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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 May 2015
After the suppression of Ti. Gracchus, the Roman establishment acted savagely. The bodies of the hundreds killed in the initial massacre were thrown into the Tiber, probably at night, setting a grisly precedent (in that use of the river) that would be followed by Opimius, the younger Marius and Sulla. The action was supervised by an aedile, a certain Lucretius, who thereby acquired the cognomen Vispillo (or Vespillo), no doubt a pejorative title, but one in which he or his family seemed to take pride. The motivations behind the undertaking were possibly various. Removal of the evidence with minimal fuss may have been seen as a desirable way of avoiding further clamour. Hence the night-time operation. If so, it was done from inexperience. Experience would demonstrate that the bodies might neither remain sunk nor float discreetly to the sea. The establishment might also have hoped that the gesture carried with it some of the symbolism of a procuratio prodigiorum—though the agency of an aedile was hardly appropriate for such a commission. Probably the denial of proper burial was foremost in the minds of the enemies of Gracchus.
1 Plut. TG 20.2Google Scholar; App. BC 1.16Google Scholar; de vir. ill. 64.8Google Scholar; Val. Max. 1.4.2 [epit. Nepot.]; Vell. Pat. 2.6.7; Oros. 5.9.3; though see CG fr. 31 Male. = Plut. CG 3.3 cited belowGoogle Scholar.
2 Vell. Pat. 2.6.7; Plut. CG 17.5Google Scholar—although another tradition has it that the (headless) corpse of Gaius Gracchus was despatched to Cornelia at Misenum (Oros. 5.12.9).
3 App. BC 1.88Google Scholar; de vir. ill. 68.2Google Scholar; Oros. 5.20.4.
4 Val. Max. 9.2.1; Dio 30-35, fr. 109.8. For further references to such treatments, Gall, J. Le, Recherches sur le culte du Tibre (Paris 1953) 88–90Google Scholar.
5 de vir. ill. 64.8Google Scholar (some mss. giving the name as Vispilio, Münzer and Broughton choosing the form Vespillo); cf. Val. Max. 1.4.2 (epit. Nepot.). No doubt pejorative in that it evoked the lowly profession of those who buried the poor under cover of darkness (Fest. pp. 368-369M [= 506L]). It was a designation which came to signify in more general terms any disreputable (usually servile) trade (e.g. Ulp. On Sabirtus 42Google Scholar = Dig. 21.2.31Google Scholar). It also came to suggest (if it did not originally) even more disreputable pursuits. The corp. gloss.lat. (VII. 409Google Scholar) provides sepulchrorum violator and Fulgentius (Serm. Ant. 2) cites the obscure Antidamas of Heracleopolis in his historia Alexandri using the term for corpse-strippers (albeit a usage Fulgentius seems to offer as singular and from which he implicitly withholds endorsement). Servius (in Aen. 11.143Google Scholar), on the other hand, undercuts any sense of unsavoury nuance. Vespillones are simply funeral attendants.
Pride is indicated by the fact that the Lucretii of following generations retained the cognomen; cf. RE 35-36.
6 C. Gracchus' version of events (fr. 31 Male. = Plut. CG 3.3Google Scholar) might suggest that Tiberius' body was dragged through the streets to the Tiber before the eyes of the people: a public spectacle—through the clear rhetorical purpose of that vision (only implicit) disqualifies its admission as a historical datum.
7 Tac. Ann. 6.19Google Scholar. Were the Romans of the second century B.C. inexperienced in this regard? David, (‘Du Comitium à la roche Tarpéienne. Sur certains rituels d'exécution capitale sous la République, les règnes d'Auguste et de Tibère’ in Du châtiment dans la cité. Supplices corporels et peine de mort dans le monde antique Collection de l'École française de Rome 79 [Rome 1984] 172Google Scholar) and Kyle, (Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome [London and New York 1998] 218–9Google Scholar) suggest that the river was customarily used as a means of disposing of bodies, though no concrete evidence can be adduced for the early period (cf. Hinard, F., ‘Spectacle des exécutions et espace urbain’ in L'Urbs. Espace urbain et histoire (Ier siècle avant J.-C.—IIIe siècle après J.-C.) Collection de L'École Française de Rome 98 [Rome 1987] 120Google Scholar, registering 133 as the first attested occasion). Reference to human sacrifice using the Tiber raises a point which must remain moot; and David's reliance (172 n.187) on Polyb. 11.30 (punishment of mutineers in 206 B.C. in New Carthage) to confirm that such use of the Tiber was an ancient practice, does not seem to me to be well founded.
8 On procuraliones utilizing the Tiber, see Le Gall (n.4) 88, citing Liv. 36.37.1-2 (191 B.C.); Obseq. 26 (135 B.C.); in the former case, and presumably in the second, at the behest of the haruspices. It might be noted, however, that in both cases the monstra were first burnt, and the Tiber used (simply?) as a conduit for the dispersal of the ashes; cf. Kyle (n.7) 214-7. Spaeth, B.S. (‘The Goddess Ceres and the Death of Tiberius Gracchus’, Historia 39 [1990] 182–95, esp. 193Google Scholar; cf. The Roman Goddess Ceres [Austin 1996] 77Google Scholar) suggests that the refusal to bury Tiberius and his supporters may be a consequence of the fact that they were suffering consecratio capitis. The signals, like the motivations, as noted above, might have been mixed: ‘The river washed away the remains of the enemies of the state and in the process purified the city.’ (V.M. Hope, ‘Contempt and Respect. The treatment of the corpse in ancient Rome’ in Hope, V.M. and Marshall, E. [eds], Death and Disease in the Ancient City [London and New York 2000] 116Google Scholar; cf. Hinard [n.7] 120; and Kyle [(n.7) 213 & 219] who refers to a consensus of modern scholarship that, by ‘long tradition’, the Tiber served for expedient disposal, purification and the denial of proper burial.) Procuratio seems an odd job for an aedile. Rather, it seems that the bodies were being accorded the added insult of being treated as just so much refuse. John Bodei (‘Dealing with the Dead. Undertakers, executioners and potter's fields in ancient Rome’ in Hope and Marshall, op.cit., 130) thinks it a ‘reasonable, if not absolutely necessary, inference’ (following Mommsen, , Rom. StR 2 2 [1887] 505–17Google Scholar)—from the fact that in Athens demarchoi had a similar function—that ‘at Rome the removal of dead bodies from city streets was considered a part of the cura urbis, a charge that normally fell to the aediles.
