D’un Polybe à l’autre: statuaire honorifique et mémoire des ancêtres dans le monde grec d’époque impériale

Abstract

This article proposes a reflection on the way in which the memory of great historical figures from the Greek past could be used in the honorific inscriptions from the imperial period – either in order to legitimise the social order or to affirm one’s identity. The study takes its starting point from two statue bases in honour of T. Flavius Polybios, erected in the 2nd century AD at Olympia by his mother city Messene and the Achaian κοινόν. Not only was a dedication engraved for the honorandus, but also an epigram composed in honour of the historian Polybius. This case invites us to analyse the practice of re-using and re-inscribing (μεταγραφή) monuments, since it testifies to an ambivalent usage of the forefathers’ memory (sometimes abolished, sometimes retained). It also illustrates a typical strategy of distinction in the imperial period which consisted in giving oneself a historical personage as ancestor or model. This new form of elite celebration derives more from a global process of re-elaborating the past than from a hypothetical Romanisation.