Interdictio Aqua Et Igni - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VII, p. 74

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

INTERDICTIO AQUA ET IGNI. – Roman capital punishment, imposed, beginning in the last century of the Republic, by the courts known as quaestiones perpetuae.

Its origin is to be found in the accused’s right, when charged with a crime carrying the death penalty, to evade its application by going into exile. From this to regarding the i. a. et i., not as a substitute for the punishment but as punishment proper, was but a short step (Cicero, Paradoxa, 4, 31); it is held to have been imposed as such for the first time by the penal laws of Caesar the dictator. The name derives from the prohibition of roof, water, and fire pronounced by a particular formula (Cicero, De domo sua, 78). The i. a. et i., in addition to prohibiting residence in Italy, entailed the loss of citizenship and the publicatio bonorum (total confiscation of the property). It fell into disuse with the end of the procedure

Article illustration — INTER DUAS LAUROS, cemetery of – Plan of the gallery leading to two historic crypts, one of which (no. 13) probably belonged to the Four Crowned Martyrs.
(from G. P. Kusch, *Pitture inedite nel cim. ad duas lauros*, in *Riv. di arch. Crist.*, 7 [1938], p. 28)

of the quaestiones and with the replacement of this procedure by extraordinary repression.

BIBL.: E. Levy, Römische Kapitalstrafe, Heidelberg 1931, passim: U. Brasiello, La repressione penale in diritto romano, Napoli 1937, p. 97 sgg.; C. Gioffredi, L'aqua et igni interdictio e il concorso privato alla repressione penale, in Archivio penale, 1947, p. 426 sgg.; id., Ancora su l'aqua et igni interdictio, in Studia et documenta historiae et iuris, 1946 (but 1947), p. 191 sgg.; V. Arangio-Ruiz, Storia del diritto romano, 6ª ed., Napoli 1950, p. 177. Rodolfo Danieli