9 On that, Plutarch, who preserves both pro- and anti-Gracchan traditions, has no doubts: 
(i.e. of the malevolence of Gracchus’ enemies) 
(sc. of Gracchus) (TG 20.3Google Scholar); cf. Nippel, W., Public Order in Ancient Rome (Cambridge 1995) 64CrossRefGoogle Scholar on analogous (though more elaborate) actions in 121 B.C.
The Gracchan family lived with the ignominy. Twelve years later the (reported) last words of Licinia to C. Gracchus underline the anything but religious nature of the act. ‘If your brother had fallen before Numantia, his body would have been given back to us under the truce, but, as it is, I too may have to pray to some river or sea to yield up yours. What faith can we put in the gods or in the laws of men, when we have seen Tiberius murdered?’ (Plut. CG 15.4Google Scholar; trans. Scott-Kilvert)—though some would suspect Licinia's speech as a literary fiction (cf. Meiser, K., Veber historische Dramen der Römer [München 1887] 35–36Google Scholar, drawing attention to parallels in Homer, Virgil and Ovid), an argument which does not affect the point being made here; cf. Münzer, , Roman Aristocratic Parties and Families (1920Google Scholar; Eng. trans. T. Ridley, Baltimore 1999) 247.
The punitive intent is echoed by Aeneas at Virg. Aen. 10.557–560Google Scholar (a passage cited by Le Gall [n.4] 91). It is of little relevance to Aeneas whether the abandoned body of his enemy Tarquitus is picked over by birds or fish.
10 If the reference of Vell. Pat. at 2.7.3 to the crudeles quaestiones relates to the associates of both Gracchi (as his text has it) then amici and clientes were investigated. Cf. Sail. BJ 31.7Google Scholar, indicating (in the rhetorical context of a tribunician speech [C. Memmius, 111 B.C.]) that the target was the plebs Romana.
11 Plut. TG 20.3–4Google Scholar; cf. Cic. de Amie. 11.37Google Scholar; Val. Max. 4.7.1 (on Blossius).
12 Plutarch (TG 20.3–4Google Scholar) has Blossius interrogated by Scipio Nasica before the consuls; Cicero, on the other hand, makes the dramatic episode a private meeting between Laelius and Blossius—and, at the very least implicitly, has Blossius pre-empting an adverse decision of the consuls by fleeing Rome before an appearance (Cic. de amic. 37Google Scholar). Val. Max. (4.7.1) is closer to the Ciceronian version. Cf. Dudley, D.R., ‘Blossius of Cumae’, JRS 31 (1941) 94–9Google Scholar, esp. 97-8. See also Sordi, M., ‘I maestri greci di Tiberio Gracco e la polemica antigraccana’, in Sodalitas. Scritti in onore di Antonio Guarino I (Naples 1984) 125–36Google Scholar, esp. 130, 134-5, pointing to the way in which the foreign influence of philosophical friends was an integral part of contemporary anti-Gracchan propaganda.
13 Fr. Münzer, RE IIA col. 1379Google Scholar; Gundel, H., RE Vettius 2Google Scholar; Malcovati, H.ORF 178Google Scholar; Gruen, E.S., Roman Politics and the Criminal Courts, 149-78 B.C., (Cambridge, Massachusetts 1968) 62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. Alexander, M.C., Trials in the Late Roman Republic, 149 BC to 50 BC. Phoenix Suppl. 26 (Toronto 1990) 11Google Scholar (no. 19).
14 Perduellio. Eine Studie zu ihrer begrifflichen Abgrenzung im römischen Strafrecht bis zum Ausgang der Republik Münchener Beiträge zur Papyrusforschung und antiken Rechtsgeschichte 29 (München 1938) 246Google Scholar f. n.6
15 Confusion, to the modern mind, might easily arise from the wide range of applications to which the word crux might be put in antiquity. Its designation is to be understood in association with the torment intended (cruciare) rather than with any precise form of execution (cf. Isid. Etym. 5.27.33–34Google Scholar on whether the victims of the crux and the patibulum cruciantur or patiuntur; though in this regard Isidore goes on to draw a clear distinction between the modes of death).
In German scholarship, suspension on/from an arbor infelix and associated punishments are customarily discussed under the rubric of crucifixion; cf. Hengel, M., Crucifixion in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross (trans. Bowden, J., London and Philadelphia 1977)Google Scholar esp. chap. 6. In the bibliography provided therein, at 39 n.l, reference is made to Gamsey, P., Social Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire (Oxford 1970) 128–9Google Scholar n.10. Gamsey in fact distinguishes this punishment from crucifixion.
Being tied to a stake (palus) for the purposes of a beating or being thus left for dead (by exposure, starvation or the attack of animals) might be designated as condemnation ad crucem (Cic. 2 Verr. 5.10–12Google Scholar; cf. Saglio, E., ‘Crux’ in Daremberg, Ch. and Saglio, , Diet, des Ant. Grecques et Romaines [Paris 1887; Graz 1969] 1.2.1574Google Scholar n.54 for further references).
The fact that C. Gracchus alluded in two speeches against Popillius Laenas (fr. 36 Male. [= Fest., p.136, 12L], fr. 38 Male. [= Fest., p. 136, 16-19L]) to the ‘baneful cross’ (malo cruce) might also be used to fuel (wrongly in my opinion) the argument that the Romans could loosely define this supplicium more maiorum as crucifixion. The coincidence is teasing. But the identification would be premature. Festus provides a single sentence as a context for one instance; nothing for the other. Eo exemplo instituto dignus fuit, qui malo cruce perirei. It would be foolhardy to believe that a sentence so isolated from context can be confidently interpreted, but the implication that Gracchus thought the (unknown) victim worthy of the punishment surely militates against the allusion being to the victims of 132 whose worth Gracchus would have been promoting in an altogether different way. [But we cannot know what the exemplum was (whether the form of punishment or the victim's behaviour), and on that point hangs the interpretation of the sentence.]
