Prospective Memory in Ancient Rome: Constructing the Future Through Text and Material Culture

This paper focuses on the materiality and iconography of late fourth century cut and incised gold glass to explore how the strategic recontextualization of these objects impacted their function as carriers of meaning by prompting contemplation of the future and bringing the past into the present. More than five-hundred examples of gold glass survive, with approximately eighty-five percent bearing biblical scenes, portraits of individuals, or portraits of saints within an image field delineated by a decorative round or polygonal border.

The afterlives of ancient objects have fascinated scholars, promising to offer a view into how later generations interacted with the past by manipulating statues and monuments after their initial dedication. Although statues and monuments have drawn the most attention (e.g., Brilliant and Kinney; Swetnam-Burland; Kousser), scholars are increasingly exploring the afterlives of votive offerings in antiquity, such as objects’ complex impacts on people’s experiences in sanctuaries after the objects have been deposited (Rieger).

This paper investigates the phenomenon and implications of secondary intervention, such as recarving and reinscribing, to Roman-period public sculpture by applying the concept of predictive processing to ancient evidence of reworking. Whether it is characterized as recycling or damnatio memoriae, reworking was a common occurrence throughout the entire Roman imperial period (Ng and Swetnam-Burland). The historiography of alteration often highlights that the practice engenders comparative evaluations based on preexisting associations.

The Ludi Saeculares have long been viewed as a key symbolic moment in the reign of Augustus. Following the significant experimentation in many areas of political, social and cultural life in Rome, in particular the passage of the lex Julia de maritandis ordinibus in 18 BCE, the Games have often been considered to mark a transition to a period of consolidation.

In Tacitus’ Annals, Germanicus’ death and the Romans’ reactions cast his loss as an event to be interpreted based on past memories as well as a template for future commemorations. The idea of prospective memory, described by Schacter as “remembering to do things in the future” (51), shows how Tacitus’ narrative emphasizes the struggle to remember not just what to do, but how to do it.

In The Roman Triumph, Mary Beard takes to task “modern historians of the triumph (and of other ancient parades and processions) [who] have erred on the side of credulity,” when assessing the reliability of ancient sources (Beard, 168). In particular, Beard scolds E. E. Rice for her supposedly gullible defense of Callixeinos of Rhodes’ second-century BCE description of an over-the-top procession of Ptolemy Philadelphos (early third century BCE)—now a “fragment” in Atheneaus’ Deipnosophistae (late second century CE) (Beard, 365 n. 57; and Ath. 5.197C–203B).