5 – The Mamertine
The Mamertine prison was one of the most brutal in the ancient world. It was created during the era of Roman Kings sometime between 640 and 616 BC. It is located at the foot of Capitoline Hill in Rome and was the only prison in the city at the time. According to Livy, it was the fourth king of Rome, Ancus Marius, who ordered the construction of the prison. The Romans were the first to introduce imprisonment as a form of punishment, and the Mamertine remained in use for centuries.
It is worth noting that the Mamertine was very different to the prisons of today. It was located underground and consisted of upper and lower cell floors. You could only access the lower cell via a hole in the upper cell’s floor. The upper prison is trapezoidal in shape, and there is a plaque naming famous prisoners and their cause of death. There is another plaque featuring the names of saints and martyrs along with the people who tortured them. St. Peter and St. Paul are both said to have died in the Mamertine.
The lower room is called Tullianum, after its builder, Servius Tullius, and is located in a sewer system below the city. This part of the Mamertine was designed for the criminals set to be executed whereas the upper part was for torture. According to Sallust, the Tullianum was 12 feet underground and vile because of the filth and stench. Prisoners in the Tullianum were usually executed via strangulation or else they were left to starve to death. There was also an iron door which was opened when the Romans wanted to toss dead bodies into the River Tiber.
There is a lengthy list of famous individuals imprisoned and/or executed in the Tullianum. These include King Jugurtha of Numidia who died of starvation in 104 BC, Vercingetorix, leader of the Gauls, who was imprisoned there before his execution in 46 BC, and Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura, who was one of the main members of the Catiline Conspiracy and executed in 63 AD.