16 e.g., as at 2.7.12 (crucibus adfixit); 2.7.ext.1 (cruci … suffigebantur); 6.3.5 (cruci fixit, adfixit or suffixit); 6.9.15 (crucibus adfixit); 6.9.ext. 5 (cruci adfixit); cf. 8.4.2.
17 Cf. M. Hengel (n.15) chap. 8 ‘The “slaves” punishment’.
18 Dio 2, fr. 11.6 (trans. E. Cary).
19 Zonaras 7.8.
20 ibid. 9.10.8.
21 Cf. Dio loc.cit. (on Tarquin's ‘tyrannical' behaviour); Dio 30-35, fr. 104.6 (on Fimbria). See also 49.22.6 for the anomalous (and not strictly parallel) execution of the Hasmonean Antigonus. Cf. Hengel (n.15) 29 n.21.
22 though the precise translation of this as treason is problematic—see Bauman, R.A., Crime and Punishment in Ancient Rome (London & New York 1996) 72–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
23 Again, the applicability of a ‘treason’ charge is problematic (loc.cit.). Further on the supplicium more maiorum, the punishment allotted to Horatius, and the relationship of these to treason and the penalty prescribed by the lex horrendi carminis, see Cantarella, E., Isupplizi capitali in Grecia e a Roma (Milan 1991) 204–10Google Scholar.
24 Thrasea's reference (via Tacitus) to the noose (to the carnifex and laqueus) need not distract. His reference is to the effective abolition, in favour of milder punishments, of the standard form of execution (i.e. strangulation in prison). His point is to highlight the relative enormity of the ‘ancient’ punishment being proposed. Other references to the penalty will be found in Mommsen, Th., Römisches Strafrecht (1899; repr. Graz 1955) 918Google Scholar n. 5.
25 His ignorance is possible but less likely in view of the incident which arose from the commuting of Antistius Sosianus’ sentence (and of Nero's expression of pique on that occasion, which marked the re-introduction of trials maiestatis minutae) and his affected intervention, subsequent to their suicides, in the case of L. Antistius Vetus, Sextia and Pollitta in A.D. 65 against the senate's equally artificial pronouncement of execution more maiorum (Tac. Ann. 16.10–11Google Scholar).
26 … [Nero] legitque se hostem a senatu iudicatum et quaeri, ut puniatur more maiorum, interrogauitque quale id genus esset poenae; et cum comperisset nudi hominis ceruicem inseri furcae, corpus uirgis ad necem caedi … Perhaps unhelpfully, Eutropius (Brev. 7.15Google Scholar) adds that Nero, his head inserted in furcam and subsequently beaten, was to be thrown from the Tarpeian Rock, exciting remembrance of what turns out to be an ultimately elusive reference to the Gracchani suffering that fate (see below, n.32). Cf. [Vict.] Epit. de Caes. 5.7Google Scholar: …ut more maiorum collo in furcam coniecto virgis ad neceT caederetur; Fuhrmann, M., ‘Verbera’ RE Suppl. IX 1589-97, esp. 1590–91Google Scholar.
Last, CAH 1 9.36–37Google Scholar, was alert to the implications of the formula of the senatorial decree against the Gracchani but inexplicably suggested that the senate's resolution need not strictly be (or was not) interpreted in that fashion. He referred rather to ‘various methods, all of sufficient brutality’ by which the Gracchan following was destroyed. He perhaps had in mind the (seemingly) singular execution of Villius, on whom discussion follows.
27 which Isidore reports was commonly equated with condemnation to the patibulum (Etym. 5.27.34Google Scholar; cf. Blanchet, J.A., ‘Furca, Furcilla’ in Daremberg, Ch. and Saglio, E., Diet, des Ant. Grecques et Romaines [Paris 1896; Graz 1969] 2.2.1409Google Scholar), a penalty which gained alternative popularity in late (Christian) antiquity, when veneration for death on the cross prompted its abeyance. The penalty was initially still used for delinquent slaves and freedmen in the reign of Constantine but was later abolished. In the Justinianic compilations, furca has replaced crux. References are given by Humbert, G., ‘Crux’ in Daremberg, Ch. and Saglio, E., Diet, des Ant. Grecques et Romaines (Paris 1887; Graz 1969) 1.2.1573-4 n.43Google Scholar. In fact, the patibulum was considered a quicker mode of death (and hence a lesser penalty) in that it effected more or less immediate death by strangulation (Isid. loc.cit.; for an explanation of its mechanics, utilizing early-medieval iconography, Saglio in Daremberg and Saglio [cited above] 1.2.1575 [and fig. 2085]), Crucifixion (and attendant exposure) inflicted a more lingering torment.
28 Although I know of only one example of his doing so, at 1.7.4. Ditto (or perhaps, rather, alternatively), the patibulum, as at 9.2.3 (patibulo adfixum). Again, in furcam tollere/ad furcam damnatio might cover a multiplicity of forms, but it too suggests suspension (furcae suspendere).
29 See above for the editorial comment of Valerius Maximus at 2.7.12; cf. Hengel (n.15) 29n.21.
30 On which see Walters, J., ‘Invading the Roman Body: Manliness and Impenetrability in Roman Thought’, in Hallett, J.P. and Skinner, M.B. (eds), Roman Sexualities (Princeton 1997) 29–43Google Scholar. See nn. 19-25 on the humiliation attendant upon beatings, and p. 40 on the paradoxical status of Roman soldiery vis-a-vis beating. With regard to humiliation, Callistratus (Digest 48.19.28Google Scholar) reports that beatings were class-specific, being visited upon tenuiores and not honestiores.
31 The dogs that were annually sacrificed in the vicinity of the Circus Maximus by being suspended alive in furca (canes pendunt inter aedem luventatis et Summani vivi in furca sabucea armo fixi; Plin. NH 29.57Google Scholar) seem to have been a ritual reminder of the treasonable negligence of their forebears in 390 B.C. (Scullard, H.H., Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic [London 1981] 170Google Scholar; cf. McDonough, C.M., Mnemosyne 52 [1999] 465Google Scholar [doubting the etymology]). Intriguingly, Pliny remembers this amongst the priscorum mores—though no attendant beating is recorded.
