Abstract
‘Parricide and Parental Authority in Roman Law’, by Barbara Biscotti considers the etymological and sociological perspective of parricide in addition to the development of legal attitudes towards the crime from archaic Roman law onwards. Through the prism of jurisprudence, she reveals the nature and dynamics of complex parenting networks and family structures of feeling, and the paradoxical link between the violation of one of the greatest taboos and the origin of law itself in the confrontation of freedom and power.
Ps. Quint., Decl. maior 8.14 (‘Quod tu monstri portentique genus es?’).
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Notes
- 1.
Paul Veyne, ‘La vie privée dans l’Empire romain’, in Histoire de la vie privée. De l’Empire romain à l’an mil, I, eds. Philipp Ariès and George Duby (Paris: Seuil, 1999, now in a separate volume, Paris: Seuil, 2015).
- 2.
Cic., Pro Sext. Rosc. Amer. 25.70, pro Mil. 7.17, Phil. 3.7.18, Tusc. 5.2.6; Quint., Inst. or. 8.6.35.
- 3.
See sv. par(r)icida(s)/par(r)icidium, in Alfred Ernout and Alfred Meillet, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine. Histoire des mots3 (Paris: Klincksieck, 1951), 855, where it is underlined that ‘the uncertainty of the ancient sense makes every etymology doubtful’.
- 4.
Or even to Romulus, according to the contents of the Vitae by Plutarch, Rom. 22.4 (see Jörg Rüpke, ‘You shall not kill. Hierarchies of Norms in Ancient Rome’, Numen 39 [1992]: 61). The text is referred to by the grammarian Festus (second/third century ad) in de verborum significatione, sv. ‘Parrici<di> quaestores’ (L. 247) in these terms: ‘Si qui hominem liberum dolo sciens morti duit, paricidas esto’, ‘If anyone knowingly with guilty intent kills a free person, let him be paricidas’. I deliberately do not translate the word paricidas, as this would require a specific interpretative stance (worthless here) preceded by a full explanation of the different reasons and justifications on which the choice is based: the lemma is very controversial indeed and subjected to manifold interpretations. These may range from interpretations (no longer up to date) of the term as a mere definition (‘be a patricide’/‘be killer of one of his peers’) to the (most likely) reference to the punishment of the criminal act, that is, ‘be likewise killed’ or ‘be killed by means of the punishment of the sack’, and the like. Specifically on the more ancient form of the word ‘paricidas’, see Giuseppe Romaniello, Pensiero e linguaggio. Grammatica universale (Rome: Sovera Edizioni, 2004), 418 f.
- 5.
For a general reference to the current position within the doctrine, for all, see Marco Falcon, ‘“Paricidas esto”. Alle origini della persecuzione dell’omicidio’, in Sacertà e repressione criminale in Roma arcaica, ed. Luigi Garofalo (Naples: Jovene, 2013), 191–274 (bibliography sub fn. 5).
- 6.
In this sense, Festus’ testimony is decisive, always sv. ‘Parrici<di> quaestores’ cit., where he clearly states that ‘Nam parricida non utique is, qui parentem occidisset, dicebatur, sed qualemcumque hominem indemnatum’ (‘Indeed, the qualification of parricide was not used to refer to everyone guilty of the killing of a father, but of any man who had not been prosecuted yet.’). In this sense, see also the cited excerpt from Plutarch (Rom. 22.4), according to whom the term parricide referred to ‘any killing of a man’ (πᾶσαν ἀνδροφονίαν πατροκτονίαν προσειπεῖν).
- 7.
On the nature and elements of such an arrangement, see the convincing arguments of Falcon, ‘Paricidas esto’.
- 8.
On ‘homicidium/homicida’, see Theodor Mommsen, Römisches Strafrecht (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1899), 613, and fn. 2., who however underlines that this terminology did not have good fortune in the Roman lexicon. There are clues to the use of a different term ‘parenticida’, specifically referred to the killer of a father, already during Plautus’ age (Epidic. 349–351), linked to the archaic, terrible punishment of the sack (pera). About Epidicus’ text, see Mommsen, Römisches Strafrecht, fn. 44. See fn. 45 about the nature of this punishment.
- 9.
