The Romans considered that memory could be dangerous. Hence, the ability to control or even suppress memory became a crucial component of political authority. Better known by the modern concept damnatio memoriae, punitive memory sanctions were applied in the principate specially to crimes against the princeps and his family. In the late republic, from the end of the 2nd century BC, different strategies of punishment of memory began to be imposed as a consequence of accusations such as aspiration to tyranny or declaration as a public enemy. This PhD research is in development under the supervision of Prof. Claudia Beltrão da Rosa, at the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO – Brazil), and aims to understand how memory sanctions were applied in the late republican period of Rome (133 BC – 44 BC), its objectives, strategies and contradictions.
Such sanctions consisted of exemplary execution, persecution of allies, denial of traditional burial, confiscation of goods and property, destruction of houses, trophies, and banning of representations in images and statues. With emphasis on Ciceronian and Salustian documentation, it seeks to contribute for the debate by analyzing the punitive memory sanctions applied from the death of the Gracchi to that of C. Julius Caesar, not only as strategies of erasure, but above all of creation of memory, marked by conflicts and contestations, understanding memory as J. Assmann does, as a space for the creation and imposition of references, but also for the coexistence of different narratives about the past.
Jonathan Cruz Moreira
Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO), academic visitor at Newcastle University
Lyceum Classics Community Seminar 