24 CE, Rome
Emperor Tiberius took a long, hard look at the room. It was clear there had been a struggle. Furniture was overturned and broken - a trail of destruction leading directly to the window. You could see how much she struggled, how hard she fought. No chance in tartarus Apronia committed suicide. He was lying. It was murder. Cold-blooded. Her husband, Marcus Plautius Silvanus, had been so confident that he hadn’t even bothered to order the slaves to clean it up. He was cocky. Arrogant. At least he was, until the Emperor Tiberius - the greatest detective on both sides of the Tiber River - came to investigate. Her husband was going to pay for this.
While modern audiences love a great detective mystery, we can’t really say the same about the Romans. The laws in Roman society, while setting the template for much of the Western world today, were more different than we would sometimes like to think about. One of the best illustrations of just how culturally different the Romans were to us is the incident of Apronia’s murder.
Now, a few points before we get too far into the story. In ancient Rome, the man of the house had complete control over the life and death of their family members and slaves. If he deemed his own son did something unforgivable, he had the authority to kill him. If he was in a crummy mood and killed his slave, well, he didn’t legally do anything wrong. The Roman state could do nothing. Because any of these people was the man’s own “property”, therefore there would be no one to bring charges against him. Additionally, at this point in time, Roman law was much more of a “self-help” situation, where you needed to drag the man you wanted to sue to court in order to do it.
Women in particular were considered perpetual minors. This meant that a woman would always be under the “protection” of her father until the day she married – at which point she would be moved to her husband’s “protection”. However, her father could later make the woman divorce her husband and marry her to another man. Therefore, the father did actually retain some power over the woman even after she left his possession, uh I mean, “protection”. Fathers frequently (ab)used this power to create alliances with other men by joining the families in this manner.
One such father, Lucius Apronius, one of the most powerful men in Rome, decided to marry his beloved and beautiful daughter Apronia to a man named Marcus Plautius Silvanus. Silvanus was a rising star with great potential, and now, a very powerful alliance. Everything seemed to be going well - until Apronia was found dead on the street one morning. Her body had been crushed from a fall from her window.
Silvanus claimed that she committed suicide by throwing herself out the window. Apronius was enraged. He did not believe that his own perfect daughter would do such a thing, nor that it was an accident. He cried murder.
Unfortunately, this was a time where the state did not concern itself with what was deemed “private” matters. There were no police to report the crime to, let alone a detective to investigate. Back then, a Roman had to identify, find, and confront the perpetrator by themselves. Under normal circumstances, Apronius would meet Silvanus and they would (hopefully) agree to a fair monetary compensation to be paid for the loss of his daughter. Apronius, however, wanted more. He wanted everyone to know what kind of man Silvanus was, and he had the political power to make it happen. Apronius managed to get Silvanus dragged in front of none other than the Emperor Tiberius for questioning.
Silvanus made up a terrible story about Apronia killing herself while he slept, and Tiberius was less than convinced. The emperor actually did something quite strange and decided to go and see the bedroom, the scene of the crime, for himself. This certainly took Silvanus by surprise because investigations were completely unheard of. He hadn’t even bothered to have the slaves clean up his mess yet. Roman law did not really conceive of such a thing as a crime scene, much less evidence, in the way we take for granted. Still, Tiberius went to the bedroom and, according to the account from the writer Tacitus, saw “traces of resistance and force employed”. Tiberius quickly sent Silvanus to the Senate to be tried and sentenced. Silvanus tried to plead insanity, that someone had laid a magical curse on him. Naturally, suspicion fell to all the women in Silvanys’ life, because magic and potions was the domain of women. His sister, Urgulanilla, was briefly suspected, but this was quickly dismissed. It did, however, allow her husband to cite this as a reason for divorce (along with adultery). Then suspicion shifted to another woman, Numantina, his ex-wife.
At this time, Silvanus was secretly sent a dagger from his grandmother, strongly implying that he should save everyone the trouble of the trial and public spectacle and just kill himself (though he did need the help of a slave to do it). With his death, guilt was admitted. It was done. The charges against Numantina were immediately dropped. She was safe. Silvanus would not be able to bring death to more women.
And so, the story concludes, Apronia’s murder is solved, the murderer is dead, and after a brief – admittedly overwhelmingly successful – career as a detective, Tiberius returns to being the emperor.
Text: Cindy G. Levesque. MENAM Archaeology. Copyright 2022.
Further Reading: Emma Southon, 2020. A Fatal Thing Happened on the way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome. Tacitus Annals iv 22 Alice Kober. 1945 Tiberius Master Detective. The Classical Outlook vol 22 no 4 1945 p.37 American Classical League David L. Vagi 2010 Tiberius Claudius Drusus († AD 20), Son of Claudius and Urgulanilla. American Journal of Numismatics Vol. 22 pp. 81-92 Published by: American Numismatic Society Stable
Images: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, open access
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