In this sense, see Mommsen, Römisches Strafrecht, 613. A copious testament to this law is indeed in Cicero, pro Sext. Rosc. Amer. 25.70, de inv. 2.50 and in Rhetorica ad Herennium, 1.12.23. On the lex Pompeia specifically and for all, see Yan Thomas, ‘Parricidium. I. Le père, la famille et la cité (La lex Pompeia et le système des poursuites publiques)’, Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome. Antiquité 93, no. 2 (1981): 643–715; Lucia Fanizza, ‘Il parricidio nel sistema della «lex Pompeia»’, Labeo 25 (1979): 266–289; Henryk Kupiszewski, Quelques remarques sur le ‘parricidium’ dans le droit romain classique et post-classique, in Studi in onore di E. Volterra, 4 (Milan: Giuffré, 1971), 601–614 (now in Id., Scritti minori [Naples: Jovene, 2000], 225–238).
- 10.
The penalty was the same one provided by the lex Cornelia de sicariis, according to D. 48.9.1, Marcian. 14 inst.; on this, see Duncan Cloud, ‘Leges de sicariis: The First Chapter of Sulla’s lex de sicariis’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte / Romanistische Abteilung 126 (2009): 114–155. But see also supra, fn. 9 and, infra, fn. 45. On the potential ties of kinship taken into account by the law, see, in the title specifically dedicated to the law in the Digest of Justinian, D. 48.9.1–3 (Marcian. 14 inst.) and D. 48.9.9 pr.-1 (Modest. 12 pandect.); adde, as a testament to a trend of extensive interpretation of the law by the Roman jurisprudence, D. 48.2.12.4 (Venul. Saturn. 2 de iudic. publ.); Pauli Sententiae (5.24.1); Theodosian Code (9.15.1, referred to in C. 9.17.1); Iustiniani Institutiones (4.18.6). See Carla Fayer, La familia romana: aspetti giuridici ed antiquari (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2005), 181.
- 11.
Thomas, ‘Parricidium,’ 656 ff.
- 12.
We should keep in mind that the paterfamilias, the only subject sui iuris with a legal competency and who took part in legally relevant activities (legal transaction, legal action), took advantage of a wide network of sons, slaves, sometimes freedmen, and clients, who acted in his name and on his behalf for the benefit of his patrimonium. For this purpose, he could count on effective ad hoc legal instruments provided by the praetor according to the circumstances. See for a more historical focus, see Maurizio Bettini, Affari di famiglia. La parentela nella letteratura e nella cultura antica (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2009).
- 13.
With regard to the familial environment, the father was even defined in some Latin literature as domesticus magistratus (Sen., de benef. 3.11.2) or iudex domesticus (in addition Sen., Controv. 2.3.18; Cic., Pis. 40.97; Liv. 2.41.10). I cannot analyse here in depth the controversial institution of consilium domesticum (on which, for all, see Edoardo Volterra, ‘Il preteso tribunale domestico in diritto romano’, Rivista Italiana per le Scienze Giuridiche 85 (1948): 103–155, now in Scritti giuridici, 2 (Naples: Jovene, 1991), 127–177; Antonio Ruggiero, ‘Nuove riflessioni in tema di tribunale domestico’, in Sodalitas. Scritti in onore di A. Guarino, 4 (Naples: Jovene, 1984), 1593–1600; Yan Thomas, ‘Remarques sur la jurisdiction domestique à Rome’, in Parentés et stratégies familiales, eds. Jean Andreau and Hinnerk Bruhns (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 1990), 449–474; Id., ‘Il padre, la famiglia e la città. Figli e figlie davanti alla giurisdizione domestica a Roma’, in Pater familias, ed. Angiolina Arru (Rome: Biblink, 2002), 23–57. However, the fact that the sources refer to it along with the role assigned to the father as the person granted the right of life and death (ius vitae ac necis), which was institutionalized and ruled in a legal perspective whose boundaries between private and public were less definite than today, contribute to defining a precise framework for the episodes of familial violence, as we will see later. On the general authority of the paterfamilias see Meyer Reinhold, ‘The Generation Gap in Antiquity’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 114 (1970): 362 f. (now in Id., Studies in Classical History and Society [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002], 1–22).
- 14.
For all, see Maria Vittoria Bramante, ‘“Patres”, “filii” e “filiae” nelle commedie di Plauto. Note sul diritto nel teatro’, in Diritto e teatro in Grecia e a Roma, eds. Eva Cantarella and Lorenzo Gagliardi (Milan: Led, 2007), 95–116.
- 15.
