Professor Baragwanath contributes to Christy Constantakopoulou and Maria Fragoulaki (eds) Shaping Memory in Ancient Greece: Poetry, Historiography, and Epigraphy, Histos, Online Supplement Volume 11
The Cardiff Branch of the Classical Association announces a panel discussion to celebrate the publication of the new book (Histos, Online Supplement Volume 11) Christy Constantakopoulou and Maria Fragoulaki (eds) Shaping Memory in Ancient Greece: Poetry, Historiography, and Epigraphy, which explores “aspects of the shaping (and reshaping) of collective memory in ancient Greece, viewing it as a holistic cultural phenomenon, mobile, transformative and transformable. The volume contains different types of sources, media of memory and theoretical approaches, exploring boundaries, dialogues and interactions: literary works (Homer, Pindar, Herodotus, Thucydides, and significant intertexts), oral traditions and folktale, inscriptions, material culture, funerary epigrams and statues, ethnography. Its chronological scope encompasses the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods” (M. Fragoulaki, Collective Memory in Ancient Greek Culture: Concepts, Media, and Sources, ix).
Emily Baragwanath’s contribution, History, Ethnography, and Aetiology in Herodotus’ Libyan Logos (4.145–205) (155–88), “concentrates on the close connection of ethnography and historical narrative in Herodotus’ Histories, showing the deep embeddedness of the Libyan logos in the Histories (4.145-205) and the section’s contribution to Herodotus’ probing of cause and responsibility. Discussion of related concepts, such as blame, vengeance, justice, punishment, and gender norms offer further opportunities to observe Herodotus’ interaction with the world of the epic and his work’s dialogic and culturally relativistic program by challenging the opposition between ‘Greeks’ and ‘barbarians’. Ethnography as a tool of historical explanation is shown to be a major means by which Herodotus embeds his work in Greek cultural memory.” (M. Fragoulaki, Introduction: Collective Memory in Ancient Greek Culture: Concepts, Media, and Sources, xxxix).