All right Isabelle.

Isabelle.

Say quick hello.

Hello, I'm Isabel and I'm 5 years old and I hope you enjoy a podcast.

Quiet now.

You need to be really quiet for a minute, okay?

Are they and welcome to Emperor's of Rome, a Roman history podcast from Latrobe University.

I'm your host Matt Smith and with me today is Dr. Rianna Evans, associate professor in

classics and ancient history at Latrobe University.

This is episode CXL I-I-I-I-I-I-I-Dam-Nartio Memori.

If an emperor had been disappointing, cruel, tyrannical, or just related to the wrong person, he is at risk of being damned,

erased, having his likeness destroyed and his name stricken from the records.

The process of D'Anatio Mamori was intended to be a permanent judgment and the final vengeance of an angry Rome.

Here's Rianna Evans.

Damnatio Memori is a Latin phrase that means the condemnation of memory, but it's not a phrase that exists

in antiquity. Those two words exist separately, but they don't come together as a phrase in classical texts.

In terms of what happened with what we call Damnati and Memorial is it's sort of like

erasing someone from history, but doing it in very physical ways.

So you would get rid of their face from a statue, you'd get rid of their name from an inscription,

take them out of official accounts of something happening.

So some people have reasonably, I think, made the parallel with, I guess, more extremist,

maybe communist or fascist rewritings of history, whereby you just

...