Precipizio e castigo. Forme, funzioni e mitologie delle deiectiones e saxo in Roma antica

In the early imperial age, some brutal punishment practices for the execution of the poena capitis were promoted in the criminal prosecution. Among these, the precipitation from the Tarpeian cliff; such an instrument of punishment was originally reserved for qualified forms of breach of fides and it was partly already used, with political aims, in the last part of the republican age. But in the Augustan age, historians, poets and doxographers linked to the imperial court brought the myth of Tarpeia to new life. There are therefore sufficient elements to place the revival of the deiectio e saxo in connection with the lex Iulia maiestatis in the framework of an initial, rudimentary development of a “criminal law of the enemy”.