Punishment more maiorum approaches most closely condemnation ad furcam and it is worthwhile noting that the later sources associate condemnation ad furcam with inter alia those linked with seditious activity. But whereas condemnation ad furcam appears to have been a relatively routine punishment, particularly for humiliores (albeit accounted at the most extreme ‘grade’ of capital punishment [Callistratus (Digest 48.19.28Google Scholar)]), the naming of the supplicium more maiorum together with the way it is described at Suet. Nero 49.2Google Scholar suggests a degree of specialness which was perhaps supplied by the beating, bringing it into line precisely with the ancient punishment meted out to those who had defiled a Vestal Virgin (Zonaras 7.8), and all in all appears concerned with criminality which endangered the state. Its exact relationship to crucifixion is problematic.
32 Unless we are to read this phrase as denoting precipitation ‘from the upper level of the prison into its subterranean, partially submerged basement’—i.e. abandoned unto death (cf. David [n.7] 132-3, 139-46).
Thrown from the Tullianum: such was the fate of victims of the Tullianum in the imperial period, thrown onto the Gemonian Steps (Kyle [n.7] 218). No unequivocal republican evidence exists for the Scalae Gemoniae (Richardson, L. jr., A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome [Baltimore and London 1992] 345Google Scholar; Coarelli, F., ‘Scalae Gemoniae’ in Steinby, E.M. [ed.], Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae 4 [Roma 1999] 241Google Scholar) nor, Richardson argues, for such a use of the Gradus Monetae which are thought to have preceded them (op.cit., 182, 345; cf. Wiseman, T.P., ‘Gradus Monetae’ in Steinby, E.M. [ed.], Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae 2 [Roma 1995] 372Google Scholar), though this is to deny the historicity of one tradition (Val. Max. 6.3.3a) which held that the corpse of the disgraced M. Claudius Clineas (leg. 236 B.C.) was exposed there (… corpus contumelia carceris et detestando Gemoniarum scalarum nota foedauit); cf. Dio 12 fr. 45, Zonaras 8, 18 for the alternative tradition that Clineas was banished. Presumably Richardson would argue that the evidence of Val. Max. was anachronistic and unreliable in this topographical regard. But in the passages dealing with the fates of Clineas and the familiares Gracchorum, the former explicitly, the latter implicitly, Val. Max. indicates that he thought that such exposure was a Republican practice; cf. Levick, B., Tiberius the Politician (London 1976) 283 n.51CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is also to deny the implications of the rhetoric supposedly used at the trial of Lucius Scipio in 187 (Liv. 38.59.10) which David ([n.7] 172 n.188), following Münzer, dismisses as anachronistic.
But see, however, David's strong argument (155-175) for exposure of the corpses of the condemned being a deliberate (symbolic) development of the early Empire.
The suggestion that rupe be read instead of robore appeared in the margin of the respected Berne codex of Valerius Maximus and subsequently appeared in some European editions (remaining the suggested reading in the Gamier ed. of Pierre Constant [1935]) but elsewhere will not be found in modem editions. It was rejected in Kempf s Teubner text of 1888 (and subsequently by Combés [Budé 1997] and Briscoe [Teubner 1998]), Kempf citing Paul. Diac. (Fest. p. 264 M): Robus quoque in carcere dicitur is locus, quo praecipitatur maleficorum genus, quod ante arcis robusteis includebatur. Adding contextual support, App. BC 1.26 reports that the followers of C. Gracchus and Flaccus were incarcerated before Opimius gave the order that they should be strangled; cf. Oros. 5.12.9: Flaccus adulescens in robore meatus est. Livy's summary (Per. 61) has Opimius throwing uncondemned citizens in carcerem. Val. Max. 9.12.6 has Herennius Siculus committing suicide while being led in carcerem; cf. Vell. Pat. 2.7.2. (Constant held that the reading de rupe was the easier to explain—in a sentence taken in isolation perhaps, but not in context.) The reference at App. BC 1.16Google Scholar to followers of Ti. Gracchus being driven off the edge (sc. of the Capitol) is not a reference to precipitation from the Tarpeian Rock (pace H. White).
33 Sallust's text probably underlines a parallelism between the persecution of the plebs Romana in 132 and 121 and no more; but might just be read to suggest that the followers of Ti. Gracchus were also killed in prison.
34 e.g., Brunnenmeister, E., Das Tödtungsverbrechen im altrömischen Recht (Leipzig 1887) 185 n.2Google Scholar (at a loss to explain why a follower of Ti. Gracchus should be accorded that particular treatment); Mommsen (n.24) 922; Greenidge, A.H.J., The Legal Procedure of Cicero's Time (London 1901; repr. New York 1971) 384 and n.1Google Scholar; Dull, R., ‘Zur Bedeutung der Poena Cullei im römischen Strafrecht’, in Atti del Congresso Internazionale di Diritto Romano Roma II (Pavia 1935) 363–408, esp. 367-8, 377, 382, 390, 407Google Scholar; Hinard (n.7) 119; Alexander (n.13) 9-10; cf. Gruen quoted below.
This is not the place to discuss the much debated issue of the etymology of parricidium or the Roman definitions of the word cum ‘ordinary homicide’; see the article of Magdelain, A., ‘Paricidas’ in Du châtiment dans la cité. Supplices corporels et peine de mort dans le monde antique Collection de l'École française de Rome 79 (Rome 1984) 549–571Google Scholar; also Strachan-Davidson, J.L., Problems of the Roman Criminal Law I (Oxford 1912; Amsterdam 1969), 21–23Google Scholar; Meylan, Ph., L'étymologie du mot parricide a travers la formule «paricidas esto» de la loi romaine (Lausanne 1928)Google Scholar; Gernet, L., ‘Paricidas’, RPh 63 (ser. 3, no. 11) (1937) 13–29Google Scholar; and Cloud, J.D., ‘Parricidium: from the lex Numae to the lex Pompeia de parricidiis’, ZRG 88 (1971) 1–66, esp. 2-18Google Scholar.
