ROMAN FORENSICS by June Trop

 

 

Guest Blog: June Trop, author of The Deadliest Deceptions. (Level Best Books, 2023).

As the author of the Miriam bat Isaac Mystery Series set in first-century CE Roman Alexandria, I regularly research criminal investigative techniques used in ancient times. In writing my latest book, The Deadliest Deceptions, a collection of short mysteries ranging from cozy to noir, I found myself focusing on Roman forensics.

The term forensics—from the Latin word forum because the Romans presented their charges in a public square—became widely used during the second half of the 19^th century. That’s when new techniques in toxicology, fingerprint analysis, and ballistics were used in response to cases like Jack the Ripper in England and the Parker-Webster murder case in the United States. While the Romans did not use the term forensics or know about fingerprints and DNA, some historical examples show they used bloody prints, dental characteristics, and pattern recognition marks to identify the villain.

Perhaps the most famous case based on bloody prints was “The Wall of Handprints”, in which a blind son was accused of killing his father for his inheritance. The prosecution argued that the father was asleep with his wife, his son’s stepmother, when his son stabbed him to death. Furthermore, he argued that the father died instantly without awakening his wife and that the son left an intermittent trail of bloody handprints on the wall from their room back to his own.

The defense attorney claimed that it was the stepmother who killed her husband. Upset that she would lose the inheritance, she framed her stepson. The lawyer successfully argued that the son, being blind, would not have left intermittent prints. Rather he would have dragged his hand along the wall. So, despite their lack of knowledge about the components of blood, the Romans used its prints to reconstruct the crime.

Julia Agrippina, aka Agrippina the Younger, used dental characteristics to confirm that her rival Lollia Paulina was dead. Paulina was Caligula’s beautiful and wealthy third wife. After Caligula’s death, the new emperor, Claudius, began to court her but nevertheless had an interest in Agrippina. To eliminate Paulina, Agrippina accused her rival of witchcraft, had her exiled from Italy, and forced her to commit suicide. To confirm her death, Agrippina asked for Paulina’s head and inspected the teeth herself. She must have been satisfied because she did not have anyone else killed for five more years.

Pattern recognition marks convinced the Roman emperor Tiberius that a murder not suicide had been committed. He saw drag marks and other signs of a struggle to contradict the husband’s claim that his wife had jumped out the window while he was sound asleep. Tiberius referred the matter to the Senate, but alas, the husband opened his veins instead.

Roman forensics may date back thousand years, but even modern evidence from bloody prints, dental characteristics, and pattern recognition marks can be wrongfully interpreted. Just not in my stories. You can depend on Miriam bat Isaac and her assistants to look at bloody prints, dental characteristics, and pattern recognition marks to assess a crime correctly—at least most of the time.

 

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