Poena cullei

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Poena cullei (Latin, 'penalty of the sack') under Roman law was a type of death penalty imposed on a subject who had been found guilty of parricide. The punishment consisted of being sewn up in a leather sack, with an assortment of live animals including a dog, snake, monkey, and a chicken or rooster, and then being thrown into water. The punishment may have varied widely in its frequency and precise form during the Roman period. For example, the earliest fully documented case is from ca. 100 BC, although scholars think the punishment may have developed about a century earlier. Inclusion of live animals in the sack is only documented from Early Imperial times, and at the beginning, only snakes were mentioned. At the time of Emperor Hadrian (2nd century AD), the best-known form of the punishment was documented, where a rooster, a dog, a monkey and a viper were inserted in the sack. At the time of Hadrian, poena cullei was made into an optional form of punishment for parricide (the alternative...

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