The mob is at work again in Oxford, protesting against the existence of Oriel’s statue of Cecil Rhodes. But this is a mob of dons who, rather than doing anything about it, have decided just to stop teaching at Oriel. And that will solve the problem? The Romans were a little more proactive.
‘Statue’ derives from statuo, ‘I place X so as to remain upright’. That was its correct position, where it could be kissed, garlanded and so on. Cicero mentions a deity whose mouth and chin had been worn down by worshippers. Vandalism and indeed theft were known, but it was damnatio memoriae (‘condemnation of memory’, a designation invented in 1689) that the powerful, especially emperors, feared. This took the form of a senatorial decree to erase their name from all records, resulting also in their statues being torn down, abused and dragged through the streets by chanting crowds, as were their bodily persons and sometimes their families too.
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