This chapter surveys the organization of the east Roman military from the failure of Julian’s Persian expedition to the death of Theodosius I in 395. It demonstrates that there is no evidence to support the emergence of the Notitia system during this period and, in fact, positive evidence indicating that the Roman military continued to operate in its fourth-century configuration, with a central reserve army, the comitatus, commanded by a magister equitum and magister peditum, while smaller regional commands were managed by local limitanei or, in exceptional cases, a comes rei militaris. The sole exception was the magister militum per Orientem, the chief general on the eastern frontier, whose office went from an ad hoc appointment to a formally constituted command during this period.

This chapter traces the gradual unwinding of the Notitia system in response to the shifting strategic needs of the east Roman empire. Anastasius began the process by deploying the praesental armies to the east, first against the Isaurians and then against the Persians, but it was Justinian who fully dismantled them. Beginning with his creation of a new military command for Armenia and continuing through the establishment of a standing field army for North Africa and Italy, Justinain cannibalized the praesental armies and dispersed the striking power of the armies of Oriens, Thrace, and Illyricum. The consequences of Justinian’s decisions were keenly felt by his successors who struggled to defend the empire against escalating threats in the Balkans and the east. By the time Herakleios came to the throne, the Romans could barely muster three field armies, those for Thrace, Armenia, and Oriens, and it was these depleted armies that Herakleios used to defeat Persia and lay the basis for the thematic armies of Byzantium.

This chapter explores the mediation of experience in Middle Republican Rome. Mediation ‘facilitates the externalization of memories we produce in our minds … [and] through the internalization of mediated memories … we participate in collective memory’.1 In what follows, I will suggest that the First Punic War was the first event in Roman history to be mediated in certain ways that held the real potential to transmute lived experience and personal recollection, supplementing them, or even replacing them, with a different set of narratives that emerged from innovations in Roman artistic production. In Rome in the late third and early second centuries BC, especially in the years after Rome’s first war with Carthage, we encounter the first time that memories of conflict were tied to Latin poetry and public narrative art. Accordingly, this chapter will track the impact that these new memorial media made on Rome’s cultures of memory.2

In the early first century AD, the democratic institutions of Athens dedicated an honorary statue to the Roman senator Lucius Cassius Longinus.1 In the process, they re-used a monument consisting of a bronze statue and a marble base from the Classical period.2 Elsewhere, I have investigated why Athenians rededicated such old statues to Roman senators in this period. I have shown that old statues, that is statues from the Classical (and Hellenistic) period, were particularly suitable honours for Roman benefactors because of their shape and the cultural memory attached to them. I have detailed the manner in which they were employed as a political strategy both to engage powerful Romans and to manoeuvre them into a position of patronage and support for the city.

his chapter will discuss some of the ways that recent scholarship on cultural memory has contributed to thinking about the role of exempla in Roman culture, and particularly to the development of the idea of the ‘site of exemplarity’.1 It will also suggest how insights found in this scholarship might sharpen our appreciation of some of the challenges that face modern scholars who are studying cultural memory in antiquity, especially when it comes to the Roman republic from which so little written testimony survives. These themes will be focused through the discussion of the somewhat obscure case of Vibellius Taurea, a bold native of the city of Capua who clashed with the Romans during the Second Punic War.

While researching the significance of the various ways in which Latin speakers interpreted the phenomenon of grammatical gender, I spent a substantial amount of time examining ancient Roman scholars, in particular the Latin grammarians.1 Even a cursory reading of the accounts that these scholars have compiled about the masculine, feminine, and neuter soon reveals how they credit different poets with varying degrees of authority in the use and treatment of grammatical gender, even when that treatment may seem inconsequential to modern eyes. As one might expect, the grammarians regularly consider Vergil’s linguistic finesse indisputable, whereas they deem other poets, Lucan for example, to possess ‘lesser authority’ (minor … auctoritas).2 Evaluative remarks such as these prompted me to wonder what characteristics were thought to constitute the ‘poetic authority’ that informed scholars from antiquity in the evaluation and ranking of poets and whether these criteria affected the ways in which poetry was read and evaluated by ancient readers other than grammarians and other scholars.

Roman comedies transcend the isolated pockets of time in which they are set. Their characters have histories, and their plots are influenced by past events. The audience peers into these with voyeuristic curiosity, as does Periphanes, the senex (‘old man’) of Plautus’ Epidicus: ‘It would be good if people had mirrors … they could then think about how they lived their lives long ago in their youth’ (Plaut. Ep. 382–7). The suspense of comedy lies, however, in the vagueness of these very histories; if the figures of the Epidicus had truly possessed ‘mirrors’, Periphanes would have instantly recognised the slave-musician Telestis as his daughter and there would be no narrative to speak of. The complex relationship which comedy holds with its pasts is therefore advantageous to the audience, who derive no little laughter from watching comic characters grapple with their histories.

