Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Proscription Lists

Episode Date: February 26, 2023

The movie The Purge depicts a fictitious world where one night a year, there is a war of all against all.  If you look back in history, you will find a time when something similar happened.  Except it wasn’t a case of everyone against everyone, it was a case of everyone against a few.  For those who were the victim of this, it was terrifying. Learn more about proscription lists and why you never wanted to be on one on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/EverythingEverywhere Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The movie The Purge depicts a fictitious world where one night a year there's a war of all against all. If you look back in history, you'll find a time when something similar actually happened. Except it wasn't a case of everyone against everyone. It was a case of everyone against a few. And for those who are the victims of this, it was truly terrifying. Learn more about proscription lists and why you never wanted to be on one on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were we're wrong. Throughline is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story

that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night and how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the Throughline podcast from NPR. Before I get started, I should note that I'm talking about proscriptions, not prescriptions like you get from a doctor. While they sound similar, they have almost opposite meanings. To prescribe is to set down something as a rule or law. To proscribe is to condemn, ban, or forbid. As you will see, this episode is all about proscribing. The story gets started with the first Roman civil war.

The civil war will be the subject of its own future episode, but to briefly summarize, there were two opposing forces led by the Roman generals and consuls, Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius. Sulla. The faction led by Marius was called the Populares. They had the support of the common people and advocated reform of the Roman system. Sulla's faction were the optimates who had the support of the elites and opposed reform. Rome had been experiencing social and economic strife and Marius sought to institute reforms to change the Roman system. I previously did an episode on the reforms which Marius brought to the Roman military, which had the long-term effect of shifting the

loyalties of soldiers from the Republic to individual generals. Armed conflict broke out between Marius and Sulla in 88 BC, and by 82 BC, Sulla had come out victorious. Sulla marched on Rome with his forces, took control the city, and was declared dictator by the Senate, giving him absolute control of Rome. During the Roman Republic, dictator was an actual legal position that was given in the case of emergency for a period of six months. In this case, however, Sulla was appointed dictator with, no limit to his term. One of the first things that Sulla did was to get rid of those who had opposed him, as well as to seek revenge after Marius had enacted massacres against his supporters. To this end, he published a list of names of people he considered to be enemies of the state

and personal threats to his rule. In Latin, a prescription was originally a public notice advertising something or a notification of something for sale, similar to a flyer you'd post on a lamppost in your neighborhood. In this case, however, the prescription was a public notice of people who had their citizenship immediately revoked. Moreover, anyone on the list was declared outlaw, and their lives and property were immediately forfeit. If you remember back to my episode on outlaws, an outlaw wasn't just someone who committed a crime, but someone who was declared outside the protection of the law. Anyone on the prescription list was eligible to be murdered by anyone. That included friends, family members, and even their own slaves.

Not only could anyone be killed on site, but it was considered to be the duty of any Roman to kill someone on the list if they were able. Furthermore, anyone who killed someone on the list would be rewarded with two talents of silver. To put that amount into perspective, two talents of silver at the time were the equivalent of about 12,000 dinari, and a denarius was the standard wage for a day's work. so if you kill someone on the list, you'd instantly become rich. On top of just getting killed, anyone on the list would have their property confiscated by the state, and their sons and grandsons would be ineligible to sit in the Senate for their entire lives.

As the Roman historian Plutarch noted in his life of Sulla, quote, Sulla immediately prescribed 80 persons without communicating with any magistrate. As this caused a general murmur, he let one day pass and then prescribe 220 more, and again on the third day as many. In a harangue to the people, he said with reference to these measures that he had prescribed all he could think of, and as to those who now escaped his memory, he would prescribe them at some future time. End quote. The entire process was overseen by his freedman, Lucius Cornelius Chrysogynus, and the process was incredibly corrupt. It's unknown just how many people were ultimately put on the list, but estimates are as high as 9,000. As Plutarch

noted, quote, Sulla now began to make blood flow, and he filled the city with deaths without number or limit. People were beheaded, and their heads were displayed to curry favor with the government. Many of the people on the list went into hiding. If you were found to be harboring anyone on the list, then you, too, would be sentenced to death. Most of the people who were prescribed had nothing to do with Sulla or Marius, and were just put on the list because they had money, and Sulla needed cash. Likewise, other people bribed Lucius Cornelius Chrysogynist to put their rivals on the list, even if they were totally innocent. One of the people who was prescribed was a young man named Julius Caesar, whose father-in-law was a supporter of Marius.