For a historical evaluation of the parricidium especially in this period, see Eva Maria Lassen, ‘The Ultimate Crime. Parricidium and the Concept of Family in the Late Roman Republic and Early Empire’, Classica et Mediaevalia 43 (1992): 147–161.
- 16.
Lucan., Phars. 2.150: ‘…nati maduere paterno/sanguine: certatum est, cui cervix caesa parentis/cederet…’.
- 17.
Cicero, pro Sext. Rosc. Amer. 25.70: ‘…cum intellegerent nihil esse tam sanctum, quod non aliquando violaret audacia’, with reference to parricide and to the dissuading function of the terrible related punishment.
- 18.
Vell. Paterc. Histor. rom. ad M.Vinicium libri duo 2.67.1–2: ‘Huius totius temporis fortunam ne deflere quidem quisquam satis digne potuit, adeo nemo exprimere verbis potest. Id tamen notandum est, fuisse in proscriptos uxorem fidem summam, libertorum mediam, servorum aliquam, filiorum nullam, adeo difficilis est hominibus utcumque conceptae spei mora.’
- 19.
But also, for the father who kills the children (addressed as parricida): Liv. 3.50.5 (parricida liberum); 8.11.7 (parricidium filii) and Ps. Quint., Decl. maior 8.1,2,4,6,8,11,14,15,19,21; 10.17; 18.1,2,3,5,8,11,14,15,17. For parricide as the killing of a brother: Liv. 40.24.6 (parricida fraternus); Sen., Contr. 7.1.1,5,6,7,9,10,15,16,17,22,23; Ps. Quint., Decl. min. 286.9, 321.6,11; Calp. Flacc., Decl. 21.7.
- 20.
Cic., pro Cluent. 11.31.
- 21.
Cic., Phil. 3.7.18.
- 22.
Leslie Poles Hartley, The Go-Between (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1953).
- 23.
Yan Thomas (‘Paura dei padri e violenza dei figli: immagini retoriche e norme di diritto’, in La paura dei padri nella società antica e medievale, eds. Ezio Pellizer and Nevio Zorzetti [Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1983], 119 ff.) had the merit to analyse the controversies linked to the familial conflicts in the writings of Quintilian, Seneca the Elder, and Calpurnius Flaccus in order to verify how many of these had fathers and sons as main actors. The result emerging from the analysis of these selected authors is really noteworthy: 54 cases out of 90 in Quintilian, 37 out of 50 in Seneca, 21 out of 33 in Calpurnius Flaccus. The majority of these were cases of parricide.
For further statistics involving single authors, see Lewis A. Sussman, The Declamations of Calpurnius Flaccus (Leiden, New York, Köln: Brill, 1994), 103; Vera Isabella Langer, Declamatio Romanorum. Dokument juristischer Argumentationstechnik, Fenster in die Gesellschaft ihrer Zeit und Quelle des Rechts? (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2007), 87 ff.; Mario Lentano, ‘Parricidii sit actio: Killing the Father in Roman Declamation’, in Law and Ethics in Greek and Roman Declamation, eds. Eugenio Amato, Francesco Citti, and Bart Huelsenbeck (Berlin, Munich, Boston: de Gruyter, 2015), 139 ff. This last scholar highlights in his very recent work (133–153) that in the rhetorical writings (where parricide is a tópos), the majority of the cases of parricidium are murders committed by sons against fathers. I will come back later to the distinctive features between patricide and matricide. From now on, in order to avoid misunderstandings, and unless there is no different specification, I will refer in general terms to the specific phenomenon of the killing of parents committed by the children as ‘parenticide’ if there is no need for a distinction concerning the two different roles played by gender.
- 24.
Plutarch (Rom. 22.4) meaningfully states that in the first six hundred years of Roman history there were no cases of patricide. The first one was indeed committed by Lucius Ostius in 202 bc. For a backdating of the first episodes based on references made by Plautus, see Eva Cantarella, I supplizi capitali (Milan: Rizzoli, 2005), 224 f.: we would however go back just 30/40 years.
- 25.
Lentano, ‘Parricidii sit actio,’ cit., 143.
- 26.
Cic., ad fam. 4.6. In Laelius de amicitia (8.27), Cicero will remark that ‘the relationship between parents and children could not be severed, except by the most detestable crime (detestabili scelere)’.
- 27.
See, for example, the consolationes in P. Papin. Stat., Silvae 2.1.13–15; 5.5.54–59.
