A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome

by Emma Southon

The first attempt at voting was interrupted when Tiberius appeared to be winning and his opponents got in the way. The votes were erased and everyone started again. Now Tiberius appeared to be losing, so his supporters interrupted and the whole thing was called off. Tiberius returned to his house, where people congregated shouting lamentations and encouragement through his window all night. The next day began badly with a series of omens. First, the sacred birds of Rome refused to eat their breakfast, which definitely signalled bad news. Then, when Tiberius was leaving the house, he badly stubbed his toe on the doorframe, breaking the nail and filling his sandal with blood. This might have been because people had kept him up all night with the shouting and lamenting, but doors and doorways had great symbolic significance for the Romans, and they saw this as the gods telling Tiberius to go back to bed. Tiberius wasn’t listening. He kept going, only to have a tile thrown at him by a murder of crows fighting on a rooftop. It was all very ominous, but still Tiberius didn’t stop. After the previous day’s activities, voting had been moved to the Capitoline Hill where people might be expected to behave themselves a bit. It didn’t work. By the time Tiberius arrived, the tribes had devolved into two restless mobs, each furious that their vote had been erased the day before. When the other Tribunes tried to prevent the vote from going ahead yet again, a riot inevitably broke out. Th...