The power of place to stir memory was well-known in antiquity, and is exemplified by a speech Cicero places in the mouth of Piso in de Finibus (On Ends). Piso reflects on the Athenian cityscape, and remarks on the capacity of places and the memory associated with them to stir emotion even more strongly than hearing or reading.1 Accordingly, the role of monuments and buildings in Republican memory has been the focus of a good deal of recent scholarship.2 Nor was the mnemonic potential of buildings lost on the princeps himself: as recent work by Eric Orlin and others has shown, architecture played an important role in the Augustan regime, shaping memories of recent events, and stimulating remembrance of a more distant past.3 Examples include the temple of Apollo on the Palatine and the new constructions on the Capitoline (treated elsewhere in this volume), as well as the Forum Augustum, with its statues of Republican notables (the summi viri) evoking a particular model of Roman history.

The early history of Rome has long been subjected to various forms of criticism. I am told that public-school boys in the United Kingdom used to read whole books of Livy’s history, which they (in turn) were told was the work of his imagination, and this view has become a communicative memory still propagated by many historians. This unstable construct began to shake under the weight of Ogilvie’s voluminous commentary (and its continuation by Oakley).1 A serious modern reconsideration began with Tim Cornell’s monograph The Beginnings of Rome in which he argued for the internal consistency of the traditions on early Rome.2 Cornell made the case that the main body of narrative is likely to go back a long way and shows a structure that could not simply be invented by historians of the late Republic and early Principate. Given that Roman historiography started only in the second half of the third century BC, there is a gap of several centuries between this and the regal period (traditionally dated 753–509 BC).3 Accordingly, if there was any earlier material, it must have been transmitted by means other than formal historiography, and oral tradition seems like the obvious candidate.

This is a tale of two Catos, the real-life man and the legend. The difference can be helpfully illuminated through two stories. Our first opens on 5 December 63 BC in Rome at the Temple of Concord where an important meeting of the Senate has been debating the fate of the Catilinarian conspirators.1 Should they face exile or death? Decimus Junius Silanus, the consul-elect for the following year, proposes execution and many others in the Senate agree. But Gaius Julius Caesar, the praetor-elect and new pontifex maximus, steps forth and makes a stirring speech against the death penalty, arguing instead for exile. The Senate is momentarily persuaded, but then something remarkable happens: Marcus Porcius Cato, only thirty-two years old and the tribune-elect, stands up and delivers a passionate, uncompromising speech against Caesar’s motion, articulating the need for decisive action to deter future treason. His speech sways his fellow senators back to a vote for execution of the conspirators. Everyone present takes note, for a new senatorial star is on the rise.

This chapter demonstrates that all of the available evidence indicates that the Notitia system was rapidly put into place in the 440s, likely in response to the invasions of Attila the Hun on the Danubian border. Although designed to face down the threat of the Huns, the system continued to operate as the collapse of Attila’s kingdom put increasing pressure on the eastern empire, in particular in the form of Theoderic Strabo and Theoderic the Amal, two Gothic warlords who repeatedly ravaged the Balkans and assaulted Constantinople during this period. Placed in its proper context, many central features of the Notitia system become intelligible, in particular its strong Balkan focus and the function of the praesental armies, which were used as reserve forces.

This chapter looks at specific evidence of political violence and massacres during the medieval Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526), for most of which period roughly the whole of the Indian Subcontinent was ruled from Delhi by powerful Sultans with Turkish antecedents and exposure to Persianate political culture of Central Asia and Iran. In view of the abundant material in contemporary sources, the focus is on genocidal massacres under three most despotic rulers who brooked no criticism, resistance or protest against their rule, which tended to be arbitrary and in complete disregard of existing conventions of politics and governance. They were Sultan Ghiyas-ud-Din Balban (ruled 1266-86), Sultan Ala-ud-Din Khalji (ruled 1296-1316), and Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq (ruled 1325-51). Historian Ziya-ud-Din Barani’s mid-14th century discussion of their reigns show not only that opponents resisting their conquests or regimes were brutally killed in large numbers during armed combat, but also that many of those captured alive were later massacred in cold blood. The women and children of soldiers from the other camp were not only imprisoned and enslaved, but also bodily harmed, often killed; women were also raped as punishment for alleged crimes of their male relatives.