Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
Carthage
Nero's Torches (1876) by Henryk Siemiradzki
Dr. Kristian Lorenzo,
[email protected]
Dr. Kristian
Lorenzo
Today’s Plan
Upcoming Important Dates
Fatal charades: Roman Executions
staged as Mythical Reenactments
Upcoming Important Dates
Thursday, March 19th: Sign up for Presentation date.
2nd Extra Credit Opportunity
March 19th 2015, Kathryn Sampeck, Anthropology Assistant
Professor at Illinois State University “Spanish Entradas and
Indian Roads: Colonial Encounters of the First Kind in the
Interior of the US Southeast”, Room 118 Jepson Hall at 6pm.
Tuesday March 24th: Developed Bibliographies and Outlines
Due by 1:30pm
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
Coleman explores what subject in this article?
Tert., Apol. 15.4-5. “But you really are still more religious in the amphitheatre, where
over human blood, over the polluting stain of capital punishment, your gods dance,
supplying plots and themes for criminals-unless it is that criminals often adopt the
roles of your deities. We have seen at one time or another Attis, that god from
Pessinus, being castrated, and a man who was being burnt alive had taken on the role
of Hercules.”
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
the punishment of criminals in a formal public display involving role-play
set in a dramatic context: the punishment is usually capital.
To explore this subject Coleman:
reviews the aims of the Roman penal system
demonstrates how public displays provided an opportunity to exact
punishment
examines the evidence for fatal charades
offers explanations for their emergence in the early Empire
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
Based on Coleman’s brief outline of the leading schools of thought with regards to
punishment/penal systems she identifies 5 aims of the Roman penal system.
1. Retribution
2. Humiliation
3. Correction
4. Prevention
5. Deterrence
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
1. Retribution
Seneca (Clem. 1.20.1) in the 1st cent. AD admits that retribution and revenge are the
chief factors motivating emperors in their punishment of crimes. Enshrined in this
notion is the principle of talio, according to which the means of punishment evokes
the misdeed.
For example the punishment of being burned alive (crematio,
vivicomburium) prescribed for those found guilty of arson in a
built-up area.
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
1. Retribution
A refined notion of retribution that shades into the notion of asserting the status of
the injured person is expressed by the middle Platonist L. Calvenus Taurus:
“That reason for punishment exists when the dignity and the prestige of
the one who is wronged must be maintained, in case the omission of
punishment should bring him into contempt and diminish the esteem in
which he is held.” (Gell., N. A. 7.14.3)
This refined notion has as its counterpart the humiliation of the offender.
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
1. Retribution
Intrinsic to the notion of retribution is the intention that the offender, having caused
harm and suffering, should in turn suffer for his offence; the criminal's wickedness has
earned him cruel treatment.
E.G. condemnation to hard labour, while not divorced from economic
considerations, was primarily devised in order to inflict physical suffering;
the death penalty, summum supplicium, should not merely deprive the
offender of his life but do so as painfully as possible for the worst types
of offender.
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
2. Humiliation
humiliation, constituting mental and emotional suffering, is unquantifiable. The most
extreme form of degradation for persons who were not condemned to capital
punishment was the application (in itself a painful process) of a permanently visible
mark in the form of a tattoo or, occasionally, a brand.
humiliation of the offender further validates the processes of the law by distancing
the onlooker from the criminal and reducing the possibility of a sympathetic
attitude towards him on the part of the spectators.
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
2. Humiliation
the public nature of Roman execution shows that one purpose of humiliating the
miscreant was to alienate him from his entire social context, so that the spectators,
regardless of class, were united in a feeling of moral superiority as they ridiculed the
miscreant.
Mockery of condemned persons could occur spontaneously as in the story of the
Roman soldiers mockery of Jesus (e.g. crown of thorns, purple robe, a reed).
However, humiliation is often an integral part of the punishment.
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
3. Correction
There are references to correction of the wrongdoer (Plato held correction along
with deterrence to be the only proper aim of punishment.) If the Roman authorities
ever took correction into account during sentencing, it is extremely unlikely that it
influenced the average person's attitude towards the fate of criminals.
