THE PRESENCE OF "DAMNATIO MEMORIAE" IN ROMAN ART Author(s): Lauren Hackworth Petersen Source: Source: Notes in the History of Art, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Winter 2011), pp. 1-8 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23208566 Accessed: 06-03-2017 19:22 UTC

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This content downloaded from 94.174.159.118 on Mon, 06 Mar 2017 19:22:48 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms THE PRESENCE OF DAMNATIO MEMORIAE IN ROMAN ART

Lauren Hackworth Petersen

Of the emperor Domitian (reigned 81-96 individual to oblivion meant eradicating his C.E.), the Roman biographer Suetonius re(or her) images and inscriptions as if he (or counts the following mixed reactions to his she) had never existed.2 It was an attempt at assassination: conscious forgetting, analogous to wiping a slate or ancient wax tablet clean. As Plato The people received the news of his death pithily articulates in his treatise on memory, with indifference, but the soldiers were which helped to shape Roman writings on greatly grieved and at once attempted to call him the Deified Domitian. . . . The memory, "Whatever is so imprinted [in the wax block of the soul] we remember and senators on the contrary were so over know so long as the image remains; what joyed, that they raced to fill the House, ever is rubbed out ... we have forgotten where they did not refrain from assailing and do not know."3 But, in reality, it was not the dead emperor with the most insulting so simple. and stinging kind of outcries. They even It is well understood that memory making had ladders brought and his shields and was central for the Romans, especially for images torn down before their eyes and elite and powerful individuals and their fam dashed upon the ground; finally they ilies, who had a tremendous stake in being passed a decree that his inscriptions part of Rome's recorded history. The very should everywhere be erased, and all idea that one's memory could be ordered to record of him obliterated be obliterated from collective memory The senators' response was severe but not demonstrates just how persistently Romans atypical. In fact, Domitian was one of many sought to (re)write their own recorded his individuals whose memory was condemned tory, but usually with various degrees of suc upon death, meaning that records of the per cess, as we shall see. While the study of son, both visual and verbal, were ordered to memory and damnatio memoriae has re be mutilated or destroyed. The term damna ceived excellent scholarly attention within tio memoriae is often invoked to describe the last decade or so,4 this essay takes a the institutional decree and events that took slightly different tack. It takes as a point of place once a Roman was declared to be an departure the premise that the stated goal of enemy of the state, but, as we know, this damnatio memoriae was to eradicate the term is a modern one. Nonetheless, the an memories of condemned individuals. Yet this cient combination of the word memoria, practice often had the opposite effect—that along with various forms of verbs such as is, of reminding the viewer of those who condemnare, damnare, abolere, and eradere, were removed from public view. The ques makes clear that a decree to condemn an tion remains as to why the practice of

This content downloaded from 94.174.159.118 on Mon, 06 Mar 2017 19:22:48 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 2 damnatio memoriae could not actually relief panel from the Porta Argentariorum achieve its ostensible aim of eradicating an in Rome (204 c.E.) now depicts an isolated individual from collective memory. image of Caracalla pouring a libation (Fig. As individuals moved throughout Rome, 1). The left and central portions of the com they were continually reminded of the city's position are rendered imageless. Caracalla's history and the emperors' deeds through vi young wife, Plautilla, and her father have sual cues understood as crucial for perpetu been chiseled from the relief field as a result ating memory.5 Imperial monuments, such of Caracalla's attempt to eradicate their as triumphal arches, displayed text and im memories. Likewise, another panel from the ages to remind viewers of Rome's past, same monument depicts the emperor Septi much the same as funerary monuments of mius Severus and his wife, Julia Domna wealthy citizens were intended to record (Fig. 2). A fragment of a caduceus appears their achievements and promote the family's to float in the void to the right of the em good reputation and social standing for pos press, and a substantially lower relief carving terity. Likewise, sculpted portraits were often on the empress's left side exposes faint ves accompanied by inscriptions. Text and im tiges of the erasure of her son Geta, who ages could thus work together to stimulate a had once been carved into the panel and sub specific memory of an individual (or indi sequently carved out after his murder by his viduals) and affirm Rome's history more ruthless brother, Caracalla. In both panels, broadly. This situation is different from that the empty (or clumsily reworked) space cre of Romans of relatively modest means; they ates an unbalanced, awkward composition. could not always secure resources, nor did The erasure calls attention to itself. In a they have the political achievements, to war sense, therefore, the empty space has be rant bold memory making and monument come as much a presence as the figures making. Most Romans, it must be remem themselves.7 bered, are unintentionally rendered to obliv The erasure has become a mark, much like ion, with little trace of their existence mark the presence of a written sign, to put it in the ing the material record. terms of Jacques Derrida.8 Indeed, the era As we saw with Domitian, however, a sures of the relief panels described above, damnation of memory could mean that ma among many others, have the quality of phys terial traces of an individual were purpose ical marks. The empty spaces have been made fully abolished, thereby removing the chance present through the process of erasure, and that a visual or verbal stimulus might evoke the subsequent physical absence of the pre the memory of the proclaimed enemy of the ceding mark (that is, the image of an individ state. A portrait could be smashed to pieces ual) is present as, or signified by, a void. The or systematically mutilated, with eyebrows, empty spaces, as indexical representations of eyes, nose, mouth, and chin carved out, thus erasing, become subjects of the panels; they making the figure, for the most part, unrec represent a past event—the damnation of the ognizable, thereby negating the positive vi memory of an individual. Ironically, the sual cues to memory making.6 Relief sculp empty spaces could function as prompts to tures and painted images could also suffer recall the memory of the condemned indi the effects of damnationes. For example, a vidual.9 While this concept has been ad

