MONEY PEOPLE HATED: DAMNATIO MEMORIAE

ANCIENT COINS OFTEN took a beating in circulation, remaining in use for decades or even centuries. But some surviving coins seem to have been deliberately defaced or mutilated as an expression of popular hatred and contempt for the subject depicted or name inscribed. A 17th-century scholar coined the Latin phrase damnatio memoriae ("damnation of memory") for this practice, though there is no evidence for the use of the phrase in antiquity.

Coins mistreated in this way have a certain perverse appeal to some collectors, and a few dramatic examples have brought impressive prices at auction. Coins become damaged for many different reasons – sometimes the shovel or trowel that unearths a coin leaves a gouge in the metal – and unscrupulous sellers may try to misrepresent modern damage as ancient, so damnatio memoriae is hard to prove. Cataloguers often follow the phrase with a cautious question mark.

Gaius Julius Caesar was beloved by his troops and Rome's common people, but he was hated by many of the elite; indeed a faction of the Senatorial class hated him enough to stab him to death.

When Caesar's portrait was placed on a silver denarius in January 44 BCE, it violated a long-standing Roman taboo against depicting living persons on the coinage. A deep scratch across the face on this rare coin could be an expression of damnatio — or at least the auction cataloguer thought so. Lifetime portrait coins of Julius Caesar are in such high demand from collectors that even a deep scratch is an acceptable defect.

To read the complete article, see:
Money People Hated: Damnatio Memoriae on Ancient Roman Coins (https://coinweek.com/ancient-coins/money-people-hated-damnatio-memoriae-on-ancient-roman-coins/)

To read earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
FEATURED WEB PAGE: DAMNATIO MEMORIAE (https://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v16n14a27.html)
QUERY: DAMNATIO MEMORIAE OF ROMAN EMPERORS SOUGHT (https://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v19n08a18.html)

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