Rome Sewed You Into a Sack... With a MONKEY #shorts

Kill your father in ancient Rome and you got the poena cullei: sewn into a leather sack with a monkey, a dog, a rooster and a snake, a wolf skin over your head, carted to the sea by black oxen and thrown in. Cicero says the point was to cut you off from sky, sea and earth, even in death. Emperor Claudius used it more in five years than Rome had in centuries. Augustus hated it so much he coached the accused to deny it.