greco-Roman world. For instance, there were cases in which ―the memories of two empresses, Melonia Caesonia and Poppae Sabina were condemned in conjunction with their husband‖ (Verner, 2001:44). Many cases of such
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mutilations and condemnations are mentioned by Verner which of course are beyond the scope of this work.
The examination of remembrance in Greco-Roman world discloses a mental, psychical or physical phenomenon, a concept that is rarely found in the Old Testament. The obscurity of this concept in the Old Testament could be that the Old Testament emphasises the cultic aspect over and above that of remembering as a mental process. However, in spite of their differences, one could easily see many similarities between that of Israel and Greco-Roman acts of remembrance. The investigation shows that both have links in the interpretation of the past and involve sociological processes. In other words, all tied remembrance to the power that cements relationships with the past, thereby creating a predictable outcome and a point of departure for the future.