“optanda erat oblivio”

The emperor Tiberius was once approached by a man who addressed to him a question beginning with the word meministi – “do you remember …?” (Sen. Ben. 5.25.2). Scarcely had he uttered that one word when the emperor brusquely interrupted, non memini … quid fuerim, “I do not remember what I was.” Tiberius was merely feigning a memory lapse; he doubtless remembered perfectly well what the man was inquiring about – evidently, a previous encounter between the two – but chose to consign it to oblivion. As Seneca puts it, optanda erat oblivio (ibid.). Loosely rendered, “it was the emperor's wish to forget.”

If, to borrow Millar's succinct definition, the emperor was what the emperor did, he was equally what he remembered. As this small episode illustrates, however, his memory could be entirely selective, with decisions large and small hinging on what the emperor chose to remember … and forget. Indeed, memory lay at the very heart of power under the Principate; the phenomenon of damnatio memoriae – the (usually) posthumous ‘erasing’ of someone's memory by having all references to their names removed from inscriptions, portraits defaced, and the like – provides one familiar illustration of how such control might be exerted and, as importantly, why it needed to be exerted. Memories, Romans knew, can be dangerous. For that reason the ability to control and even suppress memory became a crucial component of political authority.