After Caracalla murdered his brother Geta, speaking Geta's name became a capital crime in Rome, yet his face kept circulating on silver coins that the state could not recall. This episode uses that paradox to explore damnatio memoriae, the condemnation of memory, a Latin label actually coined by two German scholars in 1689. We look at how the Roman Senate seized property, struck names from registries and defaced statues, and why scholars like Polly Low argue the visible ruin was the point: not amnesia but public disgrace.

From there we travel through Sumerian scribes demoting a rival king to the Man of Umma, Pharaoh Horemheb dismantling Akhenaten's temples block by block, the Ephesians outlawing the name of the arsonist Herostratus, Maya rulers plastering over a predecessor's monuments, the Yongle Emperor's gourd vine purges, Spanish author ...