Defacing the image: damnatio
memoriae
David W.J. Gill
University of Wales Swansea
Introduction
•
•
•
•
•
Defining damnatio memoriae
Nero
Domitian
Commodus
Geta
Defining damnatio memoriae
•
Diane Kleiner
•
‘When an emperor suffered an official
condemnation by the senate … his portraits
were destroyed, mutilated, or recast with the
features of a successor. The bodies of such
portraits were, however, often retained intact
and supplied with the heads of the new
emperor, the body again serving as a prop for
the head’
A late antique definition
•
Theodosian code on the palace eunuch
Eutropius (AD 399)
•
All his statues, all his images, in bronze as well as in
marble, in pigments, or in whatever material is
suitable for portraiture, we order to be destroyed in all
cities and towns, both in private and in public places,
in order that the stigma of our age, so to speak, may
not pollute the sight of those who look at such
images’
Defacing coins
Nero
•
•
•
•
Committed suicide in
June 68
Senate issued damnatio
memoriae
People wore the cap of
liberty
Otho replaced portraits of
Nero with his own
(Suetonius, Otho 7)
Defacing Nero’s image
•
Suetonius, Nero 45.2
•
When he had incurred the hatred of everyone, there
was no form of insult to which he was not subjected.
A curly lock of hair was placed on the head of his
statue along with an inscription in Greek which said
that now at last games were being held in which he
would eventually have to yield. On the neck of
another statue a sack was fastened along with the
inscription, ‘I have done what I could. But you have
earned the sack’.
The Arch of Nero
•
•
•
•
Vowed in 58 for victory
over Armenia
Tacitus (Annals):
constructed on the
Capitoline in AD 62
Represented on coins
minted between 64 andd
67
Nero in quadriga on top
of arch, flanked by Pax
and Victoria
Pliny the Younger
•
•
The portraiture of Domitian (AD 81-96)
The Younger Pliny, Panegyric 92.4
•
‘It was our delight to dash those proud faces to the
ground, to smite them with the sword and savage
them with the axe as if blood and agony could follow
from every blow. Our transports of joy, so long
deferred, were unrestrained; all sought a form of
vengeance in beholding those mutilated bodies, limbs
hacked to pieces, and finally that baleful, fearsome
visage cast into the fire to be melted down …’
Number of statues of Domitian
•
Suetonius, Domitian 13.2
•
He permitted no statues to be set up in his
honour unless they were of gold and silver
and were of a certified weight. He also built so
many arcades and arches, complete with the
insignia of triumphs, throughout all the
regions of the city that on one of them
someone added the following inscription in
Greek: ‘Arci’ [‘it is sufficient’]
Removal of statues
•
Procopius, Anecdota 8.18-21
•
•
Only one statue left in Rome set up by his
widow after his death
However, Domitia was behind the
assassination.
Cancellaria Reliefs
•
Originally part of a monument for Domitian
•
•
Portraits recut to represent Nerva and
Vespasian
Perhaps to represent Domitian’s Sarmatian
victories
Cancelleria relief
Cancelleria relief
•
Domitian / Vespasian
arriving with the gods
Commodus
•
Assassinated on New
Year’s Eve 192
•
•
•
Planning to appear as
Hercules in the
amphitheatre on 1 January
193
Senate voted damnatio
memoriae
Portraits survived
because of Septimius
Severus’ links with
Marcus Aurelius
Commodus as Herakles
•
Dio Cassius 72.22.3
•
[Commodus] cut off
the head of the
colossus and replaced
it with another which
bore his own features.
He also gave it a club
and put some kind of
bronze lion beneath it
so that it would
resemble Hercules …
Liberalitas panel of Marcus
Aurelius
•
Commodus would
also have featured in
the chariot of Marcus
Aurelius
Commodus
•
From the lost arch,
now on Arch of
Constantine
•
Portrait of Commodus
removed from the left
of Marcus Aurelius
Geta
•
•
Subject to damnatio
memoriae by his
brother Caracalla
Erasure on the
inscription of the arch
of Septimius Severus
in the Roman forum
Plautianus and Plautilla
•
•
Plautianus: murdered
in 205
Plautilla: married
Caracalla in 202 and
killed in 211
Plautianus
•
Dio Cassius 75.16.2
•
Becoming vexed at one time because of the
great number of portrait statues dedicated to
Plautianus which were then in existence …
Severus had some of them melted down; as a
result of this a rumour ran through the cities to
the effect that Plautianus had fallen from
power and been destroyed, and some of them
smashed his portrait statues, an act for which
they were later punished.
Geta
•
•
Arch of the Argentarii
Septimius Severus
and Julia Domna