Poena Cullei

I wouldn’t even know where to start…

CATS IN BAG BAGS IN RIVER (1990) An untitled work of enamel on aluminum by Christopher Wool (American, born 1955), a gift of The Louis and Bessie Adler Foundation, Inc. in 1991 to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City

For me, writing a sermon still feels like writing a book or blog post or anything else. It’s different in some small ways, but it’s still writing. And all writing, for me, has this one weird quirk that I don’t fully know how to articulate but I chuckle every time I run across it.

Basically said, the rabbit trails and research deep dives I end up taking almost never see the light of day. I can’t begin to consider how many hours I’ve spent reading about some arcane or quizzical cultural oddity in search of a missing piece for a story or illustration. I’ve read whole books chasing down a metaphor that never really takes off. It’s almost maddening to consider that I’ll spend half a morning hunting down some semblance of an idea that will end up, at best, merely (vaguely, indirectly) influencing one sentence spoken in a sermon that will only be heard by a few hundred people before being completely forgotten forever.

(This is helpful in our pursuit of smaller. I am, like virtually every other person on earth, largely a forgettable creature. My great-grandchildren will likely not know my first name, much less be able to recount anything of importance about my life. And yet - I was created on purpose for a purpose so my life has profound meaning and invites intentionality into every day. This is what I like to call “living in the tension.”)

Where were we?

Oh ya - even though I regularly have to chase down loose ends and ideas that will never see the light of day, this pursuit never feels like wasted time. It’s all part of the writing process and actually makes life more interesting. Hurray for obsessive curiosity!

Anyway, I was doing some research on the reign of Augustus in the Roman Empire related to a future sermon and ran across something so bizarre and unbelievable that I simply had to share it somewhere.

And let me state for the record: it is utterly irrelevant to what I was chasing down. It does not apply to your life or mine. It has no value at all other than its role as a historical curiosity. And yet here we are. Together. About to have our minds melted.

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In the Roman world, patricide - killing one’s father - was apparently common enough that it had a special punishment.

It was called poena cullei - literally “penalty of the sack” in Latin.

Now, listen - humanity has created some interesting penalties and punishments over the years. Just in the last couple of centuries, we’ve used bullets, electricity, and needles connected to reservoirs of poison to execute people. Torture is unfortunately common and the means and methods of modern torture are as inventive as they are depressing.

Humans have a seemingly endless well of ideas when it comes to ways to create pain, coerce confessions, or just plain punish people. Inflicting the damned has led to the creation of ridiculously awful contraptions and even new technologies.

So what is poena cullei, this Roman oddity that I found so interesting that I had to interrupt your day to explain it?

Well, let’s start by saying you’ve been convicted of patricide. Shame on you.

Your punishment (rightly earned, perhaps) is the death by penalty of the sack. As in, you will literally be placed inside of a leather sack and thrown into water.

I mean, that alone sounds sort of terrifying. Sinking in a heavy leather sack as you slowly drown sounds quite terrible. But that isn’t the fullness of the penalty of the sack at all.

You would be in the sack. But you would not be alone.

*insert dramatic gasp here*

In this leather sack, you would be joined by a dog, a monkey, a rooster, and a snake.

And, once sealed in the sack, you would all be thrown into water. Which leads to a few obvious questions:

• Why were these the animals chosen? Was it just what they had on hand? Were the animals kept for this purpose or would a Roman soldier carrying a big leather sack knock on your door and be like “Hey, so, can we borrow your dog…?”

• What is happening inside of this sack? On dry land are the animals freaking out and fighting each other? Are you building alliances? What is the worst animal? Is the dog just biting anything that moves? Is the monkey freaking out and scratching wildly? Is the snake (*hold on, I’m about to pass out*) just biting you over and over? How does the behavior change when the sack hits the water?

• Are there other animal combinations? Could it possibly be worse? Could we include a porcupine? What is wrong with people? Were there just piles of sacks on the bottom of lakes and rivers all around the Roman Empire? Did they consider using a cheaper material for the sack? Would salt water be a different experience? What are we doing here?

I don’t have a clever way to end this whole thing.

So. That’s it.

Live well. Avoid the sack. Eat Arby’s.

- KB