Gemonian stairs
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The Gemonian Stairs (Latin: Scalae Gemoniae) were located in the central part of Ancient Rome, leading from the Capitoline Hill down to the Roman Forum and Tiber River. Nicknamed the "Stairs of Mourning," the stairs are infamous in Roman history as a place of execution.
The stairs were built some time before the reign of Tiberius and were not mentioned by name in any ancient texts that predate his reign. Their first use as a place of execution is thus associated with the paranoid excesses of his later reign.
The condemned were slain on the stairs either by sword, or more famously, by being bound and thrown down the stairs. Occasionally the corpses of the executed were transferred here for display from other places of execution in Rome. Corpses were usually left to rot on the staircase for extended periods of time in full view of the Forum, scavenged by dogs or other carrion animals, until eventually being thrown into the Tiber.
Death on the stairs was considered extremely dishonourable and dreadful, yet several senators and even an emperor (Vitellius) met their demise here.
[edit] External links
- Emblematic Scenes in Suetonius' "Vitellius" - interpretive essay, makes several mentions of the stairs
- LacusCurtius entry on the Scalae
