A few years ago a young American man took three hits of ecstasy and then used a hammer to beat
his parents to death. After that, he announced on Facebook that he was having a party. The guy
then got busy cleaning up the blood and hiding his parents’ bodies. 60 of his friends soon turned up
to play beer pong and smoke cigars. Little did they know they were partying with a murderer.
It was an unforgivable crime. It was a heinous crime, and that’s why in the past
possibly the most unbelievable kind of punishment was reserved for this special kind of killer.
Before we get to this most horrendous of punishments, let’s talk a little about the act
itself, that is, the act of killing one’s parents. The name for it is parricide. When a son or
daughter kills the father it’s called patricide, and when it’s the mother that
is murdered, we call it matricide. It can also mean the killing of a close relative,
so siblicide- the murder of a sibling could fall under that umbrella, as could avunculicide, which
means taking out your own uncle. A 3rd-century Roman lawyer named Modestinus first laid down
the law regarding this crime and he said it covers first cousins or even someone who isn’t related by
blood but financially supports another person. You might not be surprised to hear that if you
killed your parents a few hundred years ago in Europe the outcome wasn’t good,
especially if your parents were of so-called noble blood. In Italy in the 16th century, Beatrice
Cenci did just that to her father, a powerful count who was a monster to his own children.
After suffering at the hands of her vile pop for many years, with the help of her siblings
and step-mom, Beatrice took her father out by bludgeoning him to death and throwing his body off
a balcony. You have to remember this was an awful man. He’d already been imprisoned for incest,
but he managed to get out early due to the fact he was wealthy and could grease the right palms.
Beatrice and co tried to make it look like suicide, but the papal police were suspicious.
Her lover was horrifically tortured but died without snitching. Others were soon charged
with being co-conspirators to the murder and they were sentenced to death. The people of
Rome protested about this because they knew what the horrible father had done to his kids. The
Pope wouldn’t budge an inch, for the reason that he didn’t want parricide to become widespread.
There had been other recent cases of kids killing parents, so he had to make an example
of Beatrice and her brothers and stop-mom. That he did, in the most brutal fashion.
Her elder brother was tortured in the public square for everyone to see. After that,
his head was smashed with a mallet. The spectators saw what might happen to them if they ever got any
ideas about killing a parent. The brother was then torn apart limb from limb. Beatrice and her
step-mom got off lucky with a relatively gentle beheading, while the youngest of the brothers,
only aged 12, was spared. His punishment was watching his family die and then
doing a short stint as a galley slave. We included that least bleak tale because
we want to hammer home to you just how serious parricide was taken. It wasn’t just a matter of,
“How could they do that to their own flesh and blood”. The powers that be at the time didn’t want
kids thinking they could whack a parent and get the riches and power they thought they deserved.
This is why the worst kind of punishment was sometimes metered out to children that committed
this crime. The establishment were the powerful, so it’s not surprising they created strict laws
that might prevent them from being killed by their own offspring. The crime was also seen
as the most unnatural crime a person could do, so it warranted the most unnatural kind of execution.
That execution in the early days was called poena cullei.
It can be translated as “penalty of the sack”. It’s thought it goes back as far as
the first century BC, but there were some modern cases, too. We’ll get around to those later.
Let’s start with ancient Rome and the first cases of the penalty of the sack. It was,
no doubt, a cruel and unusual punishment, with the emphasis being on unusual.
One of the earliest known cases can be found in an ancient book called,
“History from the Foundation of the City.” In it, the historian Titus Livius, aka, Livy, wrote this:
“Publicius Malleolus, who had killed his mother, was the first to be sewn into a sack and thrown
into the sea.” It’s said this guy was first fitted with heavy wooden shoes and a wolf’s
hide was placed over his head. In this case, the leather hide is presumed to be the sack.
That doesn’t sound too unusual and for the Romans, not all that cruel, but things got a lot worse.
There were a few iterations of getting the sack, with most cases being for the crime of parricide.
Even though people might have been executed by being thrown to wild beasts, or burned,
or crucified, it seems the Romans thought the sack was about as bad as you could get.
In the first century AD, one historian wrote that Emperor Augustus was reluctant to hand down this
form of the death penalty, and that was before the sack turned into something much more gruesome.
Emperor Claudius, who came a few decades later,
was ok with the sack. The Stoic philosopher named Seneca the Younger said this about him,
“The Emperor Claudius sewed more men into the culleus in five years than history says
were sewn up in all previous centuries. We saw more cullei than crucifixions.”
You might now be thinking, surely being drowned in a sack is much better than
being crucified or burned. Why on earth did those Romans fear the sack so much?
It seems the answer is they feared very much falling to the bottom of the ocean or whatever
body of water they were thrown into. It was also very undignifying, or at least that’s what the
Romans thought. But there was something else, too. Seneca the Younger had a father, who you can guess
was named Seneca the Elder. It is he who first mentioned someone getting the sack,
but having a guest put in there with him. This gives the punishment a whole new meaning.