35 See Lassen, E.M. (‘The Ultimate Crime. Parricidium and the Concept of Family in the late Roman Republic and Early Empire’, Classica et Mediaevalia 43 [1992] 147–161, esp. 155-156Google Scholar) for Cicero's rhetorical use of the concept. Cf. Dull ([n.34] 407-408) and Bauman ([n.22] 72-73) arguing for a close connection between perduellio and parricidium. (Tondo, S.[Leges regiae e paricidas (Firenze 1973) 157; cf. 166Google Scholar] believes that Villius was answering to a charge of treason.) On the other hand, Briquel, Dominique (‘Sur le mode d'exécution en cas de parricide et en cas de perduellio’, Mélanges d'Archéologie et d'Histoire de l'École Française de Rome. Antiquité 92 [1980] 87–107Google Scholar) would insist that between the punishments for parricidium and treason there was a clear and profound distinction in the Roman mind, the origins of which were to be found in indo-european antiquity. Briquel spies a deep significance in the differences between a death by drowning, as prescribed for parricides, and by ‘suspension’ as prescribed for those condemned for perduellio. Cantarella ([n.23] 287), however, has rejected altogether Briquel's anthropological distinctions between archaic Roman punishments, and contests the conception of the poena cullei as death by drowning. Yet she maintains that it is a highly distinct punishment—which is the important point. [As a matter of course, then, Briquel notes (88 n.5) the fact that immersion (the essential factor) is not mentioned in the case of Villius, and expresses doubts that Villius’ punishment relates to parricidium (on which important observation, see further below [and n.66]). If Villius’ punishment was to be seen in a context of treasonable acts, B. would have regarded the ‘sack treatment’ as altogether inappropriate.] But, then why Villius singularly? Erich Gruen ([n.13] 61-62) suggested that Plutarch had erroneously placed a domestic criminal in this political context: ‘The punishment of Villius, an unknown personality, indicates that he was convicted of parricide, and that Plutarch has inadvertently included him among the victims of political persecution.’
36 The S.P. Scott translation of Modestinus Pandects 12 (The Civil Law [Cincinnati 1932] 11.66Google Scholar) gives virgis sanguineis as ‘rods stained with his blood'. Strachan-Davidson (n. 34) 25 is inclined to believe that the rods were made from the wood of a special shrub, and that the shrub had medicinal or magical qualities, this pointing to the primitive and ritual nature of the punishment. Hitzig (RE 4 col. 1747) describes the virgae as ‘red rods’, though he is credited by Strachan-Davidson (citing ‘Tödtungsverbrechen’ in the Revue Pénale Suisse [1896] 41Google Scholar) as suggesting that the rods were merely painted red, a view followed by Radin, M. (‘The Lex Pompeia and the Poena Cullei’, JRS 10 [1920] at 119 in note 4Google Scholar; but cf. the reference in Radin's text to ‘either blood-red rods, or rods of a special shrub’).
Strachan-Davidson is surely correct in his inclination to see Modestinus’ reference as an arboreal classification; cf. Plin. NH 1.24, which Strachan-Davidson does not cite, making explicitly clear what was implicit in Book 24 itself; that virga sanguinea is an independent species of tree. See also the full subsequent discussions by Düll ([n.34] 396-401, exploring the ritual symbolism) and Bayet, J. (‘Le rite du fécial et le cornouiller magique’, MEFRA 52 [1935] 29–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar, identifying the virgae sanguineae as the ‘female’ of the cornel tree [cf. Plin. NH 16.47, 105, 211 on the sex of these treesGoogle Scholar], arguing that the designation was more than simply classificatory, and exploring the suggested magical attributes of this kind of wood).
37 Corp. Gloss. Lot. iv, 502, 3; v, 593, 57Google Scholar.
38 Full descriptions will be found at Justin. Inst. 4.18.6 and Modestinus, Pandects 12 (apud Digest 48.9.9Google Scholar); cf. also [Cic.] ad Herenn. 1.23Google Scholar; Cic. de Invent. 2.149Google Scholar; Rose. Amer. 30, 70, 71–2Google Scholar; Mommsen (n.24) 921-3, esp. 922; Hitzig, RE 4 cols. 1747–8Google Scholar.
39 Strachan-Davidson (n.34) 21. Cf. Briquel (n.35) 88 (and n.8), citing the work of L. Gemet. It is often assumed, even acknowledging the absence of explicit ancient testimony, that the process was an antique one. See, for example, Le Gall (n.4) 92 & n.4.
Etruscan roots have been discerned, as has ‘le caractère infernal de la cérémonie’ (Bayet [n.36] 66-68, esp. 67 nn.1-3; cf. Le Gall 93)—all of which is highly speculative.
40 This text might invite a belief that the penalty was an ancient one; and so it is read by Cornell, T., ‘Some Observations on the Crimen Incesti’, in Le délit religieux dans la cité antique (Table ronde, Rome, 6-7 Avril 1978) Collection de L'École Française de Rome 48 (Rome 1981) 27–37Google Scholar, esp. 36, assuming that Atilius was accorded the traditional punishment for parricidium, which was ‘revived' in 100 B.C. (sic).
41 (n.34) 28 n.34. Alternatively, Cloud suggests that Dionysius may have been guilty of an anachronism.
42 A third option (i.e. that the penalty as applied to parricide followed from this occasion) may be offered by Zonaras 7.11; cf. the garbled version in Tzetzes (comm. Lycophr. Alexandra [line 1279]). Whatever the merits of Zonaras’ contribution, Cloud ([n.34] 28 n.34) again champions an alternative reading—i.e. that Zonaras is not saying that the punishment meted out to Atilius (Zonaras gives Acilius) was the fairly direct origin of the penalty with regard to parricide but that ‘from that [occasion] subsequently the penalty came to prevail with regard to parricides’. In any case, it would be foolhardy to base an historical argument on the item.
43 Whether or not the penalty rested on law is another question; see Cloud (n.34) 36. For a review of scholarship devoted to the question of whether practice in this regard rested on a lex, see Zuccotti, F., Sludi Biscardi 7 (1987) 231 n.2Google Scholar.
44 The most illustrious champion of the penalty's primitive antiquity was Mommsen ([n.24] 922-3). For an argument against that point of view, see Cloud (n.34) 26-8, his citation of Senec. de Clem. 1.23.1Google Scholar supporting a telling point.
