The Proscriptions
event · 2 works · 2 mentions · 2 anchored passages
proscriptions · the Proscriptions · the proscription
in the texts
Ancient Law
Revolutionary episodes of suspended law attributed to the Roman Tribunals' incapacity to punish capitally.
The incompetence of the Roman Tribunals to pass sentence of death led distinctly and directly to those frightful Revolutionary intervals, known as the Proscriptions, during which all law was formally suspended simply because party violence could find no other avenue to the vengeance for which it was thirsting.
Sulla
Sulla's campaign of publicly listing and condemning citizens to death and confiscation, extended across Rome and Italy, with rewards for informants and killers.
Moreover, proscriptions were made not only in Rome, but also in every city of Italy, and neither temple of God, nor hearth of hospitality, nor paternal home was free from the stain of bloodshed, but husbands were butchered in the embraces of their wedded wives, and sons in the arms of their mothers.
Some, however, say that it was not Metellus, but Fufidius, one of Sulla’s fawning creatures, who made this last speech to him.
Referring to these measures in a public harangue, he said that he was proscribing as many as he could remember, and those who now escaped his memory, he would proscribe at a future time.