Poena cullei

Poena cullei (Latin, 'penalty of the sack')[1] under Roman law was a type of death penalty imposed on a subject who had been found guilty of parricide.

The punishment consisted of being sewn up in a leather sack, with an assortment of live animals including a dog, snake, monkey, and a chicken or rooster, and then being thrown into water.

At the time of Emperor Hadrian (2nd century AD), the best-known form of the punishment was documented, where a cock, a dog, a monkey and a viper were inserted in the sack.

At the time of Hadrian poena cullei was made into an optional form of punishment for parricides (the alternative was being thrown to the beasts in the arena).

For example, the Rhetorica ad Herennium, a treatise by an unknown author from about 90 BC details the execution of a Publicius Malleolus, found guilty of murdering his own mother, along with citing the relevant law as follows: Another law says: "He who has been convicted of murdering his parent shall be completely wrapped and bound in a leather sack and thrown in a running stream"... Malleolus was convicted of matricide.

Immediately after he had received sentence, his head was wrapped in a bag of wolf's hide, the "wooden shoes" were put upon his feet and he was led away to prison.

[7] The historians Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Valerius Maximus,[8] connect the practice of poena cullei with an alleged incident under king Tarquinius Superbus (legendary reign being 535–509 BC).

According to Valerius Maximus, it was very long after this event that this punishment was instituted for the crime of parricide as well, whereas Dionysius says that in addition to being suspected of divulging the secret texts, Atilius was, indeed, accused of having killed his own father.

[9] The Greek historian Plutarch, however, in his "Life of Romulus" claims that the first case in Roman history of a son killing his own father happened more than five centuries after the foundation of Rome (traditional foundation date 753 BC), when a man called Lucius Hostius murdered his own father after the wars with Hannibal, that is, after the Second Punic War (which ended in 201 BC).

[11] Within that particular context, Cloud points out that certain jokes contained in the plays of the early 2nd century dramatist Plautus may be read as referring to the recent introduction of the punishment by the sack for parricides specifically (without the animals being involved).

[14] Support for a possible distinction in the inferred contents of Lex Cornelia and Lex Pompeia from the remaining primary source material may be found in comments by the 3rd-century AD jurist Aelius Marcianus, as preserved in the 6th-century collection of juristical sayings, the Digest: By the lex Pompeia on parricides it is laid down that if anyone kills his father, his mother, his grandfather, his grandmother, his brother, his sister, first cousin on his father's side, first cousin on his mother's side, paternal or maternal uncle, paternal (or maternal) aunt, first cousin (male or female) by mother's sister, wife, husband, father-in-law, son-in-law, mother-in-law, (daughter-in-law), stepfather, stepson, stepdaughter, patron, or patroness, or with malicious intent brings this about, shall be liable to the same penalty as that of the lex Cornelia on murderers.

For example, Kyle (2012) summarizes, in a footnote, one of the contemporary relevant controversies in the following manner:Cloud (1971), 42–66, suggests that Pompey's law on parricide, the Lex Pompeia de Parricidiis (Dig.

48.9.1), probably of 55 or 52 BC defined parricide in terms of the murder of parents or close relatives, assimilated it with other forms of homicide, and suspended the sack and replaced it with the interdictio;[16] but see Bauman's cautions, (1996) 30–2, about whether Pompey changed the nature of the penalty[17]Marcus Tullius Cicero, the renowned lawyer, orator and politician from the 1st century BC, provides in his copious writings several references to the punishment of poena cullei, but none of the live animals documented within the writings by others from later periods.

In his defence speech of 80 BC for Sextus Roscius (accused of having murdered his own father), he expounds on the symbolic importance of the punishment as follows, for example, as Cicero believed it was devised and designed by the previous Roman generations: They therefore stipulated that parricides should be sewn up in a sack while still alive and thrown into a river.

Yet these men live, while they can, without being able to draw breath from the open air; they die without earth touching their bones; they are tossed by the waves without ever being cleansed; and in the end they are cast ashore without being granted, even on the rocks, a resting-place in death.

[18]That the practice of sewing murderers of their parents in sacks and throwing them in the water was still an active type of punishment at Cicero's time, at least on the provincial level, is made clear within a preserved letter Marcus wrote to his own brother Quintus, who as governor in Asia Minor in the 50s BC had, in fact, meted out that precise punishment to two locals in Smyrna, as Marcus observes.

[19] In whatever form or frequency the punishment of the sack was actually practiced in late Republican Rome or early Imperial Rome, the historian Suetonius, in his biography of Octavian, that is Emperor Augustus (r.27 BC–14 AD), notes the following reluctance on the emperor's part to actively authorize, and effect, that dread penalty: Furthermore, he administered justice not only with the utmost care but also with compassion as is illustrated in the case of a defendant clearly guilty of parricide; to keep him from being sewn into the sack (only those who confessed suffered this punishment) Augustus reportedly asked, "Surely you did not kill your father?

Furthermore, a rescript from Hadrian is preserved in the 4th-century CE grammarian Dositheus Magister that contains the information that the cart with the sack and its live contents was driven by black oxen.

In the time of the late 3rd-century CE jurist Paulus, he said that the poena cullei had fallen out of use, and that parricides were either burnt alive or thrown to the beasts instead.

[28] However, although Paulus regards the punishment of poena cullei as obsolete in his day, the church father Eusebius, in his "Martyrs of Palestine" notes a case of a Christian man Ulpianus in Tyre who was "cruelly scourged" and then placed in a raw ox-hide, together with a dog and a venomous serpent and cast in the sea.

[33]It is seen that Justinian regards this as a novel enactment of an old law, and that he includes not only the symbolic interpretations of the punishment as found for example in Cicero, but also Constantine's extension of the penalty to fathers who murder their own children.

[34] The poena cullei was eliminated as the punishment for parricides within the Byzantine Empire in the law code Basilika, promulgated more than 300 years after the time of Justinian, around 892 AD.

[citation needed] The penalty of the sack, with animals included, experienced a revival in parts of late medieval and early modern Germany, particularly in Saxony.

In the meantime, the choir girls in town had the duty of singing the Psalm composed by Martin Luther, "Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir" (From deep affliction I cry out to you).

[44] The reference to the punishment is in connection with Cicero's (historically correct, and successful) endeavours to acquit Sextus Roscius of the charge of having murdered his own father.