Poena Cullei: A Roman Torture of Unspeakable Horror...

Ah, to be in Rome in the spring. Mild temperatures, bustling streets, blossom on the trees, and the screams of men being tied in sacks with snakes or roosters and then thrown into a nearby body of water. I think you can tell that one of these things is not like the other. Rome truly is beautiful in the spring, but the city has witnessed incredible acts of brutality throughout its long history. Today's video will focus on one of the most inventive and cruel punishments from the Roman Empire, Poenicule. Welcome to the Roman Empire. The what? Poenicule, or the punishment of the sack, was an example of Roman ingenuity when meting out punishments. Poenicule was the name of the death penalty or torture for a person who had been found guilty of parricide or killing their parents or another close family member. The person would be sewn into a leather sack before being thrown into a lake or river. Anecdotally, live animals like roosters, snakes or dogs would also be added into the mix and sewn in alongside the convicted criminal. The history As with a lot of ancient history, it's hard to pin down exactly when something starts. Some historians believe the first instances of Poenicule date to the reign of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus around 535-509 BC. According to Dionysius of Hillecarnassus, one of the first victims of Poenicule could have been Atilius as we know he was condemned to being sewn in a sack and then thrown into the sea. There is argument around this though, as we don't know whether he was condemned to this punishment for parricide or some other transgression. If we look to Plutarch as a source of information on Poenicule, it seems as the first documented case of someone committing parricide in Rome was a man called Lucius Hostius. His sentencing happened just after the Second Punic War around 218-201 BC, but what Plutarch doesn't make clear is how Hostius was executed. It may well have been considered a murder rather than parricide. Despite the argument surrounding the exact point when Poenicule started to be used, it's generally accepted that the first genuine instance of it comes in Titus Livy's book History of Rome. Livy describes how one Marcus Publitius Malleolus was sewn into a sack and tossed into the sea for killing his mother. Towards the end of the 3rd century, BC social upheaval seemed to lead to the development of a more severe punishment for parricide and possibly foreshadowed the difficult times ahead as Roman society began to struggle after Hannibal's invasion. Including the live animals seems to only happen from early imperial times and was restricted to snakes at the beginning. From the 2nd century AD under the rule of Emperor Hadrian, Poenicule seems to have developed into the version that we know today where a rooster, a dog, a snake and a monkey were all added into the sack. The punishment at this time was reserved for those who had killed their parents or grandparents, although those convicted were given the choice of being thrown into an arena with wild animals or face Poenicule. The first recorded use of the four live animals seems to come from the writings of a man called Modestinus who wrote in the 3rd century AD that Poenicule needed to have these four creatures as specified by their ancestors. Other variants on the theme of getting trapped in a small space with live animals include the case of Gaius Vilius who was executed by being locked in a vase with snakes for supporting the reforms of the Gracchi. Other rituals sprang up around Poenicule too, which included being forced to wear wooden clogs or getting beaten while their face was obscured in a bag made from wolfskin. Poenicule evolved through time as attitudes shifted. Sometimes Poenicule could be enacted for those who had killed their employer, while at other times it was reserved only for those who had killed their parents. It mainly fell out of use before being revived by Constantine the Great, who changed the punishment to only include a snake in the sack. It then continued to be widely used into the reign of Justinian the Great and throughout the Byzantine Empire as a punishment for those who killed their parents or their children. It seems that Justinian, who commissioned a massive collection of laws in the early 6th century, was using Poenicule as a way to reinforce his connection to their Roman legacy and provide legitimacy to legal institutions. The Why When thinking about why such an extreme punishment was given out for murder, it's useful to understand how Romans viewed familial connections. The family unit was fundamental to the entire fabric of society, underpinning everything from jobs to law and finances. The patriarch was the head of the household and had complete authority over everyone else through the rights of patria potestas. With this right, he was within his right to do whatever he wanted to the rest of his family, even so far as capital punishment. Everything that his children achieved would reflect well on him, and in the same vein, any crime or misdeeds would tar his name as well as theirs, bringing shame on the whole family. Parasite, therefore, would go against everything that Roman society viewed as valuable. Killing the patriarch would leave the rest of the family unprotected, as well as bringing deep dishonor on the family. It also threatened the stability of society as a whole, since overthrowing his authority