What a society deems criminal is always contextual. Romans did not have a word for “crime” as contemporary people conceptualize it, but they had multiple words that carried various shades of negative nuance for different behaviors.
What counted as a crime in the Roman Empire?
One important resource for understanding Roman criminal law is Emperor Justinian’s Digest. This sixth-century compilation summarized classical legal decisions informed by laws from 450 BCE through the sixth century CE. The Digest separates activities that would resonate with more contemporary sensibilities of crime into two books: a book on delicts or offenses (Digest 47) and a book on crime, trials, and punishments (Digest 48).
The term delict refers to an action that inflicts damage for which the person inflicted can demand retribution. Activities under this category included theft, robbery with violence, and unlawful damage. Those affected by delicts had to secure their own justice and personally demand penalty or compensation from the offender. This reflects a key feature of Roman culture: elite Romans sought to address personal offenses on their own without courts.
Crime proper, per the Digest, required public proceedings. The procedure began with a public accusation in which the accuser asked the civic, provincial, or imperial courts to pass judgment on the accused. In the Roman provinces during the imperial period, the governor presided over such courts and issued verdicts based on their interpretation of the evidence.
This procedural definition of crime applied to a small list of eleven activities, seven of which required wealth and/or status and could, therefore, only be performed by the elite. These included activities like electoral corruption, extortion, and embezzlement. Treason against the imperial order and later against the emperor himself also made the list. Crimes of violence, especially offenses considered publicly violent like stirring up crowds and causing civic disturbances, were crimes that people of any status could commit, and Romans punished such crimes severely.
How were punishments determined?
Roman legal practice had a dual penalty system. There were at least two sets of rules: one for the honestiores (the more honorable individual of higher status) and another set for the humiliores (the humbler individual of lower status). When both types of individuals committed the same violation, the humbler would receive harsher punishments. Certain types of punishments like crucifixion, working in mines, fighting beasts in the arena, and enslavement were exclusive punishments for low status people. For similar crimes, honestiores would instead receive sentences that Romans understood as more humane and dignified. They would instead be exiled, and if an elite’s actions warranted a death penalty, they would be executed by beheading with a sword rather than crucifixion. It is important to note that Roman law did not recognize prisons as punishment and admonished governors not to use them as such. Romans had their own strategies of state violence for punishing low status “criminals.”