Seneca maintains that the law fulfills three functions in punishing offenders:
correction, deterrence, and the restoration of security by removing the criminal
from society. The best corrective, in his view, is severitas, so long as it is applied
sparingly (Clem. I.22.2):
Severity is the best corrective, but it loses its efficacy by over-use.
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
3. Correction
L. Calvenus Taurus as transmitted by Gellius believes that punishment embraces
three aims: correction, deterrence, and the upholding of the victim's status.
Gellius in NA 7.14.2 defines correction as,
when punishment is inflicted for the purpose of correction and reformation, so that
one who has accidentally done wrong may become more careful and scrupulous.
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
4. Prevention
aims to make it impossible for criminal to repeat his offence. Prevention can most
simply be the permanent removal of the offender from society, or else the means
whereby he committed the offense may be removed:
the retributive gesture of cutting off the hands of the fraudulent money-changer
constitutes also a preventive measure.
Incarceration, except forced labor which combines removal from society with
debilitating but economically profitable duty, was not usually a punishment in antiquity
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
5. Deterrence
deterrence is a pre-emptive aim designed to inhibit potential offenders in society at
large. The prominence of execution sites at crossroads and long major roads makes the
deterrent purpose obvious.
deterrence is an aim endorsed by philosophers such as Taurus and Seneca
Seneca argues that when the aim is deterrence, punishment can be inflicted more
rationally and with greater self-confidence than when it is revenge (Clem. I. 20. I):
It is more difficult to control oneself when one is exacting revenge out of anger, than
when one is doing it for the sake of example.
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
5. Deterrence
In practice the execution of brigands at the site of their crime was advocated as both
deterrent and a means of giving satisfaction to the victim’s surviving friends and
relatives.
To be an effective deterrent, a penalty should arouse horror and aversion; no doubt
audiences in the amphitheatre experienced these sensations, but so effective was the
gulf created between spectacle and spectators that the dominant reaction among the
audience was pleasure rather than revulsion
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
Public displays involving punishment
While public executions could involve nothing than a cross outside the city walls of
crucial importance for Coleman’s enquiry into Roman fatal charades is the adoption of
custom-built public auditoria as venues for the dispatch of criminals condemned on
capital charges.
Basic requirements:
1. some entity to mount the spectacle
2. a venue with adequate facilities
3. a supply of condemned individuals
4. an approving audience
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
1. some entity to mount the spectacle
Regular public shows to which spectators were granted free admission were the
responsibility of the annual magistrates, munerarius
Sponsors strove to outdo their predecessors in magnificentia muneris, and were
concomitantly rewarded by having statues and other honours voted to them. The favor
of the people could also be won through staging lavish exciting spectacles, and lost by
not.
In the Roman social hierarchy the emperor, being patron par excellence, sponsors the
most lavish and exotic spectacles; and, just as with any other sponsor, his status and
popularity are increased proportionately.
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
2.Venues and Facilities
amphitheaters greatly increased the potential for sophisticated displays, made
permanent accommodation available for seating a large audience, and allowed easier
control and handling of the animals, with a corresponding guarantee of the safety of
the audience.
Beast hunts or venationes were held in the circus where the euripus, metae, and other
monuments in the middle added interest and suspense as the animals dodged between
them, much as they would derive protection from their natural habitat.
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
3. A supply of individuals
there are two categories of person who are disposed of in this manner: damnati
(condemned criminals) and prisoners-of-war; both have offended against society and
the state, and therefore have a debt to discharge to that same state and society.
A crucial factor in the Roman penal system was the evolution of differentiated
penalties for offenders of different status: humiliores and honestiores. A further
distinction was made between simple execution by decapitation and ‘aggravated’ forms
of punishment.
e.g. crucifixion, crematio (vivicomburnium) and damnatio ad bestias
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
4. An approving audience
Why did audiences in Rome and the provinces for four centuries find it
entertaining to watch men and women being slaughtered in their presence?
