Definition
The Lex Pompeia de Parricidiis was a Roman statute enacted approximately 55 B.C., attributed to Pompey, that codified and expanded the law governing parricidium — the killing of close blood relations. The law provided that any person who murdered an ascendant (parent, grandparent) or a descendant (son, daughter), or who committed any act falling within the recognized designation of parricidium, whether carried out secretly or openly, was subject to the penalty of parricidium. Crucially, the statute extended liability beyond the principal actor: any person who willfully procured such a crime or who served as an accomplice was equally subject to the penalty, even if the actual killing was not completed.
The penalty of parricidium under Roman law was among the most severe and symbolically charged in the ancient legal tradition. It entailed the poena cullei — the condemned was sewn into a leather sack together with a dog, a cock, a viper, and an ape, and cast into the sea or a river. This punishment reflected the Roman understanding that the parricide had placed himself outside the human community entirely and was unfit even for ordinary execution.
The Lex Pompeia was significant not merely for its penalty but for its definitional work: it systematized who counted as a victim of parricidium, drawing the circle of protected relations with legal precision and making explicit that indirect participation in such a killing carried full criminal consequences.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering this term in historical legal sources should understand several navigational points.
First, the statute sits at the intersection of Roman criminal law and family law. Sources treating it may appear in sections devoted to either, and the connection to the broader concept of patria potestas — the absolute authority of the Roman father over the household — is essential context. A researcher who finds the term without that background may misread the statute's scope.
Second, the Lex Pompeia is frequently cited in comparative and historical treatments of homicide law, particularly in works tracing how Western legal systems developed graduated categories of criminal killing based on the relationship between killer and victim. The distinction between ordinary homicide (governed separately) and parricidium shaped later civil law traditions, including provisions in the Digest of Justinian (notably Digest 48.9), where the lex is discussed at length. Any researcher using the Law Mind corpus on homicide taxonomy or comparative criminal law will benefit from anchoring their search here.
Third, the statute's extension of liability to accomplices and procurers is historically notable. It represents an early formal articulation of accessorial liability in a codified criminal statute — a point worth flagging for researchers tracing the intellectual lineage of complicity doctrine.
Fourth, Bouvier's entry is truncated in the available text, cutting off at the point of describing accomplice liability. Researchers relying on Bouvier's alone will have an incomplete picture. Supplement with Justinian's Digest 48.9 and, for secondary synthesis, with treatises on Roman criminal law (Mommsen's Römisches Strafrecht being the standard scholarly reference).
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary identifies the Lex Pompeia de Parricidiis as a Roman statute on the murder of blood relations dated to approximately 55 B.C. Bouvier's summary captures two core provisions: the extension of the parricidium penalty to killings of ascendants and descendants whether secret or open, and the inclusion of accomplices and procurers within the statute's reach. The entry is unfortunately incomplete in the available text, leaving the accomplice provision mid-sentence.
No other entries in the source set address this term directly. The Digest of Justinian (48.9) provides the most authoritative ancient source on the statute's content and the list of relations whose killing qualified as parricidium under its terms — a list that expanded considerably from early Roman law to include uncles, aunts, patrons, and others beyond the immediate family. Historical dictionaries of Roman law, such as those appended to editions of the Corpus Juris Civilis, treat the statute in greater detail than common law dictionaries like Bouvier's, which covers it only as a reference point for English-language legal readers encountering Roman law citations.
Jurisdictional Note
The Lex Pompeia de Parricidiis has no operative force in any modern jurisdiction. Its significance is exclusively historical and comparative. Civil law systems descending from Roman law — including French, Spanish, Italian, and Latin American legal traditions — retain vestigial influence from the Roman parricidium framework in their graded homicide categories, but none apply the Lex Pompeia directly.