Commemoration Embodied

Abstract

Chapter 5 homes in on the honorific statue and examines the attitudes of Greeks in the Roman empire to its commemorative capacity. Expressly designed as a commemorative artefact and embedded within civic social praxis, a statue should be a desirable honour. This chapter argues, however, that imperial Greek literature and aspects of how statues are deployed in reality instead cast honorific statues as deficient honours and ultimately unsuitable for personal commemorative ambition. The chapter begins by establishing the place of statue honours in the Roman empire and their perceived commemorative limitations. It then turns to examine several literary and material strategies employed by imperial Greeks that are designed to counter these disadvantages. Topics covered in detail include how statue programmes on monuments are used to amplify commemorative claims; how texts are used to create tailored, imaginary, and inviolable spaces of honour for individual statues; how the replication of private portrait types can extend a carefully crafted reputation to a broader audience; and how literature can remove the limitations of the honorific statue by animating it and instilling personality. Herodes Attikos again forms the focus of material discussion, but the texts are drawn from a much broader field, including Favorinus, Apuleius, Aelius Aristeides, Polemon, Philostratos, Arrian, and Dio Chrysostom.