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
4. An approving audience
When the participants were damnati or prisoners-of-war, the spectators were
endorsing the course of justice: as was noted earlier, condemned criminals 'deserved'
a harsh fate, and so this kind of display served a worthy end in the eyes of the
spectators.
Us vs. Them
or
Us NOT Them
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
4. An approving audience
The excitement provided the audience with an escape from the boredom of their daily
routines. It was in the interests of the establishment to channel people's enthusiasms
into an area like this that could be tightly controlled; boredom is a powerful incentive
to overt expressions of dissatisfaction.
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
4. An approving audience
Horror exercises its own fascination. A morbid desire to witness the actual moment
of death must have been commonly acknowledged. A character in Petronius' Satyricon
boasts of a friend of his who will put on a munus in which the losers will be
dispatched in public (Sat. 45. 6):
He'll give us cold steel, no way out, the slaughter-house in the middle where all the
stands can see it.
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
Evidence for Fatal Charades
A corpus of literary evidence with examples of fatal charades taken from Greek myth:
Tert., Apol. 15.4-5. “But you really are still more religious in the amphitheatre, where
over human blood, over the polluting stain of capital punishment, your gods dance,
supplying plots and themes for criminals-unless it is that criminals often adopt the
roles of your deities. We have seen at one time or another Attis, that god from
Pessinus, being castrated, and a man who was being burnt alive had taken on the role
of Hercules.”
Luc. (Anth. Pal. II.184) “Out of Zeus' Hesperidean garden Meniscus-like Heracles
before him-lifted three golden apples. Why so? When he was caught, he-like Heracles
before him-furnished a great spectacle to everyone: burnt alive.”
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
Evidence for Fatal Charades
A corpus of literary evidence with examples of fatal charades taken from Roman
history:
Mart., Lib. Spect.. 7: Just as Prometheus, chained on a Scythian crag, fed the tireless
bird on his prolific breast, so Laureolus, hanging on no false cross, gave up his
defenseless entrails to a Scottish bear. His mangled limbs still lived, though the parts
were dripping with blood, and in his whole body there actually was no body. Finally
punishment ... whether in his guilt he had stabbed his master in the throat with a
sword, or in his madness robbed a temple of its golden treasure, or stealthily set you
alight with blazing torches, Rome. This wicked man had outdone crimes recounted in
tales of old; in his case, what had been legend became punishment.
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
Myth and Autocracy
A. Mythological role-play
In Roman society mythology was cultural currency. Greek and Roman mythology
provided an all-encompassing frame of reference for everyday experience. In this
climate of thought, the outcome of fatal encounters in the Colosseum was
predictably ritualized in terms of transitioning to the underworld.Yet, it was clearly
exceptional for such encounters to be cast as mythological enactments.
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
Myth and Autocracy
A. Mythological role-play
A key factor is the increasing taste for realism on the stage. This transitions to the
amphitheater because in the damnationes performed there, dramatic scenes that had
hitherto been acted out as mere make-believe could now be actually recreated and
played out ‘for real.’ The sophisticated stage properties and mechanisms of the
amphitheatre would have enhanced the semblance of realism and stimulated greater
efforts to emulate it.
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
Myth and Autocracy
A. Mythological role-play
Fatal charades can both endorse myth or subvert it (the fates of “Orpheus” or
“Daedalus”). The point is that the criminal is to be humiliated in his dramatic persona
and he must suffer physically. Death is almost incidental, in that the arena's function
in the context of aggravated death penalties is to provide a spectacle of suffering so
severe that death must inevitably follow.
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
Myth and Autocracy
A. Mythological role-play
Fatal charades should not be seen as true cases of scapegoat rituals or purificatory
rituals or New Year festivals. But the notion of dressing up the criminal and giving
him his moment of glory may be motivated as much by a desire to present a worthy
religious offering as by the belief that the criminal in his hour of death owes a debt
to society.
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
Myth and Autocracy
A. The Miraculous Princeps
Why do these fatal charades cluster in the first two centuries of the empire? Our
earliest evidence comes from the reign of Nero, our latest from the Severan age;
most of it clusters under Nero and Titus.
