AD METALLA. — The sentence to forced labor in the mines a. m. was, after the death penalty, the most severe punishment, and was therefore called proxima morti (Dig. XLVIII, 19, 28). Unknown under the Republic, it was introduced by Tiberius in A.D. 23 to punish plebeians and slaves guilty of crimes against the State or of ordinary offenses, without regard to age or sex; it was later frequently applied against Christians.
It was generally a perpetual punishment, but if this had not been specified in the sentence, it was regarded as a ten-year condemnation (Dig. XLVIII, 19, 22). A free man lost his liberty, passing into the ownership of the State, a slave of his punishment, serous poenae (Dig. XXVIII, 1, 8, 4). The punishment was preceded by flogging; the condemned were branded with a hot iron, with half their heads shaved (semitonsi, Cyprian, Ep. 76, 2), and were chained (compedes), with their feet held by crossbars (traversaria), forced to sleep on the bare ground, and provided with insufficient food and clothing. Between the sentence ad metalla and that in opus metallum there was no difference other than in the chains, which were less heavy in the latter case. Women were generally assigned to auxiliary tasks serving the mines: in ministerio metallicorum or in the salt works; they retained their citizenship if condemned for a fixed period.
Dionysius, bishop of Corinth, wrote in 170 to Pope Soter (166–75), thanking him because the Community of Rome “provides sustenance for the brothers who languish in the mines; through this generosity, which you have practiced from the earliest times, you have remained faithful to a tradition inherited from your Roman fathers, which your worthy bishop Soter has not only confirmed but increased and strengthened” (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., IV, 23, 10). Tertullian likewise attests that Christians condemned to the mines were assisted: si quis in metallis, dumtaxat ex causa Dei sectae (Apol., 30). Under the emperor Commodus (176–92), a group of Christians was working in the mines of Sardinia, for whom Marcia obtained the emperor’s pardon; among them was Callistus (Hippolytus, Philosophumena, IX, 2: PG 16, 3). To a group of African bishops, deacons, and faithful, condemned to the mines in 257, “in metallis constitutis... martyribus Dei Patris,” the bishop of Carthage, St. Cyprian, sent substantial assistance collected from the faithful of his community (Cyprian, Ep. 77: PL 4, 427 ff.). The condemned replied with three letters preserved in the collection of St. Cyprian’s epistles (Ep. 78–80: ibid., 434–36). The mines could be marble or metal mines, etc., in Sardinia, Greece, Africa, Egypt, and Palestine, where, especially in the copper quarries of Phaenos, the extraction work was particularly arduous (Eusebius, De Martyrib. Palestinae, VII–VIII: PG 20, 1481 ff.). The Ambrosian liturgy preserves an oratio pro fratribus in metallis constitutis; in the Missale Gothicum prayer is offered pro fratribus et sororibus in metallis deputatis.