‘Whoever heard of capital punishment by night?’ To many senators, the real scandal of the business was less the executions themselves than that they had been laid on as an after-dinner entertainment. ‘The more that punishments are made a public spectacle, so the more they are able to serve as an example and a warning.’41 Here was the authentic voice of the Roman moralist, convinced that anything staged in private was bound to foster depravity and deviance. The presumption was a venerable one: prominent citizens should never, under any circumstances, be permitted private lives.