might give others iders. As such, murdering your father was seen as an abhorrent act that needed to be treated with utmost severity to dissuade others from following suit and rejecting the way that society worked. Over time, the scope of who could be a victim of parasite was widened and grew to include close family members, like spouses, siblings and grandparents, not just parents. The Symbolism Roman citizens were very well protected under the laws of the state and could not easily be stripped of their citizenship or their life. Spilling a citizen's blood was a serious business and could threaten social order since being a Roman citizen was almost seen as some kind of magical armor that could protect you from anything. But this doesn't seem to have stopped the Romans from indulging their penchant for the cruel and dramatic. It seems that seeing someone into a leather sack was supposed to represent the womb of the family that the person had violated in killing their close family member and crucially wouldn't involve making anyone bleed. But what about the animals? As there is variation in the way poena culi was carried out, it's not possible to say exactly why the animals were included, although there are some guesses we can make. Some people have seen similarities between poena culi and another ritual called procuratio prodigii, or the drowning of the monsters, where disfigured or diseased creatures need to be removed to restore natural order. Romans would have viewed anyone who could kill a parent as deranged or perhaps even monstrous. The animals included in the punishment could represent a cleansing ritual whereby society and nature could return to balance. The monkey would stand for the depraved criminal, debased from society, and only possessing animal instincts and no regard for others. The rooster was seen as lacking attachments to anyone or anything, a solitary and isolated individual. The dog is more complex as canine companions were known and valued in the Roman age, including as the symbol of Cerberus, who guarded the gates of hell. Snakes were associated with Medusa and other ancient beings, but also protected the family. Each animal had some connection or symbolic nature that meant something to ancient Romans, even if it isn't clear today. Romans feared and were fascinated by wild animals, evidenced by the wolfskin hood that some criminals were forced to wear. It seems that the Romans feared the wild while also using its power to punish those who stepped out of line for social boundaries and put the rest of society at risk. Parasite was considered such a terrible crime that it could corrupt others and even spread so far that it would infect the animals that scavenged the corpse after death. Cicero, one of Rome's greatest orators, once made an impassioned speech regarding the corruption of Parasite and how it would destroy society, and in a beautiful stroke of irony, he denounced this crime as a heinous act Cicero claimed that Parasites had previously been punished by sowing them in a sack and cutting the off from the elements, thus preventing the corruption from transferring any further. In the Corpus Juris Civilis, the collection of laws issued by Justinian in about 530 A.A.D., Poenicule is mentioned as a dismal prison The criminal would no longer have access to the air or light from the sun, their bones would not be cleansed by water, and they wouldn't find rest in the earth. It's hard to tell how often Poenicule would have been put into use, if ever at all. Some people feel that it was a symbolic thing as the logistics of getting all those animals into a sack and then a person too would have been nightmarish. With the concerns around spilling a citizen's blood or sentencing them to death, it seems unlikely that Poenicule would have been a common occurrence. This is borne out by a Roman historian called Suetonius, who said that even powerful emperors were hesitant to sentence a Roman citizen to such an ugly death. Modern Usage We like to think that society has progressed significantly over the centuries and that we'd never consider doing something so horrendous these days. While it's true that Poenicule mostly stopped being used around the end of the 9th century, it did actually see a revival in early modern Germany. The last recorded use of Poenicule comes from Saxony between 1734 and 1749. Although the particulars had changed once again. The Germans were less concerned with the animals in the sack, sometimes substituting a cat for the monkey and occasionally removing the rooster from the equation. More use in the cooking pot than in a sack at the bottom of the river. They also changed the sack from a thick leather one-to-one made of linen. Previously, the leather sack would have extended the person's survival and they'd have perished from asphyxiation or the wounds they received from the maddened creatures trapped alongside them. With the change to a linen sack, the convict would likely drown. Romans never did anything by halves and it does appear that Poenicule was used at least a handful of times as it was mentioned in multiple legal sources that date from the time. While we cannot say for certain how much of it was symbolic, we can at least say that it shows how fragile Roman society could be and how far they would go to protect it. Thank you for watching this video. If you enjoyed it, don't forget to like and subscribe and we'll see you next week for another episode of the Roman Empire.