He fled and was protected by his family members, many of which were supporters of Sulla. He was later pardoned by Sulla who came to regret it, noting, quote, In this Caesar, there are many Marius's. It should not surprise you when I say that this period in Roman history, was not looked upon fondly by anyone. When the next Civil War broke out a couple decades later between Julius Caesar and Pompei Magnus, many people thought that there would be a return to prescription lists after Caesar won. Caesar, however, having survived the prescription list himself, went far out of his way to be

conciliatory towards his former enemies. He pardoned pretty much everyone and sort of pretended like the whole thing had never happened. However, it would prove to be his undoing as his enemies ended up assassinating him. The assassination of Caesar was not the end of civil strife in Rome. After the assassination, the Caesarian forces, led by Octavian, Mark Antony, and Marcus Lepidus, began another civil war with Caesar's assassins. The Caesarians established a governing body known as the Second Triumvirate, which I've covered in a previous episode.

One of the first acts of the triumvirate was to create another prescription list. The prescriptions of Sulla had taken place 40 years earlier, and few people could still remember it. However, the assassination of Caesar was still fresh in everyone's mind, and his failure of being conciliatory towards his enemies was a lesson that they had learned. Over the course of two days, the three Triumvir's debated and negotiated over who would be put on the list. Unlike Sulla's prescription list, this list became extremely personal. Each of the Triumverse put their own family members on the list.

They were willing to sacrifice their own family members just to get their own enemies taken care of. We have much more information about what happened during this second prescription. Many, if not most of the people on the list, had nothing to do with the assassination of Caesar, and were put there simply because they had money or for petty personal reasons. It's been said that the first person who was killed was a Tribune of the Plebs by the name of Salvius. Salvius was an ally of Cicero, and as a Tribune of the Plebs, his person was considered inviolate while he was in office. He was not allowed to be touched or assaulted in any way. That, however, didn't matter. When he saw his name on the list, he went home and held a banquet

for his friends and family, and in the middle of the banquet, soldiers stormed in and beheaded him. Then there was the wife of a man named Septimius who wanted to marry someone else. She got her husband placed on the list. When Septimius found that he was on the list, he fled to his wife for protection, but she turned in her husband who was later killed. The man she wanted to marry was a friend of Mark Anthony. Perhaps the most famous person who was put on the Second Triumbrate Prescription list was the statesman and Senator Cicero. Cicero had been an ally of Octavian when he was fighting with Mark Anthony. However, Cicero had been a vocal opponent of Mark Anthony, and Mark Anthony had a great deal of animosity towards him. Mark Anthony's hatred of Cicero made him

the most wanted person on the list. Cicero fled town and had a lot of support from the people. Most people refused to provide information on the whereabouts of Cicero. He was eventually caught on December 7, 43 BC, while being carried in a litter going from his estate to a ship waiting for him to take him to Macedonia. When soldiers caught up to him, he didn't put up a fight. He leaned his head out the litter in a sign of submission and said, quote, I go no further. Approach veteran soldier, and if you can at least do so much properly, sever this neck. He was beheaded, his hands were cut off, and both were nailed to the rostra in the forum. According to the historian Appian, over 300 senators and 2,000 equities were killed,

but there may have been many more thousands of people who ended up being murdered in the chaos. These two prescription lists took place about 40 years apart from each other. However, in the 2,000 years since, there hasn't really been another example of it happening, at least not in the same way. The word prescription has been used to describe other historical events, but none were like the prescriptions of the late Roman Republic.

It's something that I actually find kind of odds. given how many horrible massacres and civil wars have taken place in the world's sense. It seems like a uniquely cruel and efficient means of taking care of your enemies that some despot would have taken advantage of at some point, even if it was only to be a nod to history. Not that I'm complaining. The practice of prescribing names is something which I'm sure we can all agree is better left in the dustbin of history.

The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. I just want to thank everyone, including the show's producers, who support the show over on Patreon. If you'd like to support the show, just head over to patreon.com, which is currently the only place where you can get show merchandise. Also, if you want to talk to other listeners about the show, head over to our Facebook group or Discord server, both of which have links in the show notes.