Constituting the past - forming the present: The role of material culture in the Augustan period

Abstract

How did citizens of Augustan Rome perceive their material surroundings? To what extent did architecture, Republican and Greek statues, coins, gems, and even Greek vases constitute the ‘past’ for them, and to what extent were these part of the ‘present’ experienced in their current environment? Such questions have a special relevance in a context marked both politically by a conceptual culture of remembrance (renovatio) and culturally by a significant Greek influence. The treatment of material culture permits one view of the complex relationship between a society and its past. At the same time, this perception of the ‘Dingwelt’ is closely connected to the present: the context of reception, the content, the form and style of objects, their value and age, as well as the viewer's individual interpretation are superimposed on the ‘value of remembrance’ of material culture and are simultaneously permeated by it. Cultural goods therefore acquire a special importance from the fact that they are present within many different chronological horizons: they form the culture of the present. Their persistence not only allows the reconstruction of the past, but also constitutes contents and values for the future.