Katie Adams
Professor Behan
Latin ll
18 May 2018
The Lesser Known
Depending on people's personal beliefs many believe that ancient Rome is responsible for many legal matters such as voting or even religious celebrations. There are still many obscure cultural references of ancient Rome that most do not know of.
Damnatio Memoriae
Damnatio memoriae is a modern Latin phrase literally meaning "condemnation of memory", meaning that a person must not be remembered. The damnatio memoriae had especially been used by the Romans between the 2nd century BC and the 3rd century AD. Before this it was used mainly in Ancient Egypt and the Near East, as well as in the Greek world. The damnatio memoriae was the act of basically erasing a person from history …show more content…
Poena cullei or punishment of the sack was normally the punishment for parricida (children who killed their parents) the age of which this specific punishment was not specified. Poena Cullei consisted of being sewn up in a leather sack, sometimes with an assortment of live animals, and then being thrown into water. The first identifiable case was about 100 BC although some scholars believe it may have developed about a century before. Inclusion of live animals in the sack was only documented from early Imperial times, with only snakes being originally mentioned. In the 2nd Century AD, at the time of Emperor Hadrian, the most well known form of Poena Cullei was where a cock, a dog, a monkey and a viper were inserted in the sack. With Hadrian it was made into an optional form but the other option was being thrown to the beasts. Well over 200 years later, Emperor Justinian reinstituted the punishment with the 4 animals, and Poena Cullei remained the statutory penalty for parricides within Byzantine law for the next 400 years. The person sentenced to such a penalty was first whipped or beaten with blood coloured rods. Although the Romans had many cruel and unusual punishments they still relied on a code of morals known as the mos …show more content…
Rome created a government to perform such tasks so it could stay strong one may not understand why Romans decided the way they did things was right but it worked and that is all that matters. So the cruel punishment of the poena cullei was set to defend the deaths of parents who were murdered by their child. Leaders who were not as graceful as other were condemned from memory, and their lives went of a set of “morals” Rome made it and is still quite useful in terms of mistakes not being repeated and for