“…the father was investigated through his slaves, and the investigation went against the accuser. The latter, deranged by his crime and at the same time terrified by a rumor among the public that they were threatening him with prison and the Rock or the penalties for parricides, withdrew from the City,” (Tacitus Annals 4.29.1-2).
The concepts of fama (reputation) and existimatio (good name) were at the center of social organization in ancient Roman society. A loss of one’s fama and existimatio, through either criminal misdeeds or breach of civil faith, resulted in infamia, a condition with both legal and social consequences (Infamia). In Book 4 of The Annals, Tacitus recounts the investigations into the “hostile disorder and disrupting the state” of two friends of the Princeps Tiberius. “The latter” is Lucius Seius Tubero, a relative of Sejanus, and a suffect counsel in 18 CE. The first, Gnaeus Lentulus was found innocent of his crimes, but Tubero’s presumed guilt results in the vulgi rumor (public rumor) that he is threatened with prison or “the Rock,” and Tubero flees. Though there appears to have been no formal adjudication of guilt, the public perception of Tubero’s culpability results in a loss of his existimatio. The threat which caused Tubero to flee was of the worst fate a Roman could suffer, the complete forfeiture of his fama and existimatio.
People were executed by precipitation from the Tarpeian Rock for crimes that are not merely against a citizen, but in some way against Rome itself. This venue, and later the Stelae Gemoniae (Gemonian Steps) were only used for the most serious crimes, which particularly offended the moral code of Roman society, and execution there results in a permanent shroud of infamia over their memory and their descendents. Traitors were most commonly executed on the Rock, following the etiological example of Tarpeia, but people were also executed there for crimes such as lying under oath, a betrayal of the city’s sacrosanct institutions, and for crimes that were as morally repugnant to Roman values as incest. In contrast, and reflecting the changing legal conditions between the Republic and Principate, the Gemonian Steps were used as a site of execution for traitors against the Emperor, and did not reflect the same kind of legality as the Rock. Capital punishment does not appear to have been commonly inflicted, especially when dealing with Roman citizens. Citizens could often choose self-banishment and exile to avoid the death penalty. Exile, or exsilium, had been institutionalized by the time of the late Republic, and in the Principate was replaced with a formal sentence (Exile). Despite the image in the popular imagination of Romans as bloodthirsty inflictors of vicious punishments and consumers of brutal bloodsport, there appears to have been a reluctance to impose capital punishment on Romans for all but the most heinous crimes.
Roman criminal law is not fully understood, and scholarly work about Roman law tends to focus on private and constitutional law. The only substantial work on the subject is Theodor Mommsen’s Römisches Strafrecht (1899), and this work does not thoroughly discuss the issue of penalties. The structure of the Roman legal system was transformed and refashioned countless times throughout Roman history. Even between the years 100 BCE and 100 CE, the organization of the courts themselves was transmuted multiple times. Trials were conducted by various different quaestiones (tribunals), usually presided over by a Praetor. Quaestiones consisted of jurors, either senators or equestrians before the lex Aurelia in 70 BCE, which created a juror pool from the three orders of senatorials, equestrians, and tribuni aerarii (Robinson 4). During the Republic there would be quaestiones perpetuae (standing courts) for each category of offense. For example, the quaestio de peculatu prosecuted the crime of embezzlement. The first quaestio perpetua was set up by the lex Appuleia, proposed by L. Appuleius Saturninus, around 103 BCE, and was responsible for prosecuting the new crime maiestas minuta populi Romani (“the diminution of the majesty of the Roman people,”) abbreviated as maiestas, (Maiestas). Other quaestiones were ad hoc and designed to deal with special offenses (Quaestiones). The quaestio Mamilia was formed in 110 BCE by tribune Gaius Mamilius Limetanus to investigate possible collaboration with Jugurtha (Mamilius). By the beginning of Tiberius’ reign some of these courts, such as those for maiestas and res repetundae seem to have disappeared, signifying that political crimes were now prosecuted by imperial authorities, while the old republican courts still handled ordinary offenses like adultery and forgery (Robinson 7). Additionally, the Senate itself regularly operated as a court during the 1st century CE, and perhaps before and after as well (Robinson 7). What is clear is that much of Roman criminal law was un-codified, at least until the time of Justinian in the sixth century CE, and that the issue of punishment was left largely to the individual judgment of the deciding authorities, which depended on the crime being prosecuted. Take, for example, the trial of Sextus Marius in 33 CE. Marius was accused of committing incest with his daughter. He was put on trial by the Senate in Rome, who found him guilty and sentenced him to be thrown off of the Tarpeian Rock, in contrast to the stated penalties of relegation or deportation, under the lex Julia de adulteries from the Severan period (Bauman 60). It appears from the facts of this case, and other similar examples, that the Senate, or any other prosecuting authority were not responsible for following legal guidelines when handing down sentences in the same way that modern justices are, but rather could base their decisions on the social status of the accused and particulars of the specific case.
