Britt Jones
One of the most horrific punishments in history involved a person who had killed their parents, thrown into a sack with a ‘monkey, a chicken and a snake’ and sometimes a dog.
It’s a gruesome history which sought to stave off crimes against families, which was also extended to include stepparents, uncles, aunts, grandparents etc, in the following years.
It’s not only horrifying for the person but also for any animal that is within the sack too.
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The punishment was known as the 'Poena Cullei', AKA the 'worst Roman punishment'.
Essentially, the offender would be placed into a sack alongside the animals, which was then sewn shut and thrown into a river.
The person and the animals would then struggle to breathe and would attack each other before either mauling everyone inside to death or eventually suffocating.
While nobody really calls it the Poena Cullei, and refers to it as the penalty for patricide instead, the finer details don’t really matter here.
It’s the origins which are the most interesting.
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Basically, according to Imperium Romanum, the first mention of the method included a man with snakes, but it began to expand itself into new heights of cruelty throughout the years to include a host of other animals.
There was also another sack method to die during the reign of Emperor Hadrian, which would see a person be thrown into a sack and then given to wild animals.
It was known as a ritual called 'procuratio prodigii', or the ‘drowning of monsters’, which would see the ‘removal of beings, creatures that were crippled or distorted’.
The animals chosen also had a symbolic meaning too, as the monkey used to be associated with low instincts, an imitation of a man who didn’t know what he was doing.
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A rooster symbolised the lack of attachment to things, and a dog meant to represent the dog’s path of travelling with Hecate in Hades (Greek Mythology).
As for the snake, it was apparently thanks to Medusa’s snaky head that it was included.
Then the wrongdoer would be thrown into the wolfskin sack which would symbolise their feral nature before their wooden clogs were added as they believed it was insulating and would cut them off from their connection to the ground.
Before sewing the sack, they’d whip the naked person.
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After they were in there and sewed up, they’d be chucked into the river which represented returning to the water (amniotic).
Unfortunately, if you were to be killed using this method, you wouldn’t get a burial, instead, your bones and the animal bones would be missed together.
According to Amusing Planet, historians believe the method was concocted towards the end of the third century BC and became so popular that they saw ‘more sacks than crosses’.
It lasted all the way up until the Saxonian city of Zittau, where the last case is alleged to have happened in 1749 before being banned in 1761.