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
Julius Caesar was the first to give a naumachia in the city of Rome. Caesar’s naumachia
fought by Egyptians and Tyrians was part of his triumphal games in 46 BC. He set them in
an purpose built lake in the Campus Martius near the Tiber.
Augustus staged a naumachia in a custom built structure, his stagnum located on the west
bank of the Tiber in the Trastevere region in 2 BC. Augustus’s naumachia pitted Athenians
against Persians and celebrated the dedication of the Temple of Mars Ultor in the
overarching inaugural program for the Forum of Augustus.
Augustus
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
Claudius in AD 52 sponsored the most elaborate naumachia with Sicilians fighting Rhodians
to celebrate the impending completion of a 3-mile long tunnel to drain Lake Fucinus in the
Apennine Mountains. Claudius, as much for glory as for gain undertook this project.
Nero staged his own naumachia, in his wooden amphitheater in the Campus Martius in AD
57. There was a battle between Persians and Athenians, after which the water immediately
was drained and another contest presented between forces on land.
Claudius
Nero
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
Titus presented an elaborate show at the stagnum of Augustus as part of the spectacles
celebrating the dedication of the Colosseum in AD 80. There was a sea battle between
Athenians and Syracusans and a gladiatorial show, as well as the presentation of five
thousand beasts, all in a single day.
Domitian having used the Flavian Amphitheater for a naval display, excavated beside the
Tiber a stagnum upon which he launched almost full-scale fleets. This naumachia is
associated with Domitian’s Dacian victory.
Titus
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
When seen as fatal charades naumachia were indirect forms of execution sometimes with
the possibility of reprieve. The naumachiarii were usually condemned criminals and
prisoners of war so they were effectively an en masse gladiatorial duel often set in quasihistorical settings.
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
The staging of mass punishment in these elaborate contexts guarantees the victims a
degree of anonymity that mitigates their degradation. But the sheer numbers involved in
the spectacle bore eloquent testimony to the breadth of power wielded by the sponsor, the
emperor in most cases.
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
In the context of fatal charades in the Colosseum the emperor was seen as the one who
enabled the ultimate processes of the law to take their course, and at the same time
provided thrilling and novel entertainment for his people. On the flip side the spectators
endorsed those processes and helped fulfill their aims.
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
The amphitheatre was where one went to witness and participate in a spectacle of death:
the death of animals and men, specifically the deaths of worthless and harmful persons.
Theses deaths earned the emperor popular acclaim and demonstrate his authority over life
and death.
Fatal charades: Roman Executions staged as
Mythical Reenactments
What makes our charades unique in the history of the ludi is the mythological context in
which they were performed: to witness the enactment of myth here was to experience not
escapism but reality, and the emperor who verified myth worked a miracle. Justice was seen
to be done, and the death of the criminal was all the more degrading for the short-lived
glamour of his mythological role.
reality interpreted
as myth
myth translated
into reality
Extra Credit Opportunities:
Students may earn extra credit by attending an Archaeological Institute of America (AIA)
lecture and submitting a 1-2-page response paper commenting on how it related or
compared to what we have studied (Please do not merely summarize the lecture). However,
if the topic of the lecture does not relate or compare to what we have been studying, then
please structure your paper in the following way. Begin with a short 1-paragraph summary of
the lecture including the speaker’s thesis, main evidence/argumentation, and conclusion. The
rest of your paper should be an analysis and critique of the speaker’s thesis, main evidence/
argumentation, and conclusion. Points you may cover include: Did they have a thesis? Were
they successful, or convincing? Is the argument logical? Does the evidence support their
thesis? Responses are due by email within 48 hours of the lecture. Eligible lectures:
2. March 19, 2015, Kathryn Sampeck, Illinois State U, “Spanish Entradas and Indian Roads:
Colonial Encounters of the First Kind in the Interior of the US Southeast” at 6 pm in Jepsen
Hall Room 118.
3. April 9, 2015, Anne-Marie Knoblauch,VT, “The Sculptural Tradition of Ancient Cyprus:
Island Culture or Outsider Art?” at 6pm in Jepsen Hall Room 118.