The precise location of the Tarpeian Rock remains open to debate. It is known to have been on the Capitoline Hill, the tallest of Rome’s seven hills, and was probably located on its south side, overlooking the Forum Romanum, the Palantine, the Aventine and the Tiber (Macadan 70). The Capitoline, like Rome’s other six famous hills is an ignimbrite plateau, made of lithoid and lionato tuff, deposited during the eruptions of the Tuscolano-Artemisio volcano around 350,000 years ago, and then eroded by a stream, possibly an ancient course of the River Tiber (The Seven Hills of Rome). The Gemonian Steps led down from the Arx of the hill to the Forum, by the Mamertine Prison on the right and the Temple of Concord and Tabularium on the left. The Tarpeian Rock, Stelae Gemoniae and the Carcer Tullianum in the Mamertine Prison were the three most significant sites of execution in the city of Rome, and probably were all within several hundred yards of each other.
The use of the Tarpeian Rock as a site of execution by precipitation goes back to the beginning of the Roman monarchy in the days of Romulus. Livy lays out the etiological story of the use of the Tarpeian Rock in Book I of Ab urbe condita. The story takes place during the war between Romulus and Titus Tatius, king of the Sabines. Livy writes about Tarpeia, a Vestal Virgin and the daughter of the commander of the Roman citadel during the war between Romulus and Titus Tatius, who:
…had gone by chance outside the walls to fetch water for sacrifices, was bribed by Tatius, to admit some armed soldiers into the citadel. After they were admitted, they crushed her to death by heaping their arms upon her: either that the citadel might rather appear to have been taken by storm, or for the sake of setting forth a warning, that faith should never on any occasion be kept with a betrayer. The following addition is made to the story: that, as the Sabines usually wore golden bracelets of great weight on their left arm and rings of great beauty set with precious stones, she bargained with them for what they had on their left hands; and that therefore shields were heaped upon her instead of presents of gold. Some say that, in accordance with the agreement that they should deliver up what was on their left hands, she expressly demanded their shields, and that, as she seemed to be acting treacherously, she herself was slain by the reward she had chosen for herself. (Livy 1:11)
Though Tarpeia’s execution was carried out by the invading Sabines, and not by Romans, the story still sets an important precedent that traitors be executed at this particular site, given its real or imagined historical significance. The classical literary record suggests that the Rock was used regularly, if not frequently, for the purpose of executions over the next six centuries. Spurius Cassius Vecellinus, thrice Consul, in 502, 493, and 486 BCE, was executed after his last Consulship when his fellow Consul Verginius accused him of trying to become king for proposing to give land won in a recent campaign to the plebs. Marcus Manlius Capitolinus, a patrician and Consul in 392 BCE was similarly killed for supposedly aiming at kingship by nefariously lending money to debtors. Plutarch’s Life of Coriolanus describes how the general is charged in the senate and nearly extra-legally executed from the Rock:
For he came and stood before them as one who would defend himself, and the people were quiet and silent in his presence. But when, instead of the more or less deprecatory language expected by his audience, he began not only to employ an offensive boldness of speech, which at last became actual denunciation, but also to show, by the tone of his voice and the cast of his countenance, that his fearlessness was not far removed from disdain and contempt, then the people were exasperated, and gave evident signs that his words roused their impatience and indignation. Upon this, Sicinius, the boldest of the tribunes, after a brief conference with his colleagues, made formal proclamation that Marcius was condemned to death by the tribunes of the people, and ordered the aediles to take him up to the Tarpeian rock at once, and cast him down the cliff below. But when the aediles laid hold of his person, it seemed, even to many of the plebeians, a horrible and monstrous act; the patricians, moreover, utterly beside themselves, distressed and horror stricken, rushed with loud cries to his aid. Some of them actually pushed away the officers making the arrest, and got Marcius among themselves…Then Sicinius, becoming calm, asked the patricians what they meant by taking Marcius away from the people when it wished to punish him. But the patricians asked in their turn: "What then is your purpose, and what do ye mean, by thus dragging one of the foremost men of Rome, without a trial, to a savage and illegal punishment? (Plutarch, Coriolanus 18).
