Heathcote, Nigel James (2020) Damnatio memoriae and exemplarity in Imperial Rome : from the Julio-Claudians to the Severans. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

Forms of material cultural repression are at the forefront of modern-day cultural debates and discourse. Over the course of the past twenty years, our theoretical understanding of forms of collective memory has been thoroughly expanded. Simultaneously, the study of damnatio memoriae, the destructive acts against the portraits and inscriptions of a condemned individual in the Roman period, has benefited from the publication of the foundational works of Varner and Flower. However, these studies have thus far focussed on the immediate aftermath of the destructive acts, and the reception of the already-destroyed material. In addition, the question of how damnatio affects the Roman collective memory of the condemned remains unanswered. This thesis aims to answer this question, by examining closely two understudied aspects of the phenomenon – the immediate ‘spectacle’ of destruction, and its long-term consequences on a condemned individual’s surviving ‘material legacy’.

Focussing on the case study of the city of Rome before the ‘crisis of the third century’, the interactions with the material legacies of condemned emperors will be examined. Each method of interaction will be analysed separately, considering all types of material from a handful of emperors in each case, to establish the way it influenced how Roman culture remembered ‘tyrants’. The immediate ‘spectacle’ of damnatio will be discussed first, revealing how the destruction acted both to remove the positive identity of the condemned, as well as to begin the creation of a new negative identity to replace it. The long-term consequences will then be examined. Analysis of the acts of successor emperors to deliberately contrast themselves with condemned predecessors reveals how this contrast further engrained the negative identity into the cultural memory of the city. The appropriation of their buildings, furthermore, demonstrates how successors reigning long after the death of a condemned emperor continue to rejuvenate this process, contributing further to the recreation of the condemned’s identity. I will argue that close scrutiny of all the consequences of damnatio memoriae reveals a process that transforms the positive identity of a condemned emperor into a negative exemplum of tyranny, embodying the negative qualities that the destruction and denigration of his material legacy condemn him for.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DG Italy N Fine Arts > N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR N Fine Arts > NB Sculpture
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Portrait sculpture, Roman, Art -- Political aspects -- Rome, Rome -- Kings and rulers -- Portraits, Rome -- History -- Empire, 30 B.C.-284 A.D
Official Date:	July 2020
Dates:	Date Event July 2020 UNSPECIFIED
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Classics and Ancient History
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Newby, Zahra
Format of File:	pdf
Extent:	2 volumes (214 leaves; 84 leaves) : illustrations, maps
Language:	eng

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