ABSTRACT
Marc Angenot, an architect of contemporary discourse studies, calls himself “a memorialist, not a historian” (Barsky and Angenot 2004: 190). He prefers the title memorialist because, he explains, historiography tends to generate narratives that point toward a meaningful future. Angenot declines a role that suggests an intention to project answers for the future, but as a memorialist, he can look back on moments in history when groups of people “have been in the same position we are now, trying to make sense of a world” (Barsky and Angenot 2004: 190). In this study of the early Roman imperial period, I too consider myself a memorialist, looking back at a historical moment with similarities to our own. For all the many differences, the early centuries CE seem to offer a moment comparable to our contemporary situation. As we find ourselves attempting to adjust to new universalizing schemes of culture and power, to “globalization,” we share the position of Roman subjects as they learned to accommodate themselves to a new, larger world of empire. They also had to adjust to larger frames of reference and more extensive networks of relationships, and hone new identities and self-understandings suitable for amore expansive social, cultural, and political world.