Gaius Marcius Coriolanus, like Capitolinus and Vecellinus, was an important and respected member of Roman society, honored for his military successes against the Volscians at the battle of Corioli by his honorific cognomen. Though he was not actually killed on the Rock, Coriolanus did end up meeting a grisly end as a consequence of his “disdain and contempt” for the people. It is significant that these three cases, among some of the oldest references to executions from the Rock, all involve prominent members of Roman society who went either too far to the left by advocating social reform, or too far to the right by advocating aristocratic control, and somehow upset the delicate political balance of Roman society. Echoes of Vecellinus and Coriolanus can be seen in Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus and Julius Caesar, who were also killed, though not on the Rock, for upsetting Roman social and political conventions. In these cases, executions on the Tarpeian Rock can be most legitimately regarded as a public advertisement of the consequences of stepping outside the boundaries of acceptable political action.
Meanwhile, it is probable that countless ordinary citizens, freedmen and slaves were precipitated from the Rock during this period, but most of their stories have been lost to history. The only surviving reference to the Rock in republican law is from the eighth of the 5th century BCE Twelve Tables, which states, “whoever is convicted of speaking false witness shall be flung from the Tarpeian Rock” (The Twelve Tables). Edward Gibbon explains the action of throwing the malicious witness publicly off the Rock as an attempt “to expiate his falsehood, which was rendered still more fatal by the severity of the penal laws and the deficiency of written evidence”(Gibbon 365). Many of the ancient references to killings from the rock refer to slaves or freedmen. In his Life of Sulla, Plutarch tells the story of Lucius Cornelius Chrysogenus “a freedman, suspected of having concealed one of the proscribed, and for that reason sentenced to be thrown down the Tarpeian Rock” in 80 BCE (Plutarch, Sulla 1). The 3rd century jurist Callistratus points out that “in every case of capital punishment [in omni supplicio] our ancestors punished slaves more harshly than free persons…” possibly a reference to one of the Twelve Table rules that a thief who was free would be adjudged to the victim, but a thief who was a slave would be thrown from the Rock (Bauman 134). Consequently, it can be seen that capital punishment involving the Rock was performed for a myriad of different reasons, but depended largely upon the social status of the offender. Slaves, freedmen, and other non-citizens could be executed for relatively insignificant crimes, while normally inviolable political and military elites could suffer the ultimate infamia for pressing too far on the limits of their political power.
It is unclear what caused the termination of the use of the Tarpeian Rock for executions, but the historical record shows that it was rarely used after the age of Sulla, and by the time of the Principate it appears to have been abandoned completely. Perhaps it had become too closely associated with the Republic or there had been some sort of public disavowal of the practice of precipitation in the name of humanitas, but all of this is merely conjecture. The role of the Rock appears to have been at least partially relocated to the Stelae Gemoniae (Gemonian Steps). The first mentions of the Steps occur during the reign of Tiberius, so it has been assumed that they were constructed during or shortly before his reign. They led up from the Forum to the Capitoline, with the Mamertine Prison on the on one side and the Temple of Concord and Tabularium on the other. In the chapter on Tiberius in The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Suetonius relates the story of the purging and execution of Sejanus, the prefect of Tiberius’ Praetorian Guard, referring to the Stelae Gemoniae as “the Stairs of Mourning”:
Some of those who were consigned to prison were denied not only the consolation of reading, but even the privilege of conversing and talking together. Of those who were cited to plead their causes some opened their veins at home, feeling sure of being condemned and wishing to avoid annoyance and humiliation, while others drank poison in full view of the senate; yet the wounds of the former were bandaged and they were hurried half-dead, but still quivering, to the prison. Every one of those who were executed was thrown out upon the Stairs of Mourning and dragged to the Tiber with hooks, as many as twenty being so treated in a single day, including women and children (Suetonius 61.4).
