Roman Cancel Culture

We think of cancel culture as a 21st-century phenomenon, but it’s been going on since the ancient Egyptians (if not earlier) and the Romans were enthusiastic adopters as a strategy for control. Mary and Charlotte discuss ‘damnatio memoriae’ (condemnation of memory) - the practice of erasing a person from public life and history, usually after their death. (Pedant alert: Romans didn’t use the term ‘damnatio memoriae’ - it was coined much later - and Mary and Charlotte admit straight up that to use the phrase ‘cancel culture’ is a cheeky, and inaccurate, anachronism.)

Further reading:

The classic study of this is Harriet Flower The Art of Forgetting (Univ of NCarolina Press, pb, 2011)

The full text and translation of the senatorial decree on Cn. Piso is in A Cooley, The Senatus Consultum de Cn Pisone patre (Cambridge UP, 2023)

On recarving, see E. R. Varner, From Caligula to Constantine (Uni of Washington Press, pb. 2000).

Charlotte writes about Carausius and the Tullie House inscriptions in Under Another Sky: Journeys in Roman Britain (Vintage paperback 2014)

We refer again to the Severan Tondo, now in Berlin: https://search.smb.museum/object/obj-681547

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