[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
Over the last decade, classical antiquity has gained renewed cultural visibility. From myth-retelling novels crowding bookstore tables to the algorithmic spread of “dark academia” online, antiquity has reemerged across literary and digital culture with an undeniable force, appearing as readily in curated displays as in the recommendation loops of social media platforms. It is difficult to dismiss this resurgence as merely a passing trend or as a fleeting aesthetic, given its seemingly enduring appeal among young people, for whom antiquity often functions simultaneously as intellectual aspiration and aesthetic identity. Performativity aside, the persistence of classical narratives in these spaces suggests not merely superficial engagement but an ongoing investment in the stories through which modern audiences negotiate identity, history, and cultural inheritance. The essays in Memories of Antiquity: Classical Reception and Memory Studies, edited by Madeleine Scherer, Jakob Schneider, and Benjamin Eldon Stevens, take this resurgence seriously, refusing to treat it as merely incidental or superficial. Instead, they approach antiquity as what the editors call a set of “undeniably popular and profitable memories,” asking how precisely such memories are produced, mediated, and received across print, visual, and digital cultures (1).
Central to Memories of Antiquity is a set of methodological questions about the relationship between reception and memory. If memory (whether it be individual or collective) constitutes an active engagement with the past, what happens when classical references pass unnoticed? In other words, can antiquity still function as cultural memory without conscious recognition? By treating the history of classical reception as a form of cultural mnemohistory concerned with the construction and transmission of narratives over time, the collection ultimately asks readers to reconsider how and why the classical past persists within contemporary culture—not simply as an inherited tradition, but as an evolving process through which modernity continues to narrate and understand itself. As the editors suggest, “in recent and contemporary media landscapes, ancient myths have become a familiar and comfortable network of references whose adaptation continues to provide an opportunity for modernity to define itself via its ‘remembered’ pasts” (13-14). This statement succinctly captures the volume’s concern with the relationship between antiquity and modernity.
Memories of Antiquity is organized into three sections that move broadly from textual engagements with the past to visual culture and, finally, to contemporary popular media. Part I, “Written Engagements with Antiquity,” is the most expansive, bringing together studies of scribal memory, early medieval Iberian narratives of Roman emperors, the reception of Thebes in medieval French texts, and the reimagining of Stonehenge and druidic sacrifice in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century fiction. Part II, “Deconstructing the Image of Antiquity,” pairs an essay on Homeric reception, homoeroticism, and the photography of the German photographer Wilhelm von Gloeden with a study of the deployment of classical statuary in medical textbooks. Part III, “Remembering Antiquity in Contemporary Popular Culture,” shifts to explicitly modern media, with essays on the afterlives of Gladiator in relation to nostalgia and Lost Cause ideology in the U.S. South, and on the adaptation of Atlantis in the Friends at the Table Divine Cycle podcast. While this tripartite structure suggests a gradual movement toward the present, the relative brevity of the final section sits somewhat at odds with the volume’s introduction, which foregrounds contemporary and digital engagements as a central concern. Nonetheless, the collection’s organization highlights the persistence of classical memory across disparate media and historical moments in the Western world, inviting readers to trace adaptation, continuity, and transformation in its reception.
The essays in Part I, “Written Engagements with Antiquity,” foreground the role of textual transmission in shaping cultural memory, emphasizing its continual reinterpretation across both premodern and modern contexts. Raymond F. Person Jr.’s discussion of scribal practice underscores this instability at the material level, arguing that “every manuscript can only partially represent the literary text that is contained in the collective scribal memory,” such that omissions and variations emerge not necessarily from ideological intervention but from the contingencies of transmission itself (33). In Jorge Elices Ocón’s study of early medieval Iberia, pre-Islamic Roman imperial memory is co-constructed through competing and overlapping Christian, Muslim, and Jewish historiographical traditions that mobilize antiquity to construct or reinforce political and religious legitimacy. Catherine Gaullier-Bougassas likewise emphasizes the “plasticity of memory” in her analysis of medieval French engagements with Thebes, tracing how the “mutations of memory…accompany a process of continuous reinterpretation” (71). Further, she eloquently captures the essence of the collection in ways that transcend a fourteenth-century French context: “This chain of receptions is a chain of memories, each of which seeks to assert itself in relation to the inherited memory, reinforcing it or contesting it” (71). The section concludes with an examination of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century attitudes toward Stonehenge, where Thomas Hardy and Mona Caird drew on Romantic-era myths of ancient druidic sacrifice to engage an already circulating yet historically dubious cultural memory whose deliberate anachronisms ultimately function as appeals to readerly empathy. This section demonstrates that textual engagements with antiquity are never passive but rather invite an active and often self-conscious process of remembering that reshapes the past to meet the interpretive demands of the present.
