Memory: Extraordinary Slaughter: Memory and Genocide at Rome

In the first half of the first century ce, Valerius Maximus gave this introduction to the chapter containing stories about Cruelty (9.2 de Crudelitate) in his collection of exemplary stories called Memorable Deeds and Sayings (Facta et Dicta Memorabilia). He argues that the commemoration of the worst acts of humanity is essential because it is only through this public shaming that any limit can be placed on the power of cruelty. The key power held by the witnesses and victims of cruelty is the power to hate, and to actively use that hatred to deter the operation of cruelty by describing it. Furthermore, there is a moral imperative to speak. In a powerful statement of the importance of speech in this context, Valerius states that if we are silent about cruelty, we increase cruelty. Nearly two thousand years after Valerius wrote, Colin Tatz articulates the same critical need for a record to be made: an embedded remembering that shows communal judgment and condemnation.