A Dark, Dark Place

Imagine if you will, being above ground and then forced down a hole (probably by ladder) into utter darkness and left there indefinitely. No light, only occasional food/drink, but being completely shut out from society and imprisoned inside an abyss.

This, dear readers, was the Tullianum--sometimes called the Mamertine Prison. 

Now located inside the Church of San Giuseppe dei Falegnami, this carcer (prison) was built by the ever-practical Romans right outside the Rostra and the Curia's original location in an area known as the Comitium. It pretty much enabled them to find someone guilty and then dispose of them immediately into "the hole". One of the oldest remaining parts of the Forum Romanum, the Tullianum dates from the 7th cent. B.C. and can still be visited today. People held inside were either held for trial or for execution. In other words, it was NO happy place!

Among the high-profile prisoners kept/executed here were Lentulus Sura, Vercingetorix, and possibly, Jesus's most famous Disciple, Simon Peter.

Lentulus Sura was Marc Antony's stepfather. He didn't stay inside the Tullianum long at all. Because of his social status and citizenship, ancient sources say that he was held in house-arrest after being captured during the infamous Catiline Conspiracy of 63 B.C. Antonius: Son of Rome tells the poignant story of this particular execution. A typical method used inside the Tullianum was strangulation. That is how Lentulus died.

In my next book, Antonius: Second in Command, the high king of the Gauls, Vercingetorix was a long-term prisoner inside the Tullianum for about six years. What a horrible life he had during that time... never, EVER seeing daylight. I've always pitied poor Vercingetorix. After Caesar's victory at Munda, in Spain, he was hauled out of the prison back into broad daylight. This would have been the first time he'd experienced blinding sunshine in SIX YEARS!!! For the occasion of Julius Caesar's Gallic Triumph, he was lashed to a post and paraded through Rome. I'm sure he was emaciated, sickly, and pale by that time. In fact, it's remarkable he even survived for so long. Immediately following the Triumph, he was lowered back into incarceration inside the Tullianum and strangled. It was a sad fate for a non-Roman who gave Caesar his greatest challenge in his military career.

Lastly, Jesus's Disciple, Simon Peter may have been imprisoned inside the Tullianum, although the only real "evidence" is that the Tullianum was the only known one-room prison in Rome. There is a natural spring inside the Tullianum in which Peter used during his incarceration to baptize believers. I think it admirable that he found a way to spit in the Romans' eyes, despite his condemnation!

It's true that the Romans could be extraordinarily cruel, but I find them fascinating because so many of their architectural and artistic works have survived to the present day. How many apartment buildings and prisons will survive from our society 2000 years from now? 

​Let THAT sink in!

                 Inside the Tullianum. Note the upside-down cross-- the method by which Simon Peter was executed.