ABSTRACT
In late antique Rome, restoring significant public buildings necessitated strategic choices to maintain favoured memories from the city's past while relegating discredited events to oblivion. Guarding against unnecessary erasure of honoured memories caused by time's passage, inscriptions placed either on restored buildings or carved into nearby statue plinths documented the history of notable patrons who supported the repairs. By late antiquity, Rome's accumulation of inscriptions over time created a notional community of those honoured in the public texts that synchronized individuals from different eras. In other words, architectural restoration built up an imaginary society that allowed each generation of aristocrats to revive the memories of esteemed predecessors. Without mentioning the earlier conflict over paganism, Cassiodorus Senator focused on the secular roles of exhibitions, claiming that Rome had 'an artificial population of statues almost equal to its natural one'. Rooting architectural designs firmly in the past and fostering preservation was good public policy, since sponsorship of buildings clearly established political legitimacy.
