I. The first class contained the imperial senators and their agnatic descendants to the third degree; knights with public horses; soldiers and veterans and their children; decurions. They were not liable to the penalty of death except for parricide or treason or except by an imperial order, nor to the mines or compulsory work or beating. The usual penalty was deportation to an island, in some cases combined with confiscation of part of their property. Deportation involved loss of citizenship.
II. The second class were punished for grave offences by death, more frequently by condemnation to the mines preceded by beating and accompanied with chains. This punishment was usually for life and involved loss of citizenship and property. It formerly involved loss of freedom, but this was abolished by Justinian in 542. Banishment (relegatio) might be for life or for a time, and citizenship was not lost.
The death penalty for free persons was usually beheading, in and after second century by sword, not axe; rarely, and only for the gravest offences, crucifying or burning. Beating or torturing to death, strangling and poisoning, were forbidden.
Justinian in 556 enacted that for crimes involving death or banishment the property of the criminals should not be confiscated either to the judges or officials, or, as according to the old law, to the fisc, but should pass to their descendants, or, if there were none, to the ascendants up to the third degree. He also enacted that where the law ordered both hands or both feet to be cut off, one only should be cut, and that joints should not be dislocated. No limb should be cut off for theft, if without violence.
Constantine (318) re-enacted the punishment assigned by old practice to parricide, viz., the criminal to be beaten with rods, sewn up in a sack with a dog, cock, viper and ape, and thrown into a deep sea, if near, or into a river. Justinian retained the law, but confined it to murderers of father, mother, and grandfather and grandmother, whereas it had previously been applicable to many other relatives.
III. Slaves were punished for grave crime by beheading, sometimes by crucifying or burning or exposure to wild beasts: for lesser crimes by work in the mines. Flogging was usual in many cases, and regularly preceded capital punishment. Imprisonment was not used as a punishment, but only as security for trial.
Heretics were deprived by Constantine (326) of all privileges given on the ground of religion and were forbidden (396) to occupy any place for worship. In 407 Manichaeans and Donatists were ordered to be treated as criminals; they forfeited all their property to their next of kin (if free from heresy) and were incapable of succession, of giving, of buying and selling, of contracting, of making a will; their slaves were to be held guiltless only if they deserted their masters and served the Catholic Church.
