PAST CRIMESmalicious intent, and that the items had actually gone missing, or had been
misappropriated without consent.
In assault and rape cases, much depended on the status of the victim–
penalties for attacking a slave were far less than those for assaults on citizens.
Rape was a capital crime, punishable by execution or exile. However, it was
up to the woman to prove that the act had not been consensual–if the rapist
claimed that she had consented, she could herself be accused of perjury or
adultery. Not surprisingly, many women were forced to keep silent.
Roman punishments
There were prisons in Rome, and part of one survives under the church of
San Guiseppe dei Falegnami on the Capitoline Hill. It is known as the
Mamertine Prison, and may date from the seventh centuryBC. Two damp
underground cells, one above the other, can be found here, and it remained
in use until at least the late fourth centuryAD. Imprisonment was not in
itself a punishment–prisons were used to hold people before their trials, or
executions, some of which took place within the prison. Not until later in
the Empire did longterm imprisonment become more common, and then
conditions seem to have been very bad, as sometimes imperial intervention
was required to stop the worst abuses of torture, poor accommodation and
treatment within these institutions. Tradition has it that Saint Peter and
Saint Paul were held in the Mamertine Prison, as was the great Gallic hero
Vercingetorix. Not far from the Mamertine were the Lautumiae–quarries
for tufa stone – which were used to incarcerate slaves and lowclass
criminals.
Punishment for slaves was usually harsher than that for citizens, but unless
a major crime was involved, there was an incentive not to inflict permanent
harm–slaves were property, and in killing or maiming a slave, the authorities
would also be punishing the owner, who might otherwise be an innocent party.
Slaves could be whipped, or have a heavy weight suspended from their necks
that they were forced to carry at all times. Public slaves (belonging to the
state) could be sentenced to hard labour in mines, quarries or in mills.
Punishments for citizens ranged from simple fines to whippings,
enslavement or exile. The death sentence was generally reserved for cases of
treason and patricide but noncitizens could be executed for other crimes.
Various methods of execution were used, including being whipped to death,
beheaded, strangled, crucified or thrown into the sea, river or from the
Tarpeian rock (Plate 1). The latter method was particularly popular for
patricides, and involved bringing the criminal to a public place, blindfolding