23. Roman Imperial pasts

Time, calendars and memory have been exciting topics in recent scholarship on Rome, but most treatments have either remained focused on the metropolis or characterized ‘Roman time’ as strongly interventionist. I consider the writing and commemoration of pasts as a broad phenomenon within cultures of the Roman empire, and examine some of the assumptions that lie behind these characterizations. How clear-cut are boundaries between ‘local’ and ‘Roman’ histories? Who has a stake in ‘Roman’ history, and to whom does ‘Roman’ history belong? How significant is the fact of Roman domination for the ways in which peoples conceptualize their past? Is there a division between ‘east’ and ‘west’ in patterns of ‘remembering’ or ‘forgetting’ pre-Roman pasts? The empire-wide study of ‘local’ and ‘Roman’ pasts suggests features specific to the Roman imperial experience. Recent scholarship on south Asia would characterize the interface between British and local histories as creative as well as destructive. What we do not see, however, is anything closely comparable to Roman subjects writing comprehensive histories of a Roman centre.