Part II, “Deconstructing the Image of Antiquity,” shifts from textual transmission to visual culture, foregrounding how understandings of the body are mediated through memories of antiquity. Nikolai Endres’s essay on the photography of Wilhelm von Gloeden is especially compelling in its reading of Gloeden’s images of Sicilian youths as a form of Homeric remembrance that complicates traditional genealogies of classical reception. Rather than presenting Homeric antiquity as a world of idealized beauty and perfection, Gloeden’s photographs recover a more unstable vision of Homer’s world—one defined by hardship, displacement, and longing—while also challenging modern associations between classical aesthetics, whiteness, and bodily ideals. Endres’s essay ultimately reveals photography as a medium through which different historical moments can enter into a productive and provocative conversation. Zoe Copeman’s contribution likewise examines the lasting influence of antiquity on visual culture, focusing on the use of Greco-Roman statuary as a model for the ideal body in nineteenth- and twentieth-century medical illustration. By tracing how figures such as the Venus de’ Medici and Venus de Milo came to serve as “standards of wellness,” Copeman demonstrates how classical forms became a cultural vocabulary through which ideas about the healthy female body were constructed and reinforced (123).
Part III, “Remembering Antiquity in Contemporary Popular Culture,” turns most directly to the concerns outlined in the volume’s introduction, examining how classical memory circulates within contemporary popular media. Jaclyn Neel’s essay on Gladiator (2000) and 300 (2006) offers the section’s most compelling contribution, tracing how the film’s depiction of slavery draws on, and ultimately reinforces, cultural memories of the antebellum U.S. South. Neel demonstrates that such representations operate as “remembered palimpsests,” in which these films draw on the imagery and narrative logic of Gone with the Wind (1939) to produce what she describes as a transhistorical “plantation schema” (147; 159). In doing so, they reframe ancient slavery through the nostalgic lens of the Lost Cause, idealizing past societies while obscuring their violence. Particularly effective is her insistence that even ostensibly liberal cultural productions can perpetuate conservative narratives, making the essay both analytically rigorous and pedagogically valuable. By contrast, Alex Claman’s study of Atlantean resonance in the Friends at the Table Divine Cycle podcast shifts the discussion from film studies to game studies, emphasizing the adaptability of the Atlantis myth across a wide range of cultural forms. Claman’s characterization of Atlantis as a “patchwork gestalt” assembled from successive reinterpretations offers a useful framework for understanding the myth’s persistence, though the essay’s narrow focus on the broadcast of tabletop role playing games may limit its broader applicability (167). Overall, these essays point to the continuing relevance of classical reception in contemporary media, even if the section’s brevity leaves some of the volume’s most promising lines of inquiry only partially developed.
Memories of Antiquity offers a thoughtful contribution to classical reception and memory studies. Each section yields incisive case studies, many of which open productive avenues for further research, including how such frameworks and examples might be leveraged in a classroom setting. At the same time, its compact scope—particularly in its treatment of contemporary media and popular culture—leaves some of the introduction’s most compelling ideas feeling underdeveloped. One is left wanting not only additional case studies, but also a more sustained engagement with the pedagogical implications of this work, especially given how readily several of the essays lend themselves to classroom use. Even so, the collection succeeds in demonstrating the critical value of approaching classical reception through the lens of memory and provides a useful jumping off point for future work in this area.
Authors and titles
“Introduction” — Madeleine Scherer, Benjamin Eldon Stevens, and Jacob Schneider
Part I | Written Engagements with Antiquity
- “Embodiment and Epistemics in the Composition/Transmission of Ancient Texts” — Raymond F. Person, Jr.
- “Intertwined Memories of Roman Emperors in Early Medieval Iberia” — Jorge Elices Ocón
- “Remembering the Founding of Thebes in French Medieval Texts from the Roman de Thèbes to the Ovide moralisé (Twelfth-Early Fourteenth Century) — Catherine Gaullier-Bougassas
- “The ‘Stones of Sacrifice’ as a Literary Trope in the Works of Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) and Mona Caird (1854-1932)” — Akemi Yoshida
Part II | Deconstructing the Image of Antiquity
- “Homer, Homoeroticism, Homecoming: Memories of Antiquity in the Photography of the Baron von Gloeden” — Nikolai Endres
- “Memories of Whiteness: Classical Statuary and the New Medical Norm” — Zoe Copeman
Part III | Remembering Antiquity in Contemporary Popular Culture
- “The Spaniard and the South: Lost Causes and Nostalgia in Gladiator (2000)” — Jaclyn Neel
- “Imagining a Greco-Roman Empire in Space: Atlantean Resonances in Friends at the Table’s Divine Cycle” — Alex Claman