Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Carnificina

Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary, and Greek Lexicon (Rich, 1849)

CARNIFICI'NA. The place in which criminals were tortured and executed (Liv. ii. 23. Suet. Tib. 62.); viz. an underground dungeon beneath all the other cells of the gaol. The illustration (Carnificina/1.1) represents the interior of the carnificina in the state prisons at Rome, constructed by Servius Tullius, after whom it was called the Tullianum, and the identical spot in which the friends and accomplices of Catiline were executed by order of Cicero. The criminal was let down into it by a rope through the aperture in the ceiling, and his body dragged up again by an iron hook (uncus) after the execution. The small door-way on the left hand, though ancient, does not belong to the original construction; it gives admission to a low subterranean gallery, now filled with rubbish, but which takes a direction towards the Tiber, and was, perhaps, intended for carrying the dead bodies to the river, when they were not dragged out of the prison for exposure on the Gemonian stairs.

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  Carnificina/1.1