He wrote that one or more snakes joined the man in the sack. Just imagine that,
being sewn into a sack with a bunch of snakes. But it gets even worse than that.
The poet Juvenal talks about a monkey being put into the sack. This kind of adds a comedic
element to getting sacked, at least if the monkey wasn’t big enough to gouge out a person’s eyes.
Being stuck in a drowning sack with a terrified monkey however is far from funny,
as these incredibly strong animals are known to tear limbs off people who get too close.
We have to go to the 3rd century for things to get even wilder. The Roman jurist we mentioned
named Modestinus wrote about the punishment of poena cullei for the crime of parricide.
We’ll let you hear this part in his own words, or at least his words in translation. Here’s
what he said, according to a law book called the “Digest” that was written after he died:
“According to the custom of our ancestors, the punishment instituted for parricide
was as follows; A parricide is flogged with blood-colored rods, then sewn up in a sack with a
dog, a dunghill cock, a viper, and a monkey; then the sack is thrown into the depths of the sea.
This is the procedure if the sea is close at hand; otherwise, he is thrown to the beasts.”
Ok, so now you have to imagine the scene. Try to think about how you’d handle this.
You are whipped and so are covered in welts and your own blood. You are then forced into a
sack with a viper, a venomous snake that no doubt will bite you. You won’t die instantly of course,
but it’s probably not the best day you’ve had in your life. To make things worse, a monkey is
thrown into the mix. What kind of monkey is a matter of importance. One of those small cute
ones, or a really angry baboon with huge fangs. Or were the Romans referring to large apes, animals
that could do serious damage to you on your way to the water. In fact, in the modern academic paper,
“The Ape in Roman Literature”, apes are mentioned in relation to the punishment of parricides. Then
just for good measure, a cock and dog is thrown in the sack, which likely wouldn’t bother you
in the slightest since you’d be busy being bitten by a highly venomous snake and trying
to stop an ape from taking off your face. The drowning part can only be a blessing.
Some scholars think in the 3rd century the practice started to die out and much more
humane punishments such as being thrown to wild animals or simply being burned to
death completely replaced the sack. It didn’t stay unpopular for long,
because in the 4th century Emperor Constantine initiated a revival of poena cullei. It’s written
that he said parricides should get a similar treatment, although he adds something quite
interesting to the story. He said that the guilty person should be “sewn up in a sack and, in this
dismal prison, have serpents as his companions.” At some point, the person was thrown into the sea,
but the question is, how long would that person have stayed in the sack prior to being taken to
the water? That’s an important question and there is no definitive answer. A few minutes sharing a
sack with snakes, or possibly with a great ape, a dog and a cock could almost be bearable, but a few
hours, days, that would be tough going. How long in that “dismal prison” did the condemned have to
stay? If it was longer than an hour, a fight with a bear would have been a much better way to die.
There are other Roman texts, too, which describe the law. In the 6th century,
Emperor Justinian talked about getting the sack. In the law book, “Corpus Juris Civilis”, it’s
written that those guilty of parricide should be, “sewn up in a sack with a dog, a cock, a viper,
and an ape, ” Ok, so this time we do get an ape. Historians to this day argue about translations,
as well as when the punishments happened and if they happened as they were written about.
It seems everyone agrees that the practice died out with the rise of the Byzantine Empire,
a time when killing your family mostly resulted in being thrown into the flames.
We’ve not finished yet though viewers, there’s a sequel.
Let’s call it, “Poena cullei 2: After Rome.” A man named Johann von Buch said it was
around in 14th century Germany and again it was a dreaded punishment reserved only for the terrible
act of parricide. It was however a rather tame affair in Germany. No cock or ape was hurt in the
execution and instead of a serpent, a picture of a serpent sufficed. Even if a dog or a cat- hardly
anything to worry about for the accused- was thrown into the animal cocktail they might have
their own compartments in the sack. There’s also another matter. The Romans often used a leather
sack, which was almost watertight, so that the person would not drown so quickly. The Germans
used linen, which would allow water in very fast. There was one recorded case in Germany in 1548
when a man was thrown into a river inside a sack. The linen sack had been coated with something to
make it more watertight, but when it hit the water part of it split. By all accounts, the man died,
but the dog and the cat that had been sharing his death sack swam away to their freedom.
The last cases we can find happened in the 18th century in Germany. In one case a sheep was put
into the sack, which must have been much better than an angry ape. In another case,
a serpent joined the condemned man, but it was a non-venomous, if not large, colubrid snake.
If you think that’s the worst punishment you’ve ever heard about, watch this,
“Walled up Alive - Worst Punishment in the History of Mankind.” Or,
maybe you think this is worse, “The Blood Eagle - Worst Punishments in the History of Mankind.”