For one of the most well-known examples of a non-genetic paternal relationship, just think about the one between Caesar and Brutus, who was a patricide (according to Caesar’s perplexed expression ‘You too, son’, in Suet., de vita Caes. 1.82 and Cass. Dio, Hist. Rom. 44.19), not exactly as son, but because of the de facto paternal relationship between him and Caesar (and because he killed the pater patriae as Cicero remarks, Cic., de philos. 2.31; I will come back later to this point).
- 28.
Phaedr., Fab. 3.15.: ‘Non illam quaero, quae, cum libitum est, concipit, dein portat onus ignotum certis mensibus, novissime prolapsam effundit sarcinam; verum illam, quae me nutrit admoto ubere fraudatque natos lacte, ne desit mihi’.
- 29.
A very meaningful fragment of Ulpian (2 inst., D. 1.3.41) testifies to the fact that the patrimonial relations are the core and foundation of the fatal function of law: ‘The entire law consists in acquiring or preserving or diminishing: or indeed, it deals with the way someone comes into possession of a thing, or with the way someone maintains a thing or a right, or how he transfers or loses them’ (‘Totum autem ius consistit aut in adquirendo aut in conservando aut in minuendo: aut enim hoc agitur, quemadmodum quid cuiusque fiat, aut quemadmodum quis rem veli u suum conservet, aut quomodo alienet aut amittat’).
- 30.
The first consul, along with Collatinus, established after the expulsion of the Etruscan kings from Rome.
- 31.
See Liv. 2.4.5–6, 2.5.5–8. Dion. Hal., Antiq. Rom. 8.79 attributes the episode to the two sons of Brutus.
- 32.
Liv. 8.7.
- 33.
Val. Max., Fact. et dict. memorabil. libri novem 9.3.4.
- 34.
Gai. 1.55: ‘…fere enim nulli alii sunt homines, qui talem in filios suos habent potestatem, qualem nos habemus’.
- 35.
See previous footnote. About patria potestas, see, for all, the most recent publications of Yan Thomas, ‘Paura dei padre,’ cit., passim; Id., ‘Vitae necisque potestas. Le père, la cité, la mort’, in Du châtiment dans la cité. Supplices corporels et peine de mort dans le monde antique: table ronde (Rome 9–11 novembre 1982) (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 1984), 499–548; Walter Kirkpatrick Lacey, ‘Patria potestas’, in The Family in Ancient Rome: New Perspectives, ed. Beryl Rawson (London, Sidney: Cornell University Press, 1987), 181; Emiel Eyben, ‘Fathers and sons’, in Marriage, Divorce and Children in Ancient Rome, ed. Beryl Rawson (Oxford: Clarendon Press-Canberra: Humanities Research Centre, 1991), 114–143; Antti Arjava, ‘Paternal Power in Late Antiquity’, The Journal of Roman Studies 88 (1998): 147–165; Eva Cantarella, ‘Fathers and Sons in Rome’, The Classical World 96 (2003): 281–298; Chiara Corbo, ‘Genitori e figli: l’affidamento e le sue origini nell’esperienza giuridica romana’, Studia et Documenta Historiae et Iuris 77 (2011): 55–103; Francesca Lamberti, La famiglia romana e i suoi volti: Pagine scelte su diritto e persone in Roma antica (Turin: Giappichelli, 2014), 2 ff.
- 36.
A right established by the XII Tables (IV 2a). See also Dion. Hal., Ant. Rom. 2.26.4. Cf. William V. Harris, ‘The Roman Father’s Power of Life and Death’, in Studies in Roman Law in Mem. of A. Arthur Schiller, eds. Roger S. Bagnall and William V. Harris (Leiden: Brill, 1986), 81–95.
- 37.
Mario Lentano, ‘Il dono e il debito. Verso un’antropologia del beneficio nella cultura romana’, in Römische Werte als Gegenstand der Altertumswissenschaft, eds. Andreas Haltenhoff, Andreas Heil, and Fritz-Heiner Mutschler (Berlin, Munich, Boston: de Gruyter, 2005), 125–142 (see especially 138).
- 38.
The emancipatio was an institution consisting of a complex and formalistic ritual (a triple fictitious sale of the son to a third fiduciary in order to make him sui iuris, that is, an autonomous subject of law) and referring to the XII Tables (IV 2b; Gai. 1.132), which ruled the expiry of the patria potestas only in case of a triple sale of the son on the part of the father: this institution is, therefore, a testament to the Roman reluctance to break with the described model. Anyway, as Eyben underlines in ‘Fathers and sons,’ cit., Latin literature mainly shows us a rich sample of careful and generous fathers who are not prone to abuse of their legal power.