45 Note, with no reference to the animals, though that might be put down, in this instance, to abbreviation.
46 Publicius siquidem Malleolus servis adnitentibus matrem suam interfecit; damnatus parricida insutusque in culleum et in mare proieclus est; inpleueruntque Romani et facinus et poenam, unde et Solon Atheniensis decernere non ausus fuerat, dum fieri posse non credit, et Romani, qui se ortos a Romulo scirent, etiam hoc fieri posse intellegentes supplicium singulare sanxerunt.
47 Cloud (n.34) doubts the name Hostius, merely for the reasons that it suggests mean origins, and is uncommon. He proposes instead Hostilius (38-9). Lauria, M., Index 9 (1980) 7 & 21 n.70Google Scholar entertains the suggestion.
48 (n.34) 30 ff. Cloud's thorough study is one to which the present article owes a great debt.
49 ibid. 30-31.
50 Mommsen (n.24) 614 n.1 (‘apparently the first matricide’); Münzer, , RE Publicius 17Google Scholar; Nardi, E., L'Otre dei Parricidi e le Bestie Incluse (Milan 1980) 65–8Google Scholar; cf. Latte, K., RE Suppl. 7 col. 1615Google Scholar; Tondo (n.35) 145 and n.149. The same line has been taken up by Cantarella ([n.23] 264 ff., see esp. 274-6), though she mistakenly believes that Plutarch reports Hostius being condemned to ‘the sack’ (nor does she think that Hostius was the first person so condemned, believing that the Plautine evidence [discussed in more detail below] is to be dated before 214, which demonstrates, to her mind, that the Roman public was familiar with the ‘sack treatment’ by that date. As is well known, the chronology of Plautus’ plays is much debated. Other scholars would date the relevant play to the 190s.). The mistaken belief that Plutarch reports that Hostius suffered the poena cullei is not hers alone; cf. Tondo (above) 145; Santalucia, B., ‘Omicidio’ [dir. rom.], in Enciclopedia del Diritto 29 (Milan 1979) 889Google Scholar; Guarino, A., ‘Variazioni sul Tema di Malleolo’, Labeo 35 (1989) 79–91, esp. 79 n.5Google Scholar; Bauman (n.22) 181-2 n.28 (following Cantarella). Cantarella wrongly cites Lauria ([n.47] 7) as saying that Hostius was the first victim of the ‘sack treatment’ (Lauria implicitly believes that Hostius suffered the ‘sack treatment’ but explicitly says only that Hostius was the first parricide in [Roman] tradition); Cloud (n.34) would also argue that Hostius was the first victim of the sack (see above), but he is certainly not under any illusion that Plutarch confirms the argument.
With regard to primacy, there is also the hypothesis, put forward with great caution, that Malleolus was recorded as the first to be thrown into the sea, as opposed to the Tiber; Guarino, loc.cit., pointing out that the manual ad Herennium (1.23) and Cicero (de Invent. 2.149Google Scholar) have the condemned destined for flowing water. There is also the argument that Malleolus was marked as the first to be sentenced by a quaestio which Guarino disallows. For the argument that Malleolus was so judged (though not arguing that he was the first to be so), see Cloud (n.34) 44 (contra Gruen [n.13] 262Google Scholar), followed by Santalucia (above) 889 n.30.
51 (n.34) 31; cf. Guarino (n.50) loc.cit. arguing that the Latin cannot mean that Malleolus was the first matricide.
52 For a review of arguments regarding Malleolus’ ‘primacy’, see Nardi (n.50) loc. cit.; Zuccotti (n.43) 233 n.5. This will be pursued further in J.L. Beness and T.W. Hillard, ‘Towards a history of Roman reactions to parenticide in the 2nd century B.C.’ (forth- coming).
53 With regard to the first point, for what it is worth, Cicero attests to the rarity of the crime (Rose. Amer. 37-8), though admittedly it was an assertion which much helped his case (i.e. inducing in the jurors a disbelief that such a thing could happen); cf. 64-8. It is interesting to note that Cicero does not mention the case of Malleolus in this speech.
54 E.g. Fraenkel, E., Plautinisches im Plautus (Berlin 1922) 148Google Scholar [= Elementi Plautini in Plauto (Florence 1960) 140–141Google Scholar]; Ernout, A., Plaute 3 (Paris 1935) 141 n.1Google Scholar; Duckworth, G.E., T. Macci Plauti Epidicus (Princeton 1940) 296–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar (for references to many other commentaries); Segal, E., Roman Laughter. The Comedy of Plautus (Cambridge, Mass. 1968) 184 n.49Google Scholar; see also Düll (n.34) 400-1 (extending the Plautine allusion to the poena cullei in the Pseudolus from 1.209 [see the following note] to 229). Not all agree, e.g., Buck, CH., A Chronology of the Plays of Plautus (Baltimore 1940) 69 n.8Google Scholar.
55 Lines 209-14. See Ussing, J.L., Commentarius in Plauti Comoedias 2 (Copenhagen 1883-1892; Hildesheim 1972) 316Google Scholar on the definition of pergula, citing Juvenal, Satires 8.168–218Google Scholar (for the milieu).
Taking up the proposal of Sturtevant that this is a case of para-prosdokia, with the audience anticipating that Ballio is threatening to drop her sack in mare (into the sea), Cloud ([n.34] 32) suggests that a better pun would have been achieved if the audience had rather expected in profluentem (i.e. into running water) as suggested by the Ciceronian evidence (cf. Cic. de Invent. 2.149; [Cic.] ad Herenn. 1.23).
The continuation of Ballio's threat to the girl (as it stands in most editions) startles: under the porch, her bed will give her no rest. Ain, excetra tu? (line 218) If a snake had featured in the original form of the poena cullei (on which dubious proposition, see below), the reference might have further electrified the audience, especially if the uncommon word (thought to occur three times in Plautus [Lodge, G., Lexicon Plautinum 1 (Leipzig 1924) 557Google Scholar]), does not occur (i.e. as a common vulgar insult) in a hostile tag at Casina 644 (where, despite the fact that it is included in the standard Oxford edition, that precise reading of the text, which occurs in none of the mss. is doubted [cf. Ussing on Pseud. 219]). Lines 218-24 in the Pseudolus have, however, also been called into question by some (while defended by others [see the commentary of M.M. Willcock (Bristol 1987) for further references]). While in doubt, they cannot have a place in discussions which seek to pin down allusions to the sack treatment.
