Serial killers in ancient Rome, did they exist?

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Serial killers in ancient Rome, did they exist?

Postby Tarquinius Dionysius on Fri Feb 28, 2003 11:34 am

Anyone has some info on this subject? They probably existed, but I was wondering if there were any reports from that time of famous cases.
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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Sat Mar 01, 2003 5:25 am

Interesting. I doubt there is much mention, or that it would have been so noticed as serial killing. There was however M. Caelius' prosecution of Calpurnius Bestia for murdering a series of his wives using the same method each time. Would that count?

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Postby Tarquinius Dionysius on Sat Mar 01, 2003 12:28 pm

Yes, that's interesting, could you give me some more info on it? We have to do a special project for Latin class, and I was considering "serial killers in ancient Rome".
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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Sat Mar 01, 2003 10:31 pm

Salve

This story I have mentioned before; it is found in Pliny Nat. Hist. 27.4:

"If the sexual parts of a female are touched by aconite (monkshood), death ensues on the same day. Aconite was the poison that Marcus Caelius accused Calpurnius Bestia of using to kill his wives in their sleep. Hence that famous, bitter peroration of the prosecution denouncing the defendent's finger."

I think three wives were involved in this particualar contention, but the trial was not about the murders. There were three trials of a Calpurnius Bestia by a Marcus Caelius, but to which Pliny refers I am not certain. One book refers it to the trial of Lucius Calpurnius Bestia who was consul of 111 BCE, blamed for the Roman defeat by Jugurtha the following year, and subsequently tried. The tribune-elect in 62, also called Lucius Calpurnius Bestia, who was implicated by Cicero as one of the Catalina conspirators along with Cethegus and Lentulus, was related to the consul Bestia. He was either his son or possibly his grandson.

The most likely case involved here, however, and the one so indicated by Erich Gruen, is that of the aedilis Lucius Calpurnius Bestia who was Cicero's friend. This Bestia worked with tribunes to bring Cicero back from exile in 57. In 56 came a series of trials against Cicero's advocates, first against Milo in January. Bestia had run for the praetorship in 57 and was one working to restore Cicero. He was arraigned in ambitu on 11 Feb 56 by Marcus Caelius Rufus on a charge of bribery in that campaign. Cicero defended Bestia and won an acquittal in this first case. Then Bestia's son Lucius Sempronius Atratinus charged Marcus Caelius with plotting to poison Clodia. Cicero defended Marcus Caelius in Pro Caelio Rufo, where he made his infamous character assassination of Clodia, sister of Cicero's personal enemy Clodius Pulcher. Marcus Caelius then charged Bestia a second time and won a conviction; Bestia being sent into exile. This was a very volatile year in the courts, with all kinds of wild accusations being made between the partisans of Cicero and Clodius. Elections of that year were delayed until the following July 55. The peroration mentioned by Pliny was probably made in this last trial of Bestia, Marcus Caelius making the same charge of poisoning lovers as was made against him, only three times over.

So were the charges true and was Bestia a serial killer? Probably not. The accusation seems to have been politically and personally motivated, and was used only in a manner to defame Bestia, much as Cicero had defamed Clodia by inuendo.

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Postby Gnaeus Dionysius Draco on Sun Mar 02, 2003 1:11 pm

Psychopaths and serial killers have existed as long as mankind, I think. Deranged people with a lust for killing should appear in any urban civilisation.

Think of Nero. His father, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, was extremely violent and frequently drunk. Allegedly he once hit a kid with his chariot and didn't even care. His mother, on the other hand, was power-mad and manipulative. She got rid of Ahenobarbus and then of Claudius. It's no wonder that Seneca's and Burrus' later education of Nero failed; his childhood had already deformed him psychologically.

So is it any surprise that he ordered the killing of his step brother, the suicide of Seneca and the killing of his mother? I think not. I think Nero's character matches that of any psychopath.

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Postby Tarquinius Dionysius on Sun Mar 02, 2003 5:16 pm

It's not entirely true what you've written Draco. Because according to historians, Nero was a rightful and promising emperor in the beginning of his 'career', but he was later on corrupted by his power.
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Postby Gnaeus Dionysius Draco on Sun Mar 02, 2003 5:49 pm

He allowed himself to be restrained by Seneca and Burrus, who actually ruled it in his place... He himself was just surpressing his nature.

But it may also be true that power corrupted him. Most young emperors couldn't deal with the amount of power and wealth and were corrupted by it. The only exception I can think of is Augustus. But in general older, more experienced emperors who became emperor after they had had other careers were mentally more stable.

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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Tue Mar 04, 2003 7:19 pm

Salve Tarquini

This story may interest you too. From Valerius Maximus VIII.1.amb 1:

A woman was tried before Praetor M. Popillius Laenas because she had beaten her mother to death with a stick. The verdict on her was neither one or the other, because it was quite clear that she had done it out of grief for her children who had been poisoned, killed by their grandmother to spite her daughter; she had avenged one unnatural murder by another. The former slaying was judged deserving of vengence, the latter not deserving of acquittal.

Valerius has another story of a discovery that a plague in Rome was really due to a number of women poisoning their husbands. At least 172 women were convicted on the charge, brought by one servant girl. There is a similar story from 18th century Naples of a woman sentenced to be straggled for having provided a notorious poison to a number of women with an intent to rid themselves of undesired lovers.

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