This content downloaded from 94.174.159.118 on Mon, 06 Mar 2017 19:22:48 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 3 dressed generally in the literature, I would as we saw in Plato s remark that memories like to push it a bit further. Damnatio memo were imprinted on the wax block of the soul. riae was an institution that permitted Romans With the decree of damnatio memoriae, to (re)cast a past with which they could stone portraits, reliefs, and inscriptions, al live10—that is, a past that was not immediate, though of permanent materials, could also but took some working to reconstruct. receive erasure like the slate and wax tablet. In a fascinating essay on memory making, Put another way, the entire stone surface Sigmund Freud invokes a well-beloved chil would not need to be thrown away if the dren's toy, the Mystic Writing-Pad, as a way memory of an individual was no longer to to explain the perceptual apparatus of the be retained. Rather, like the slate board or mind, which, he believes, is open to new ex wax tablet, an image could be, as it were, periences while never quite losing the im rubbed out by chiseling it away. pressions of the past (i.e., memories).11 Be This analogy between the slate board and fore relating this Pad to memory making, Roman stone is inadequate, however. An Freud discusses the role of writing on paper erased slate does not retain a mark, but, as as a means of securing a "permanent mem indicated, the traces of erasure from damna ory-trace" of something that someone wishes tiones are marks in and of themselves. to remember. A sheet of paper thus contains Freud's remarks on the Mystic Writing-Pad a mark, the "memory-trace." The memory offer an alternative approach that can be ap trace, according to Freud, only ceases to be plied to analyzing the effects of damnatio permanent when one discards the sheet of memoriae, even as he discusses this device paper. Writing with chalk upon a slate board in relation to memory making. He writes: provides an alternative means for supple [It is] a small contrivance that promises menting a memory. Although the slate does to perform more than the sheet of paper not offer a "permanent memory-trace," as or the slate. It claims to be nothing more paper does, Freud notes that a chalkboard is than a writing-tablet from which notes "a receptive surface which retains its recep can be erased by an easy movement of tive capacity for an unlimited time and the the hand. But if it is examined more notes upon which can be destroyed as soon closely it will be found that its construc as they cease to interest [him], without any tion shows a remarkable agreement with need for throwing away the writing-surface my hypothetical structure of our percep itself."12 tual apparatus and that it can in fact pro Ancients had a similar device—the wax vide both an ever-ready receptive surface tablet—which, too, was reusable. However, and permanent traces of notes that have unlike chalk, which adds to the surface, the been made on it.13 writing implement for a wax tablet is a sty lus, which engraves marks into the wax surThe Pad, which has both an unlimited re face. Nonetheless, the wax tablet could beceptive capacity and the quality of retaining smoothed down, thereby erasing the text, permanent traces, is comprised of a slab of making it comparable to a chalkboard. darkIn resin or wax and thin, transparent fact, the wax tablet was used as an apt sheets. These sheets lie over the slab and metaphor for the ancient memory process, consist of two layers; the upper layer is a

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Fig. 1 Porta Argentariorum, panel B: Caracalla Sacrificing. 204 c.E. Rome. (Photo: Alinari/Art Resource, NY; ART402438)

