This article presents three brief case studies of the way Romans talked about and expressed contempt. It examines aspects of discourses about contempt that are characteristic both of Roman literature and of modern concepts. The focus is on the relationship of hierarchy, recognition, and (active and passive) contempt in the Latin vocabulary and in two literary motifs taken from invective and historiography, two genres in which expressions of contempt are particularly frequent and prominent.

Tacitus understands himself as a historiographer who writes against forgetting. This essay examines how Tacitus conceives of forgetting and how he depicts processes of forgetting. (1) First I will introduce forgetting as an important research theme in modern memory studies. Research on forgetting can help us to understand transformations in the collective memory of modern and ancient social groups. (2) In Tacitus’ works about Roman imperial history forgetting stands out as a crucial topic. (3) When analysing processes of forgetting in (...) the Annals, the Histories and the Agricola, we can distinguish different forms of forgetting (such as ‘automatic forgetting’ and ‘directed forgetting’) as well as certain methods that Tacitus depicts as supporting or impeding forgetting. I will focus on ‘removing’ as an ambivalent method of forgetting, and on ‘writing’, which is central to Tacitus’ concept of the historiographer. This analysis of Tacitus’ works reveals that his ideas on forgetting are highly relevant to the twenty-first century. Tacitus’ age, like our own, was one of dramatic societal change, in which social frames are transformed, while the objects of collective memory are questioned and reevaluated. (shrink)

This paper analyses discussions of Nero’s voice in texts critical of the emperor, above all the works of Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio. It argues that criticism of Nero’s voice centres around four topics: (1) Nero’s hubristic longing for a divine revelation of his voice (which responds to the panegyrical accounts of his vox caelestis); (2) Nero’s training and care of his voice in a way that is too professional, distracts him from his imperial duties, and is still unsuccessful; (3) (...) the caricature of Nero’s voice as female or animalistic; (4) the orator Nero’s emancipation and finding of his own voice as a harmful development. (shrink)