Damnatio memoriae (Latin for "damnation of memory", in the sense of removed from the remembrance) was a form of dishonor which could be passed by the Roman Senate upon traitors or others who brought discredit to the Roman Empire. The sense of the expression and of the sanction is to cancel every trace of the person from the life of Rome, as if he had never existed, in order to preserve the honour of the Urbs; in a town that stressed the social appearance and respectability (and the pride of being a civis romanus) as a fundamental requirement of the citizen, it was perhaps the severest punishment.

Its most visible practice was in the condemnation of unpopular Emperors upon their deaths. The first emperor to be so condemned was Caligula (reigned 37-41), followed by Nero. Another notable example is the damnatio memoriae of Geta by his brother Caracalla.

Upon passage of the damnatio memoriae, the person's name was stricken from any rolls of honor he may have appeared on (some of them were called memoriae), and in the case of the Roman Emperors so condemned, their statues were destroyed and their name removed from public buildings.

Marino Faliero, fifty-fifth Doge of Venice, was condemned to damnatio memoriae after a failed coup d'état.

A famous example of the concept of damnatio memoriae in modern usage is the "vaporization" of "unpersons" in George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four ("He did not exist; he never existed").

More modern examples of damnatio memoriae in actual practice was the removal of portraits, books, and any other traces of Stalin's opponents during the Great Purge.

Related article

• Forced disappearance

External links

• "The Commissar Vanishes" — Yezhov airbrushed out of a picture with Stalin