This clearly written, lavishly illustrated and theoretically grounded monograph examines souvenirs as a distinctive category of analysis in the study of Roman material and visual culture. It arrives in the midst of a ‘souvenir boom’ in scholarship — see also K. Cassibry, Destinations in Mind. Portraying Places on the Roman Empire's Souvenirs (2021) — and contributes to a productive turn towards closer inspection of the social and cultural worlds of (relatively) cheaply made, portable objects that too often have been side-lined or neglected in classical art and archaeology.
The book's introduction sets the stage by engaging with recent work on space, place, lived religion, sociologies of knowledge, memory studies and much else besides. What emerges is an effective framework for approaching souvenirs as mass-produced transmitters of memory and knowledge and as having a particular set of material affordances. The main text comes in two parts. Part I examines souvenirs associated with cult statues, cities and sites, such as Alexandria and Hadrian's Wall. Fundamental to understanding these souvenirs is the complex process of miniaturisation that allowed individuals to possess, touch, and display monuments otherwise out of their reach, for example, by reproducing an image of the Ephesian Artemis in terracotta. Part II then turns to souvenirs related to the cultural imaginaries of the circus, arena and the theatre. In images that seemingly pick from the world of the stage, Popkin notes that many figures are schematised and lacking any sense of movement, narrative or even reference to a performative space, which can make them difficult to place within fixed categories, such as mime and pantomime. While this may be surprising in some ways, it is an aspect of what Jocelyn Penny Small once called The Parallel Worlds of Classical Art and Text (2008) and certainly testament to the richness and variety of ancient performance culture beyond the world of text. It also reminds us that many souvenirs would have been open to personal interpretations and meanings. Other objects discussed by Popkin challenge the notion of a souvenir as related to real-world events and places: For example, does it change anything when the racing chariots are driven not by human charioteers, but erotes (fig. 63), a motif also found in funerary contexts? Citing Diane Favro, Popkin concludes that images of Rome were not part of the wider souvenir culture because none of its monuments had become an ‘urban icon’ (245). Maybe so, but the idea (and image) of Rome as the city of seven hills was nonetheless pervasive, as were personifications of Roma (a form of cult statuary not far from the Antiochene Tyche that offers a vicarious experience of empire).
Ultimately, what kind of work is the term ‘souvenir’ doing for us? Is it more than a helpful historical analogy (see the references passim to contemporary American sports and their consumer culture)? Do we lose some of the finer details when grouping together very diverse objects (ranging from terracottas to rather fancy gems, metal and glass works) under the banner of ‘souvenirs’? Popkin in my view shows that the term has real heuristic value and makes us think harder about the meanings of objects and images, as well as how they can have an agency of their own and mediate different relationships. On the other hand, her book did leave me worrying that some of the term's essentialising implications may not be helpful in all cases. Notably the intricate patterning and interest in the labyrinthine depiction of civic space make the Puteoli and Baiae glass ampullae a little different. In this regard, it is interesting to note that some of the inscriptions found on them refer to drinking. This raises a more wide-ranging question about use that also haunts the study of late antique containers of all sorts: are (some of these) just fancy packaging for something that was perhaps even more fancy, but ephemeral and ultimately lost to us?
Finally, I did also wonder about some of the assumptions made throughout the book about aspects of class and economy. For example, about the producers of these souvenirs we hear that ‘economic profit surely motivated them’ (82) and that they produced for a ‘middle-class market’ (188). In the final part of the book, souvenirs are then presented as a means of ‘democratising luxury’ (196). This circles back to the introduction's statement that ‘the empire's culture of souvenirs was a bottom-up phenomenon’ (12). But can we really know this? The danger here is to rely uncritically on assumptions about the social context of souvenirs. After all, a rather different story could emerge if we pursued the argument that ancient souvenirs, like the modern culture of souvenirs that began with the early modern Grand Tour (see, most recently, E. Gleadhill, Taking Travel Home: The Souvenir Culture of British Women Tourists, 1750–1830 (2022)), owe more to elite than subaltern practices. These problems of interpretation are further confounded by the often context-blind approach pursued here that treats equally objects with a known findspot (e.g. the Athenian Agora) with those that are now in private collections and museums and come with little or no contextual information. Without close consideration of the archaeological contexts of souvenirs, the call is certainly not an easy one to make.