56 Leo, F., Vindicias Plautinas Index Lectionum in Academia Rostochiensi (Rostock 1887–1888) 3–12, esp. 3-6Google Scholar; cf. Cloud (n.34) 32-6.
57 An idea of the startling range of readings of this ‘difficult passage’ can be seen in Duckworth's commentary ([n.54] loc. cit.), which very few will read without giving up hope of a confident interpretation.
58 Lewis and Short's Latin Dictionary indeed gives perenticida as ‘cutpurse’. Pericida is the actual reading of the text favoured by some editors.
59 [Cic.] ad Herenn. 1.23Google Scholar; Cic. de Invent. 2.149Google Scholar. This association is spelled out by Ussing ([n.55] 1.642-3), also following Leo. The lines seem full of potential double meanings, with the word used for ‘leading off (ductitare) also meaning ‘to deceive’ (as explored by Ernout [n.54] and Duckworth [n.54])—i.e. that the father will be deceived (not so much taken away as ‘taken in’) with a money-bag. Also, on the play of words, Lauria (n.47) 7.
60 Taking the discussion full circle, the certitude of scholars that there are here references to the ‘sack treatment’ has led to attempts to date the play on that basis (i.e. that it might refer to the ‘punishment’ of Hostius); see Duckworth's commentary [n.54] for references that go back, again, to Leo.
61 Adams, J.N., The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Baltimore 1982) 75Google Scholar for the sexual connotations of words indicating containers, bags and the like. We may also allow for an obscene word play on culeos qua cuius; Pierrugues, P., Glossarium Eroticum Linguae Latinae (1826; Amsterdam 1965) 158Google Scholar citing Priap. Carm. 68, 6Google Scholar; cf. on cuius, Adams (above) 110-17; and Adams, , ‘Cuius, Clunes and their Synonyms in Latin’, Gioita 59 (1981) 231–64Google ScholarPubMed. In truth, however, I fail to see how any such allusions would fit this particular passage.
62 Serm. Ant. 53.
63 See note 52.
64 Mommsen's suggestion ([n.24] 922) that the procedure might have varied in the detail from occasion to occasion according to the inclinations of the magistrates involved seems to be no more than a way of accommodating varying evidence. Hitzig (n.38) also suggested that the inclusion of animals may have been dependent upon their availability—in effect that ritual (or legal prescription) compromised with circumstance. Similarly, Cantarella ([n.23] 267-8) is ready, to believe that ‘each time [that the penalty was invoked]’ ‘one or more animals’ were utilised in antique (peasant) practice ‘evidently chosen according to the case, the place and the possibility.’ [i.e. before being prescribed in later legislation] She questions, for example, the availability of a monkey on every occasion it was necessary to execute a parricide. I find it difficult to believe that la fantasia contadina could play such a role in what otherwise seems to be such a dictated procedure (if not ritual). Needless to say, those who believe in the antiquity of the ‘rite’ and seek (misguidedly in my opinion for the reasons given above in the text) primitive symbolism in the animals enclosed in the sack would reject (and have rejected) Radin's interpretation (in the following note). Cf. Le Gall (n.4) 93-4, n.9 on l'ancienneté du supplice.
65 Cf. Brunnenmeister (n.34) 188; Meylan (n.34) 48-9 n.1; Düll (n.34) 367. This aspect of the developed penalty has been much discussed. Radin (n.36) suggests that the lex Pompeia introduced the viper, that Claudius introduced the ape, and Constantine the dog and the cock. For other lengthy discussions of the possible significance of each animal, see Düll (n.34) 370-94, esp. 380-5, 389-394; Nardi (n.50) 131-42; and Cantarella (n.23) 268-74; cf. Tondo (n.35) 154-7.
66 Meylan (n.34) 48 n. 1; H. Gundel, RE Villius 2 citing CH. Brecht ([n. 14] 246 f. n.6); Radin (n.36) 122; Nardi (n. 50) 47.
67 Although Brecht ([n. 14] 247 n.6) does not regard death by drowning as essential almost every other scholar who has dealt with the topic has regarded this ritual exclusion of the monstrum from the world of the living as integral. Cf. Cic. Rose. Amer. 71-2.
Düll ([n.34] 367 and the other page refs. cited therein) takes Villius’ fate as an example of the poena cullei and as the first reported instance of the employment of animals, which were not otherwise used until the time of the Principate—but thinks what happened to Villius was an anomaly (eine Besonderheit) which had nothing to do, in any case, with parricide (cf. 377), but rather with treason (though see 407-8, again making specific reference to the Villius incident, for his belief, shared with others, that parricidium and perduellio are to be seen as closely connected in terms of archaic Roman abhorrence and for the continuity of such a mentality into later Roman eras).
68 Brecht (n. 14) 247-8 n.6; cf. Nardi (n.50) 47.
69 His reference to Demetrius 27 where an aggeion containing money (no more or no less than due to a highly desirable courtesan) could be moved to and fro by hand is more appropriate.
70 The following reference notations are those from the texts used by the Ibycus CD-Rom program.
71 (containing unspecified liquids) Numa 10.5Google Scholar, Moralia 81C, 721B, 782E, 801C; (water) Romulus 20.7Google Scholar, Antony 47.3Google Scholar, Mor. 690B, 690C, 690D, 949C, 952A, 954D; (milk) Aemilius Paulus 14.5Google Scholar; (bath water) Alexander 35.9Google Scholar; (poisonous water) Alexander IIA; (sacred water) Antony 34.2Google Scholar; (poison antidote) Mor. 42D; (sea water) Mor. 913C; (wine) Mor. 676B, 702A, 1088E; (olive oil) Mor. 702B-C; (wine, oil, water) Mor. 507F; (honey) Mor. 628C, 701F; (must) Mor. 918E; (a medicinal mixture of hot wax and galbanum) Mor. 1009F. Possibly to be categorized here also are Mor. 47E, 48C, 691A, 695B, and 721A. Ditto the vessel to be filled at Mor. 147F where it is said that the man of sense does not come to dinner to be filled as an aggeion but to partake in conversation, or to learn from it. With moderation, of course; talkative persons are likened to empty aggeia, void of sense but full of noise (Mor. 502D). The water-bearing aggeion at Mor. 914A has actually been supplied to the text courtesy of the editor Daniel Wytten-bach. In the incomplete work Desire and Grief—Psychical or Bodily Phenomena? (included in addenda sometimes called ‘Tyrwhitt's Fragments’ but generally agreed not to be a work of Plutarch), it is said to be difficult to determine whether the contents of some aggeia have been spoiled due to an innate flaw or a fault in the container (6).