Cassius Dio in his Roman History differs slightly in his account, saying that Sejanus was “executed and thrown down the Stairway, where the rabble abused it for three whole days and afterwards threw it into the river” (Cassius Dio LVIII:11). These descriptions of the murder of Sejanus seem to be typical of executions on the Steps. The accused was generally taken from the adjacent Mamertine Prison, strangled and thrown down the steps, where their body was usually left to rot and be picked apart by scavengers, before being dragged to the river and disposed with. Suetonius also tells the story of Tiberius’ daughter-in-law Agrippina, who committed suicide after the murder of her husband Germanicus. Afer her death, Tiberius “assailed her memory with the basest slanders, persuading the senate to add her birthday to the days of ill omen, and actually taking credit to himself for not having had her strangled and her body cast out on the Stairs of Mourning” (Suetonius 53.2). The Gemonan Steps are most closely associated with the violent excesses of Tiberius and the reign of the Julio-Claudians up to the Year of the Four Emperors in 69 CE. The third of those emperors, Vitellius ruled for only eight months, before being defeated by the armies of Vespasian and was dragged to the steps and killed by the invading troops of his rival (Tacitus Histories III. 84-5). Like an execution by precipitation on the Tarpeian Rock, being killed upon the Gemonian Steps, in close proximity to the Forum and in full public view, constituted the worst in infamia for a Roman.
The city of Rome was built along the natural contours of the land, with its geography playing a very strong role in the shape of the city. The Forum, for example, occupied a low point, in a valley nestled between hills, in a space originally occupied by marshland. The Capitoline Hill, just north of the Forum, is the highest of Rome’s hills, so the Tarpeian Rock, rising high above the city, was one of the most visible and prominent points in the city. Similarly, the Stelae Gemoniae must have been one of the most trafficked points in the city, located at the hub of the Forum, Tabularium, Temple of Concord, and the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus on top of the Capitoline (Macadan). The Tarpeian Rock and Gemonian Steps both evolved as sites of execution because of their location and high visibility. The decidedly public character of execution at these locations made it, in some ways, a fate worse than death, given the enormous humiliation and ignominy involved. Execution at these locales demonstrated a desire by the authorities to not only prosecute and punish crimes against the state and against themselves, but to make an example of those being punished. Callistratus describes this convention:
The practice approved by most authorities has been to hang notorious brigands on a gallows in the place which they used to haunt, so that by the spectacle others may be deterred from the same crimes, and so that it may, when the penalty has been carried out, bring comfort to the relatives and kin of those killed in that place where the brigands committed their murders (Callistratus Dig. 48.19.28.15 as quoted by Coleman 49).
The same technique can be seen in early modern Europe, where traitors’ heads were often stuck on spikes and exhibited at city gates to achieve maximum visibility for the authorities’ message of deterrence. In Kathleen Coleman’s study of the theatrical spectacle of execution employed in the Coliseum and other venues throughout the ancient Roman world she remarks that punishment can be interpreted as “the manifestation of disapproval by members of a society (or its rule-enforcing authorities) when that society’s norms are violated…” (Coleman 45).
Executions carried out at the Tarpeian Rock and Stelae Gemoniae were both generally for the loosely defined crime of treason. In the Republic treason was more widely understood to include any crime that was particularly distasteful to Roman society, whether an actual betrayal of Rome to a foreign power, an individual who offended Roman morality by committing incest, or one who made a mockery out of Rome’s civil institutions by lying under oath, but these executions generally took place within the legal framework of the quaestiones. Those executions which took place on the Stelae Gemoniae, on the other hand, seem to have always been for the more strictly defined crime of treason against the Princeps, but were largely up to the Princeps himself, or his praetorian guard to prosecute and carry out. This type of public spectacle and broadcasting of execution is alien to modern society, especially in the West, where death, even of heinous murderers and rapists takes place in private, as far away from the public eye as possible. However, the same argument is made today in favor of the death penalty, that it acts as a deterrent against future crime, as was likely used to justify the barbaric public executions that took place at the Tarpeian Rock and Gemonian Steps. Given Roman society’s preoccupation with the concepts of fama and existimatio, the deterrence offered by the threat of public infamia, carried out periodically in plain sight of the Forum at the center of the city, cannot be underestimated.
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