Exploring Damnatio Memoriae of Imperial Women in Ancient Rome- Stavroula Nikolaou (9778977)

Abstract

The honoring of the dead and their remembrance by the future generations is a practice which made its first appearance during the ancient times and has been noticed in many civilizations ever since. The way through which the living remembered or forgot the dead was a detail which concerned the people of the Roman Empire as well, especially the emperors and the members of the imperial family. The damnation of memory – also known in academia as damnatio memoriae- was the attack on someone’s memory through various practices, such as the destruction of portraits and the erasure of inscriptions. The focus of this thesis lies on Roman imperial women and their damnatio memoriae and the main research question is how imperial women in Ancient Rome were affected by damnatio memoriae and what were the reason behind their condemnation. Through the combination of Joan W. Scott’s gender theory and Harriet I. Flower’s theory about memory the present research master thesis attempts to explore the gender dynamics between men and women in Ancient Rome as well as the different types of condemnation which existed. Through the case study of seven different imperial women, this thesis aims to discover if the practices for condemned women were different from those for condemned men and what were the reasons behind this difference.