[[De]]constructing memory: rethinking memory sanctions and damnatio memoriae The phenomenon of Roman “memory sanctions”– also known under the neologism “damnatio memoriae” – has recently been well-theorised. Scholars emphasise that, contrary to the rhetoric of our ancient sources, these sanctions were not simply misguided attempts to suppress their victim’s memory, but as measures intended to disgrace them and so, in an oblique way, foster memory. They were thus not purely destructive, but rather, productive gestures. This paper takes the idea of memory sanctions as a “productive gesture” as a stimulus, but complicates the picture. Using the sanctions the senate passed against the emperor Domitian in 96 AD as an example, it argues that the smashing of statues and erasure of inscriptions alone could not make or unmake the memory of an individual. Rather, they were only the first step in a much more complex process of re-negotiating the past, that also involved more obviously “productive” actions of remembering, such as the setting-up of inscriptions, the minting of coins, and the writing of literature. It then argues further that this process of “remembering to forget” Domitian also had significant practical consequences, most importantly perhaps, the upsetting of the existing social order that had been constructed around the former emperor.

Early metrical inscriptions: aesthetics of sound and vision   A peculiarity of many early Greek inscriptions is their metrical form. Since the context of several of these short texts is an elite one, often with strong links to the symposium, this has led some to postulate that the use of the poetic verse in writing must be connected to the recording of poetry in symposiastic settings, and even that the alphabet itself was invented to record hexameters and Homer himself. Other theories have concentrated on the magical aspect of writing and the use of poetry as curse rhyme, since some of these objects bear the threat of punishment for their stealing. While these explanations indeed highlight features we find everywhere in inscriptions in the Mediterranean world, none of these explanations works for the material as a whole. Since metrical texts are so common, and do not necessarily relate to the world of poetry or curses, I suggest an alternative interpretation. Through a cursory analysis of ancient and modern systems of education, studies in cognitive neuroscience and a focus on the material evidence, I try to reconstruct the reasons behind such a choice, with a particular focus on sound and aesthetic placement of these ‘scratches’ upon objects.