When a tapia let Sabine, an enemy, enter Rome, she was crushed and fell headlong from the cliff above Rome Square. This story not only provides a warning for future generations, but also provides a backing for some of the most cruel punishments in Rome.
Tapia is one of the legends in the history of levi since its founding. Whether she is a real person or not, it has become a common practice to throw traitors from the "tapia Rock", and the tapia Rock is the forest mountain overlooking the Rome Forum in capito.
However, not all cruel and unusual punishments related to the Romans were implemented in practice or uniformly, and with the passage of time, some punishments changed greatly, and Roman society was basically hierarchical and patriarchal.
Theoretically, a Roman parent (the oldest male in the family) has the right to kill people at home with impunity.
This includes not only people who live in his house, but also brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews.
However, historians have been debating whether this power is mainly symbolic and rarely used in practice.
Filippo-Karl-Usinke believes that power does exist, but it does not satisfy Blanche, a family member.
For example, senator Kratos? Fesius? Maximus Ebinurs was accused of killing his son because of his "questionable virginity".
However, punishing a sexual crime was not regarded as a proper use of the father's power, so quintus himself was tried and exiled.
In order to justify this power, the son must commit a crime against the country.
When Ollus Fulvi was killed by his father for his participation in Catiline's plot (63 BC), the head of the family was not prosecuted.
This is because Katrina and her followers conspired to murder the consul Cicero and seize power for themselves, committing treason.
One of the most common misunderstandings about Roman criminal justice is the punishment of those who killed Parry.
Anyone who kills his father, mother or other relatives will be punished by sacks (Latin poena cullei).
It is said that the criminal and four kinds of animals (a snake, a monkey, a rooster and a dog) were sewn together in a leather bag and then thrown into the river.
But is this punishment really implemented? This is the epitome of Levy's history. According to the Urban Foundation, Malullus, the lioness who killed her mother, was the first person to be sewn into a sack and thrown into the sea in BC 10 1 year.
Mosaic of dogs and cocks, (public domain), in fact, the punishment for killing parrots is often just to feed criminals to wild animals.
There is no mention of any animals in the bag, and it does not appear in contemporary evidence in the later period of legal proceedings in Rome and China.
Cicero defended a young man named Cestus Rossius in 80 BC, accusing him of killing parrots, but he obviously didn't mention this ferocious zoo in his defense. He lived in the middle of the third century.
This excerpt was handed down because it was later quoted in the abstract compiled under the order of Emperor Justin in the 6th century A.D.: "Our ancestors stipulated that the punishment for killing parrots was to beat criminals with blood-stained sticks and sew them up with sacks.
"A dog, a rooster, a snake, a monkey and a bag are thrown into the sea, that is, if the sea is nearby.
Otherwise, he will be thrown in front of wild animals. According to Hadrian's deified Constitution, "Punishment of Patricide-Bonakule, Foltermuseum De Oude Steen, Bruges. (CC 2.0), the characteristics of snakes and monkeys in satirical poems written in Hadrian's era, believed that Emperor Nero should be "expelled".
But dogs and cocks only appeared when Modestinus was writing in the third century. So has anyone really been punished by all these creatures? Emperor Constantine's punishment for killing parrots only stipulated that snakes should be put in bags.
Parrot killers are usually punished in other ways, such as being judged as beasts, which is very popular in the Roman world.
It is said that one of the four animals put in the bag is a snake.
Many historians believe that sewing a dog, a monkey, a rooster, a snake and a man in a bag shows that the punishment has never really been executed-first of all, it punishes the executioner as much as the sentenced person.
The Romans themselves thought that The Book of Songs was an ancestor's custom, but like many customs, it was based on the preconceived idea of the essence of ancient punishment.
The most famous version of the punishment for killing parrots, including all fierce animals, is the product of the late Roman Empire.
This poem is to scare people, not to enforce it, because it attracts medieval scholars who try to determine the symbolic meaning of animals.
Florike Egmond said that this inspired the Germanic law to introduce bags full of creatures as punishment, reflecting a belief that civilized society should follow Roman judicial practices.
“Ertr？ Nken im Fass oder sack ",sketch of 1560, showing" punishment for package ".
In the middle ages and early modern times, in order to alleviate the suffering of Germans, this kind of punishment was rarely implemented.
On one occasion, the images of these animals were sewn into bags because they were considered to be sufficient substitutes for the real thing.
If the Romans do not take part in the census, they will pay a high price.
(Public domain), you must take part in the Roman census, because the country needs a complete record of citizens' property in order to collect taxes.
According to Dionysus, a historian in the/Kloc-0th century BC, servius tullius, the sixth king of Rome, ordered that anyone who did not take part in the census would lose his property and be sold into slavery.
However, people still have doubts about whether this punishment really happened-Dionysus didn't start writing until centuries after the sixth king ruled, and Severus Tullius may be fictional.
Levi, a contemporary of Dionysus, recorded a different kind of punishment-unregistered citizens were threatened with death and imprisonment, and there was no record of any kind of punishment being executed.
Peter Brunt, an ancient historian, suggested that this might be because the Romans always registered to ensure that their rights as citizens were guaranteed.
It is worth noting, however, that neither Dionysus nor Levi suggested that this law was still in use in their own time-severe punishment may reflect the cruel concept of early Rome, rather than any historical reality.
Sacrificial scene during the census: A plaque on the altar of Domitius Arnold babs is called "census engraved belt" on the left.
Marble, a Roman work of art in the late 2nd century BC.
From Camp Mazio in Rome.
In the late Republic of China, Cicero, a famous lawyer and politician, wrote that there was a man, Tacitus Annius Arcelors, who decided not to take part in the census in order to circumvent the inheritance law-he just lost the right to vote.
The Roman authorities have a bigger problem, because they rarely conducted a census effectively in the first century BC.
In addition, if you fight abroad, live outside Italy, or are unable to travel because of extreme poverty, Roman rule may be quite lenient. The punishment of slaves, the father's power and the punishment of sacks reflect the Romans' own views on their ancestors and the idea that the authorities must impose severe punishment to deter criminals.
But we need to carefully reconstruct the history of this punishment.
As Paride's example shows, the versions we are familiar with today are usually pieced together from different periods to create a real "Romanesque" punishment.
Above: "Ertr? Nken im Fass oder Sack ",1560 sketch, showing" Sack's punishment ".
(Public sphere), Shushma Malik and Kelan Davenport's article Decoding Ancient Roman Myth: Cruel and Unusual Punishment was first published in dialogue and reprinted in the form of knowledge. This is the ancient origin team. Our mission is to "inspire people to learn from the past by sharing research, education and knowledge, so as to improve our future".