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Fig. 2 Porta Argentariorum, panel A: Septimius Severus and Julia Domna Sacrificing. 204 C.E. Rome. (Photo: Alinari/Art Resource, NY; ART300443)

This content downloaded from 94.174.159.118 on Mon, 06 Mar 2017 19:22:48 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 6 piece of celluloid, and the bottom layer is a This analogy could also apply to portraits piece of waxed paper that gently adheres to in the round. When Pliny the Younger re the slab surface. One makes a mark by ap counts his version of the destruction of plying a stylus to the celluloid, thereby in Domitian's images, he makes it clear that directly scratching the slab surface. If one the destruction approximates attacks on the wishes to erase the mark, one simply lifts emperor himself,15 as well as creating op the sheets from the slab. The writing disap portunities for the physical transformation pears from the celluloid surface, but the of the sculpted material itself. He writes: grooves from the marks remain visible on It was our delight to dash those proud the slab as permanent traces. The Pad has faces to the ground, to smite them with the benefits of both paper and slate (and as the sword and savage them with the axe, such offers Freud a metaphor for the human as if blood and agony could follow from mind). It seems that a loose connection can be every blow. Our transports of joy—so long deferred—were unrestrained; all drawn between the writing/erasing exercise sought a form of vengeance in beholding on a Mystic Writing-Pad and the processes those bodies mutilated, limbs hacked in of memory making and damnatio memoriae pieces, and finally that baleful, fearsome in stone (among other media).14 Both stone visage cast into fire, to be melted down, surfaces and the Pad are places for making so that from such menacing terror some marks and memory. The process of damna thing for man's use and enjoyment tiones, of the abolishing or recarving of im should rise out of the flames.16 ages, compares to the lifting of the sheets of the Pad. In both instances, the intent is surely Despite both Pliny s and Suetonius's ac to erase or remove images, consigning them counts of the attacks on Domitian's images, to oblivion, whether in individual or collec his sculpted portraits do survive, many of tive memory. Yet the stone, as with the reliefs which contain no indication that they were of the Porta Argentariorum, and resin slab deliberately mutilated in antiquity. In all like both present a trace of what was. Of course, lihood, these portraits were warehoused so the resin slab's permanent traces are the that they might be recarved (or recycled) into grooves of the writing/design; and with time the likeness of another individual at a future and various rewritings, the slab becomes time, a practice that was not uncommon, as overinscribed and largely illegible. In con Eric Varner's work clearly demonstrates.17 trast, a relief's permanent traces are the marks Indeed, a number of Domitian's portraits can of erasure—the empty spaces that were in be identified as having been reworked into tentionally made and left behind—that could images of Nerva, most famously in frieze A function as prompts to remember. But the of the Cancelleria reliefs, with the telltale capacity of Freud's metaphor to explain the sign of the relatively small, recarved head of impossibility of achieving a clean slate—as Domitian/Nerva (Fig. 3). The fact that we far as memory goes—more closely approxi can identify both Domitian and Nerva in this mates the situation with damnatio memoriae image, as the ancients probably did,18 sug than does Plato's notion that an image is eigests that Roman sculpture could be a ther simply present or absent in memory. palimpsest of memories, good and bad.

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Fig. 3 Cancelleria reliefs, frieze A: Profectio of Domitian/Nerva (fourth figure from the left). 93 95 c.e. Vatican Museums, Vatican State. (Photo: Scala/Art Resource, NY; ART80416)

By abolishing images (by means of melt "erased" Mystic Writing-Pad, the wholesale ing, erasing, or recarving) or removing them wiping out of condemned individuals is not from public view, the Romans—or, more quite complete. In the words of Derrida, "We specifically, the members of the Senate— must conceive ... what Freud doubtless be were attempting to write over their recorded lieved to be the indelibility of certain traces history. To put it in Freudian terms, through in the unconscious where . nothing is the process of repression, in which some forgotten.' "20 One could argue that the sen thing is kept at a distance from the con ators' proclaimed attempts to erase parts of scious,19 Romans sought to purge con history markedly failed in their goal. Many demned individuals from collective memory, individuals condemned to oblivion and their whether displacing the condemned individ subsequent erasures remain etched in stone, ual by the substitution of another (that is, and thus in Roman history, since sculptural through recarving) or through wholesale de voids and mutilations could correspond, in struction. Indeed, not all cases of damnatio the mind of the viewer, with memory traces memoriae retained conspicuous traces of that resist eradication. Despite all the rhetoric what was to be forgotten; melted bronze por of erasing memory, damnatio memoriae, in traits and truly shattered stone portraits are practice, often commemorated the very act effectively eradicated from the material of forgetting, thereby paradoxically spurring record, while recarved or chiseled-out por one to remember individuals supposedly traits could leave memory traces. With the abolished from collective memory. latter, like the marks left behind on an