72 Aemilius Paulus 32.8Google Scholar ([open?] vessels containing coined silver each of which contained three talents and was carried by four men in triumphal procession), 33.3 ([open?] vessels containing coined gold to the value of three talents each carried by men in triumphal procession); Lysander 16.1–2Google Scholar (coined silver, gifts, crowns); Antony 28.10Google Scholar (container for many large golden cups); Demetrius 27.13Google Scholar (a hand-held money container).
73 Lycurgus 12.5–6Google Scholar (container for ‘lots’ of bread); Pericles 6.2Google Scholar (cavity or space within the cranium); Alexander 22.10Google Scholar (containers for bedding and clothing); Tiberius Gracchus 17.1–2Google Scholar (cage or box in which augural birds were carried); Mor. 39A (where the undisceming ear is likened to an aggeion of no value which is filled with anything of little quality); Mor. 130C (applied to the digestive organs of the body); Mor. 392E (time as a receptacle of birth and decay); Mor. 407B (where poetical form, metre, rhythm and the like, are spoken of as providing aggeia to ‘contain’ the unadorned words of oracles); Mor. 423D (equating to something which ‘in nature’ contains seeds [i.e. a pod]); Mor. 503D (container for wheat); Mor. 515F (container in which Lamia's eyes stored); Mor. 637A, 638A, 689D (something like a vessel within the body, classified alongside organs and inner ‘apertures’); Mor. 698B (the stomach); Mor. 698D (the oesophagus); Mor. 829A (containers for moneylenders’ records); Mor. 983B (the interior of a bee's hive); and Mor. 983D (used of [the interior of] a halcyon's nest).
74 An aggeion could be the buoyant chest or coffin holding the body of Osiris with a lid fastened by nails and molten lead (Mor. 356E, 357F). At Cato Minor 38, the treasures that the younger Cato was transferring to Rome after his annexation of Cyprus are said to have been contained in aggeia holding two talents and five hundred drachmas worth of silver apiece. To each of these he attached a long rope and a huge piece of cork, faci- litating their retrieval should the transporting vessel sink. Aggeia could be porous (or open-topped?) containers for salt carried by a mule, able on a particular occasion to be filled with wool and sponges, allowing Thales to fool an overly clever pack animal (Mor. 971B).
75 Antony 85.
76 or récipient, as Meylan (n.34) offers (48 n. 1).
77 Mor. 257D.
78 ‘placing him in a cage with vipers and serpents’; Spaeth, , The Roman … (n.8) 77Google Scholar.
79 ibid. 11 and figs. 2, 5, 7, 8, 20, 21, 34b.
80 Spaeth, ‘The Goddess Ceres (n.8) esp. 193-194.
It might also be worth noting that ‘hanging’ or suspensum was part of the consecratio capitis made to Ceres in cases of wilful damage to crops (Plin. NH 18.12Google Scholar) and that Ceres was the deity to be placated in the event of attempted tyranny and violations of tribunician sacrosanctitas, to all of which our attention is usefully drawn by Spaeth who underlines the relevance of such ritual punishments to 133 B.C. (‘The Goddess Ceres …’ [n.8] 182-195; The Roman … [n.8] 73ff.). But Spaeth does not link these with the supplicium more maiorum inflicted on the Gracchani; cf. Hengel (n.15) 39 n.1 suggesting the identification of ‘hanging up for Ceres’ with suspension from the arbor infelix.
81 Villius was perhaps being consigned to the avenging Furies—serpentibus atris (in whose proximity the ultrices Dirae cause no surprise); Virg. Aen. 4.471Google Scholar; cf. 7.375; 12.848 and the other references supplied by Dull (n.34) 390. While I do not agree with Düll that Villius’ fate is properly to be considered under the poena cullei, his thorough discussion of the symbolic potential of the animals connected with the sack penalty remains highly useful in this regard (386-394; cf. 382 for the [rejected] image of the snake as representative of benevolent spirits).
82 Indeed Düll, believing that Villius received the poena cullei (albeit not literally for parricide in his case [see above, n.34]), goes so far as to suggest that memory of Villius inspired the addition of snakes to the sack in the early imperial period (368). Villius’ death should perhaps be registered within the context of damnatio ad bestias, in which case possibly a public spectacle—or as one of its earliest examples. The practice of throwing delinquents to wild animals had been introduced by (or, at least, is first recorded for) L. Aemilius Paullus in 167—a precedent taken up by his son Scipio Aemilianus in 146 (Liv. Per. 51Google Scholar; Val. Max. 2.7.13-4)—possibly under Punic inspiration (Polyb. 1.84.8 [Hamilcar, after the First Punic War]). The practice, then, had been established (at least for non-Romans) (Lafaye, G., ‘Venatio’ in Daremberg, Ch. and Saglio, E., Diet, des Ant. Grecques et Romaines [Paris 1919; Graz 1969] 5.707–8Google Scholar; cf. Ville, G., La gladiature en Occident des origines à la mort de Domitien BEFAR 245 [Rome 1981] 55CrossRefGoogle Scholar [suggesting that the executions ordered by Paullus took place as part of his games at Amphi-polis]; Golvin, J.-C., L'Amphithéâtre romain. Essai sur la théorization de sa forme et de ses fonctions Publication du Centre Pierre Paris [UA 991] 18 [Paris 1988]Google Scholar 22 [underscoring the fact that the executions by Scipio's command formed part of the celebrations of the latter's triumph]). If the execution of Villius falls under this rubric, it is, to my knowledge, the first recorded use of reptiles for the purpose—and perhaps in itself is a precedent for such damnationes in general (as a punishment for Roman citizens).
