Tarpeian Rock

Adjudicated murderers, traitors, perjurors, and larcenous slaves, if convicted by the quaestores parricidii, were flung from the cliff to their deaths.

There is a Latin phrase, Arx tarpeia Capitoli proxima ('the Tarpeian Rock is close to the Capitol'), a warning that one's fall from grace can come swiftly.

[6] To be hurled off the Tarpeian Rock was, from a certain perspective, a fate worse than mere death because it carried with it the stigma of shame.

The rock was reserved for the most notorious traitors and as a place of unofficial, extra-legal executions such as the near-execution in 491 BC of legendary then-Senator Gaius Marcius Coriolanus by a mob whipped into frenzy by a tribune of the plebs.

[7] Victims of this punishment included:[8] "Let them pronounce the steep Tarpeian death,/ Vagabond exile, flaying, pent to linger/ But with a grain a day; I would not buy/