Lex Pompeia

Lex Pompeia DE PARRICIDIIS, B.C. 52. It is difficult to come to any definite conclusion as to the precise meaning of parricida and parricidium in early Roman history and literature. From a quotation which Cicero makes from some old source ( sacrum sacrove commendatum qui cleperit rapsitque parricida esto, de Leg. 2.9, 22), the offence seems at one time not to have been confined to killing; and even when it had acquired this narrower signification, it apparently denoted the taking of the life of any free person ( si quis hominem liberum dolo sciens morti duit parricida esto, law of Numa Pompilius in Festus, s. v. Parici Quaestores: cf. Rein, Criminalrecht, pp. 401, 449). The Romans themselves seem to have had great doubts about the etymology of the word: συστέλλοντες τὴν πρώτην συλλαβὴν καὶ βραχεῖαν ποιοῦντες, τοὺς γονέας (pārentes), ἐκτείνοντες δὲ, τοὺς ὑπηκόους (pārentes) σημαίνουσιν (Johannes Lydus, de Mag. Rom. 1.26). Parricida, quod vel a pari componitur, vel a patre: quibusdam a parente videtur esse (Prisc. Gram. i.: cf. Cic. pro Cluentio, 11, 32; Liv. 40.24; Quintil. Inst. 8.6, 35). But by the time of Cicero parricidium seems to have acquired the specific sense of killing near relatives: the application of it to Catiline and to the murderers of Caesar (Sueton. Jul. 88) may perhaps be regarded merely as an oratorical survival of older usage. There seems to be no doubt that the Lex Cornelia de sicariis et veneficis contained provisions as to the killing of near relations (Dig. 48, 9, 1; Inst. 4.18, 6 ad fin.): the Lex Pompeia de parricidiis, some thirty years later, apparently re-enacted these, and defined the crime of parricidium as the deliberate and wrongful slaying of ascendants, husbands, wives, consobrini, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, stepfathers and mothers, fathers and mothers in law, patrons and descendants; but the killing of a child by its father was excepted (Dig. 48, 9, 1). Hadrian sentenced a man who killed his son to deportatio (Dig. ib. 5); but it was not parricidium to kill one's own children till the age of Constantine, who prescribed for it the punishment of the sack described below (Cod. 9.17; Inst. loc. cit.). For most cases of parricidium no change was made in the penalties of the Lex Cornelia (death, banishment, and forfeiture) by the statute of Pompeius; but for the murder of a father, mother, grandfather or grandmother, the old punishment of the cullcus was ordained (Dig. 48, 9, 9, 1; Paul. Sent. rec. 5.24). This consisted in the guilty person being first whipped till he bled, sewn up in a sack with a dog, a cock, a viper, and an ape, and thrown into the sea or a river: if there was no water near, Hadrian sanctioned his being torn in pieces by wild beasts (Dig. 48, 9, 9, pr.), and in Paulus' time he seems sometimes to have been burnt. The antiquity of this punishment is attested by Valerius Maximus, who records that it was inflicted on M. Tullius by Tarquinius when king (1.1, 13: cf. more majorum, Dig. 48, 9, 9, pr. and 1; and Cic. pro Rosc. Am. 25, 70, ad Quint. Fratr. 1.2; Juv. Sat. 3.8, 212 sq.). The selection of animals was supposed to be symbolical: μετὰ ἀσεβῶν ζώων ἀσεβὴς ἄνθρωπος (Dosith. 3.16): τὰ δὲ προειρημένα θήρια ἐμβάλλεται διὰ τοῦτο, ἐπειδὴ ὁμοιότροπα αὐτῷ ἐστί τὰ μὲν γὰρ ἀναιρεῖ τοὺς γονεῖς, τὰ δὲ πρὸς αὐτοὺς οὐκ ἀπέχεται μάχης (Theophilus). Accessories to the crime were punished as severely as principals under the Lex Cornelia (Cod. 9, 16, 7).