The Art of Forgetting: Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman Political Culture (review)

To arrive at forgetting, you start with remembering. In this stimulating study, Flower approaches memory as a symbolic construct in the political culture of ancient Rome: it is a constellation of signs, embedded in narratives, statuary, inscriptions, onomastic practices, topography, and so on, by which Romans at any given time grasp the doings of their forebears. "Cultural" memory is thus a form of communication about the past within a sociopolitical community. If no such signs attach to a person, there is no communication and oblivion takes him. Here Flower tackles the (more complex and interesting) matter of altering or effacing such signs, whether the aim is to change the nature of communication about a person for the worse, or even to bring about oblivion. The book surveys the development and evolution of such efforts, which she calls "memory sanctions," from early Rome to the high empire.

After an introduction (ch. 1) and an overview of Greek commemorative practices (ch. 2, concluding that they do not greatly illuminate Roman practices), she turns to the middle Republic (ch. 3). Here commemoration focuses on office holding; non-officeholders generally fall into oblivion. Mid-Republican techniques for stigmatizing conduct deemed unacceptable—the censor's nota, the use of invective in oratory, and (within families) the banning of someone's praenomen—are not yet "memory sanctions," though the seeds are there. The real watershed, Flower argues, correlates strikingly with the breakdown of middle republican consensus politics: for it is with the Gracchi, especially Gaius (ch. 4), that we first find sanctions like corpse desecration and prohibition on mourning applied widely. The next innovator is Sulla (ch. 5), who takes the city by force, proscribes his opponents, confiscates their property, and bars descendants from office holding. The Sullan program of memory sanctions, Flower speculates, may account for the "blank" of the Cinna years in Roman historiography. An against-the-grain reading of Cicero presents him as part of the problem, for example, his insistence on condemning Caesar's memory and labeling Antony a hostis exemplify this politically damaging and divisive commemorative praxis. Caesar, conversely, rejects this aspect of Sullanism: his policy of clemency, besides doing away with proscription of opponents, also dispenses with memory sanctions.

Augustus too, Flower argues (ch. 6), sought an exit from the damaging regime of punitive memory sanctions, largely rejecting proposed sanctions against his opponents (especially Antony). Still, the obscurity cloaking the various plotters who supposedly targeted him may result from, and so evince, memory sanctions against them. Under Tiberius, thanks to Tacitus, we hear much more about memory sanctions, conspiracies, and treason trials. Case studies in this chapter and the next two (chs. 7–8) on such figures as Asinius Gallus, Caligula, the Agrippinas, Messalina, Livilla, and Nero show remarkable variation in the treatment of "condemned" figures: inscriptions may or may not be systematically effaced; statues may or may not be defaced, removed, and/or recut, and so on. Overall, some consistency is observable in the kinds of memory sanctions imposed on disgraced figures, but such sanctions are not systematically or consistently applied, or gathered into any regularized package. Unusual interpretations of the pseudo-Senecan tragedy Octavia and the Flavian amphitheater are high points in the Nero chapter. Condemned figures may also be restored to symbolic circulation via reerected statues, recarved monuments, and public discussion (e.g., the elder Agrippina under Caligula). But the sanctions imposed on Domitian's memory (ch. 9) are in Flower's view the most comprehensive and systematic. The information available to us about this emperor's reign has, she claims, been so affected by punitive memory sanctions that it reveals much more about the values and aspirations of the age of Nerva and Trajan, when the sanctions were fashioned and applied, than about Domitian. A brief glance at the commemoration crisis following Hadrian's death precedes a summary and conclusion (ch. 10). [End Page 115...