- 39.
Lentano, ‘Parricidii sit action,’ 146 f.
- 40.
See, for all, Carlo Venturini, ‘Leges sumptuariae’, Index 32 (2004): 355–380.
- 41.
Reinhold, ‘The Generation Gap,’ cit., 363.
- 42.
Thomas, ‘Parricidium,’ 690, fn. 163, and 714.
- 43.
See Eva Cantarella, Dammi mille baci: Veri uomini e vere donne nell’Antica Roma (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2009).
In Plautus’ Epidicus, 349–351, as referred to earlier, we still read the hapax ‘parenticida’: the characters have a discussion about the subtle play on words concerning the identification of the elements of the crime (see Carlo Lanza, ‘Plautus, Epidicus, 349–351’, in Fides Humanitas Ius. Studi in onore di Luigi Labruna, eds. Cosimo Cascione and Carla Masi Doria [Naples: Editoriale Scientifica, 2007], 2757–2766), and they underline that still at that time there was no ‘qualification’ of the term in relation to parenticide.
- 44.
This remained almost constantly the typical punishment of parricidium, except for occasional exchange with other capital punishments as the damnatio ad bestias and the aquae et igni interdictio, or the stake in the late classical period. The culleus was the archaic capital punishment of being sewn up in a leather sack with three live animals (a dog, a cock or a viper, and a monkey) and then being thrown into the Tiber or into the sea. On the connections between this punishment and the dark and hellish side, on its expiatory function, and on the impossibility of contaminating the community with the blood of such a guilty person, see Thomas, ‘Parricidium’.
- 45.
On it, see Francesco Lucrezi, Senatusconsultum Macedonianum (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1992), 144 and 211; Sara Longo, Senatusconsultum Macedonianum: interpretazione e applicazione da Vespasiano a Giustiniano (Turin: Giappichelli, 2012), 11 ff. and 19, fn. 32.
- 46.
Thomas, ‘Parricidium,’ 689 and fn. 159 for textual references.
- 47.
On this, see again Thomas, ‘Parricidium,’ 653 and 681 f., with analysis of the variation of terminology in the texts. Concerning the cases of daughter-mother matricide, see Valerius Maximus (8.1): a daughter, who had killed her mother was acquitted of the charge because she had been ‘motivated by the pain caused by the killing with poison committed by the grandmother against her children.’ On the other side, concerning the son-mother relationship, just consider the well-known case of Nero’s matricide committed against Agrippina (Tac., Ann. 14.8.5), which Suetonius (Nero 34.5) significantly defines as ‘parricidio matris’.
- 48.
Above all Cic., pro Sext. Rosc. Amer. 70. See Lucrezi, Senatusconsultum Macedonianum, 161 and Lentano, ‘Parricidii sit actio,’ 144.
- 49.
Lentano, ‘Parricidii sit actio,’ 145 f.; Thomas, ‘Parricidium,’ 706; Lucia Pasetti, ‘Filosofia e retorica di scuola nelle Declamazioni Maggiori pseudoquintilianee’, in Retorica ed educazione delle élites nell’antica Roma. Atti della VI Giornata ghisleriana di filologia classica (Pavia, 4–5 aprile 2006), eds. Fabio Gasti and Elisa Romano (Pavia: Collegio Ghislieri, 2008), 113–147 (see 139) and Id., ed./trans./comm., [Quintiliano]. Il veleno versato (Declamazioni Maggiori, 17) (Cassino: Edizioni Università di Cassino, 2011), 91, fn. 3.
- 50.
This figurative use of the term, starting from the middle of the first century ad, is very widespread. See, for example, Cic., Phil. 2.7; 2.13; 6.4; 11.27; 11.29; 13.20–21; Id., Cat. 1.17, 29, 33; Id., de off. 3.21.83; Id., pro Sull. 6; Id., ad fam. 10.23.5; Tac., Ann. 15.73.4; Id., Hist. 1.85.5; Sall., Cat. 31.8; 52.31.
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Biscotti, B. (2018). ‘What Kind of Monster or Beast Are You?’ Parricide and Patricide in Roman Law and Society. In: Muravyeva, M., Toivo, R. (eds) Parricide and Violence Against Parents throughout History. World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-94997-7_2
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