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1. Suetonius, Domitian 23, in his Works, trans. J.membering C. to Forget: The Damnatio Memoriaepp. Rolfe, Loeb Classical Library, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 89-130, although his focus is on the effect of damnatio Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979), II, pp. 384—385 memoriae on ancient writers' accounts of history. (emphasis mine). 10. This concept is taken from Michael Roth's study 2. Eric R. Varner, Mutilation and Transformation: of modern trauma and its effects on memory and his Damnatio Memoriae and Roman Imperial Portraiture tory. See Michael S. Roth, The Ironist's Cage: Mem (Leiden: Brill, 2004), pp. 1-9. See also Friedrich ory,Vitt Trauma, and the Construction of History (New inghoff, Der Staatsfeind in der romischen Kaiserzeit: York: Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 13. Untersuchungen zur "damnatio memoriae" (Berlin: 11. Sigmund Freud, "A Note upon the 'Mystic Writ Junker und Diinnhaupt, 1936). ing-Pad'" (1925), in The Standard Edition of the Com 3. Plato, Theaetetus 191D-E, in Mary Carruthers, plete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, trans. The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval James Strachey, 23 vols. (London: Hogarth Press, Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1957-1974), XIX (1961), pp. 227-232. Derrida fa 1990), p. 21. mously provides a subtle analysis of this essay in 4. Most notably Harriet I. Flower, The Art of For "Freud and the Scene of Writing," in Writing and Dif getting: Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman Political ference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 196-231. Press, 2006); Varner (see n. 2, above); id., ed., From 12. Freud, p. 227. Caligula to Constantine: Tyranny and Transformation 13. Ibid., p. 228. in Roman Portraiture (Atlanta: Michael C. Carlos Mu 14. While the comparison drawn here between per seum, 2000); and Charles W. Hedrick, Jr., History and sonal/spontaneous and collective/institutionalized Silence: Purge and Rehabilitation of Memory in Late memory making and forgetting may seem strained, a Antiquity (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000). case can be made for strong, intimate interconnections 5. See especially essays in Elke Stein-Holkeskamp between the two, particularly in response to distressing and Karl-Joachim Holkeskamp, eds., Erinnerungsorte circumstances at any given time by (re)forming per der Antike: Die romische Welt (Munich: Beck, 2006); sonal and collective identities. See Roth, esp. pp. 8 Penelope Davies, "The Politics of Perpetuation: Tra 17 and 201-213. jan's Column and the Art of Commemoration," Amer 15. See Peter Stewart's chapter "Touching Statues," ican Journal of Archaeology 101, no. 1 (Jan. 1997):41 — in Statues in Roman Society: Representation and Re 65; and Michael Koortbojian, "In Commemorationem sponse (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), Mortuorum: Text and Image along the 'Streets of pp. 261-299. Tombs,'" in Art and Text in Roman Culture, ed. Jas 16. Pliny the Younger, Panegyric 52.4—5, in his Let Eisner (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), ters andPanegyricus, trans. Betty Radice, Loeb Clas pp. 210-233. sical Library, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni 6. Varner, Mutilation and Transformation, esp. pp. versity Press, 1975), II, pp. 440-441. 3-4. 17. Varner Mutiliation and Transformation, pp. 7. As Vainer (ibid., p. 198) notes, "The resulting 111-135, for Domitian's portraits. blank passages in relief speak volumes ... [the] oblit 18. Ibid., p. 9. erated individuals are tellingly present through their 19. Sigmund Freud, "Repression" (1915), in The conspicuous absences." Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works 8. Jacques Derrida, "Signature Event Context," in of Sigmund Freud, trans. James Strachey, 23 vols. Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: (London: Hogarth Press, 1957-1974), XIV, pp. 146 University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 311-317. 158. 9. See also Hedrick, especially the chapter "Re 20. Derrida, "Freud," p. 230.

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