Penalties Under the!important; text-transform:uppercase'>Principate

By the time of Julius Caesar’s death the capital penalty in the statutes governing the criminal tribunals seems generally to have become banishment in the shape of interdiction of fire and water.

However, a full capital penalty was exacted for certain treasonable actions both under the triumvirate and during Augustus’ reign. 1²⁷ Under Tiberius it is clear that those condemned in the senate on a capital charge might face execution, and from then onwards one of the yardsticks by which the senatorial order judged emperors was whether they approved of executing members of the elite or not. In practice, this was mitigated by the possibility of avoiding humiliation through being allowed to commit suicide. Moreover, suicide before condemnation might induce the emperor to be generous in conceding the property of such persons to their family. The Augustan laws, like those of the late Republic, provided rewards for accusers, both in the form of preferment in the pursuit of public office and financial compensation, the latter to come from the estates of the condemned.¹²⁸ The Republican concept of exile, moreover, had now become somewhat outdated. Exiled men had been able to pass the time in an agreeable Greek city. We find Augustus by contrast selecting islands for the banished, which were intended to be penally restrictive if not necessarily uncomfortable. His daughter Julia went to a villa on Pandateria off the coast of Latium, her lover Sempronius Gracchus to Cercina off Tunisia; Cassius Severus was sent first to Crete and then, when he would not give up writing lampoons, to the small rocky island of Seriphos in the Aegean. 129

By the time of the classical jurists the range of non-financial penalties had been extended and their nature refined through decisions by emperors or the senate. Moreover, they were varied according to not only the nature of the crime but also the status of the criminal.

It seems to have been mainly the elite who could profit from the concession of exile under the Republic; common criminals were likely to be killed or rendered virtual slaves. Under the Principate a distinction developed between ‘the more honourable’ (honestiores) and ‘the more humble’ (humiliores).1³° Signs of this can be seen in second century AD rescripts about local senators, 1³1 but the full elaboration of the distinction probably came only in the Severan period. For the more honourable the supreme penalty was now execution by the sword, not by the traditional axe or rope. The ban on fire and water was no more, replaced by deportation to an island with confiscation of property. The more humble, including slaves, might be crucified, hanged, burnt alive, or exposed to the beasts; less drastic penalties, but likely to bring a slow death, were condemnation to the mines or to public work - that is, hard labour. 1³² Relegatio had now become a criminal penalty, milder than deportation in that it was temporary not permanent. Penalties might be aggravated by beatings with sticks or whips, dependent on the victim’s status. Prison was still in theory a measure for detention before trial or execution, but in practice it was frequently used as a punishment. 1³³ When Christianity came to dominate the empire, the cruelty of penalties generally was not reduced but, if anything, intensified.¹³⁴

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Source: Johnson David (ed). The Cambridge companion to Roman Law. Cambridge University Press,2015. — 554 p.. 2015

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