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

by Emma Southon

Admittedly, the priesthood wasn’t exactly a spiritual calling in Rome, but it was still a bit like the Archbishop of Canterbury going full Rambo when Scipio Nasica lost his patience, stood up in the temple and shouted, ‘As the consul is a traitor for letting the whole Empire and its laws collapse, I’ll fix this.’

So he states ‘some said that’ Caesar had been suffering from diarrhoea that day and had therefore been unable to stand and greet the senators lest he have an unfortunate accident. You really have to know that you have done something truly terrible when the best possible defence that your biggest fan can give you is that you might have shat yourself.

Dealing with a murder in the Roman world was less like CSI and much more like dealing with an uninsured person driving into your car, forcing you to take them to the small claims court to get them to pay for a new bumper. The responsibility for investigating, prosecuting and punishing a murder was entirely on the family and friends of the deceased.

The justice system in Rome was one based purely on personal responsibility. The individual was responsible for identifying that a crime had taken place, identifying who had committed the crime, and finding a resolution.

Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, they believed, not from some farcical bloody murder. Strange men in corridors distributing stab wounds was no basis for a system of government.