ABSTRACT
Over the last two millennia, ‘Rome’ has been perceived as a heritage by many societies around the globe, and it still plays an important role in our 21st-century world, also in the Netherlands. Consequently, strong (ideological) value judgements on the Romans always seem to play an important role in their interpretation. This chapter argues that ‘doing Roman archaeology and history’ is a form of remembering, mnemohistory, as well, and that scholars should be more aware of that. Two different cases pertaining to the mnemohistory of ‘Rome’ in the Netherlands are analysed to that end: the way in which ‘the Roman Netherlands’ are presented in the 2022 documentary series The story of the Netherlands (and, in relation to that, on 20th-century wall charts); and the ideas schoolchildren visiting the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden (RMO) have about Romans and the Roman Empire. It will be concluded that we should try and stop constructing Rome as either a positive or a negative anchor for our own society. The development of a “relational mnemohistory” concerning ‘Rome’ might be a way to do so.
