Parricide (
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
"parricida", killer of parents or another close relative)
is defined as:
- the act of murdering one's father (patricide
Patricide is the act of killing one's father, or a person who kills his or her father. The word patricide derives from the Latin word pater and the Latin suffix -cida...
), mother (matricideMatricide is the act of killing one's mother. As for any type of killing, motives can vary a great deal.- Known or suspected matricides :* Amastris, queen of Heraclea, was drowned by her two sons in 284 BC....
) or other close relative, but usually not children (infanticideInfanticide is the practice of someone intentionally killing an infant. Often it is the mother who commits the act, but criminology recognizes various forms of non-maternal child murder. In many past societies, certain forms of infanticide were considered permissible...
).
- the act of murdering a person (such as the ruler of one's country) who stands in a relationship resembling that of a father
- a person who commits such an act
Various definitions exist for the term
parricide, with the biggest discrepancy being whether or not the killing has to be defined as a
murderMurder, as defined in common law countries, is the unlawful killing of another human being with intent , and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
(usually killing with malice aforethought) to qualify as a parricide.
Parricide is most often committed by a son against his father, and is associated with delusional thinking.
In pre-
revolutionaryThe French Revolution was a period of political and social upheaval and radical change in the history of France, during which the French governmental structure, previously an absolute monarchy with feudal privileges for the aristocracy and Catholic clergy, underwent radical change to forms based...
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
, cases of unintentional killings were still treated as parricides, with the accidental offenders facing the same harsh penalties intended for deliberate perpetrators of the crime.
Ancient RomeAncient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea, it became one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
had a unique punishment for parricide, which is described at length in
Steven SaylorSteven Saylor is an American author of historical novels. He is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied history and Classics....
's novel
Roman Blood, based on one of Cicero's actual murder trials, the speech
Pro Roscio AmerinoThe speech Pro Roscio Amerino was given by Marcus Tullius Cicero on behalf of Roscius of Ameria. Roscius was accused of murdering his father. The speech was given by Cicero in 80 BCE.- Events surrounding the case :...
.
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Parricide (
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
"parricida", killer of parents or another close relative)
is defined as:
- the act of murdering one's father (patricide
Patricide is the act of killing one's father, or a person who kills his or her father. The word patricide derives from the Latin word pater and the Latin suffix -cida...
), mother (matricideMatricide is the act of killing one's mother. As for any type of killing, motives can vary a great deal.- Known or suspected matricides :* Amastris, queen of Heraclea, was drowned by her two sons in 284 BC....
) or other close relative, but usually not children (infanticideInfanticide is the practice of someone intentionally killing an infant. Often it is the mother who commits the act, but criminology recognizes various forms of non-maternal child murder. In many past societies, certain forms of infanticide were considered permissible...
).
- the act of murdering a person (such as the ruler of one's country) who stands in a relationship resembling that of a father
- a person who commits such an act
Various definitions exist for the term
parricide, with the biggest discrepancy being whether or not the killing has to be defined as a
murderMurder, as defined in common law countries, is the unlawful killing of another human being with intent , and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
(usually killing with malice aforethought) to qualify as a parricide.
Parricide is most often committed by a son against his father, and is associated with delusional thinking.
In pre-
revolutionaryThe French Revolution was a period of political and social upheaval and radical change in the history of France, during which the French governmental structure, previously an absolute monarchy with feudal privileges for the aristocracy and Catholic clergy, underwent radical change to forms based...
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
, cases of unintentional killings were still treated as parricides, with the accidental offenders facing the same harsh penalties intended for deliberate perpetrators of the crime.
Ancient RomeAncient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea, it became one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
had a unique punishment for parricide, which is described at length in
Steven SaylorSteven Saylor is an American author of historical novels. He is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied history and Classics....
's novel
Roman Blood, based on one of Cicero's actual murder trials, the speech
Pro Roscio AmerinoThe speech Pro Roscio Amerino was given by Marcus Tullius Cicero on behalf of Roscius of Ameria. Roscius was accused of murdering his father. The speech was given by Cicero in 80 BCE.- Events surrounding the case :...
. The felon was severely scourged then sewn into a stout leather bag with a dog, a snake, a rooster, and a monkey, and the bag was thrown into the river Tiber.
TacitusPublius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors...
called it the "parricide's doom". Plutarch records that the old laws of Romulus had no penalty for parricide because it was considered a crime too evil ever to be committed.
Cases
- Lucius Hostius reportedly was the first parricide in Rome, sometime after the Second Punic War.
- In Japan
is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, parricide once brought heavy punishment. Because of the Chiyo Aizawawas a Japanese woman who murdered her father. Her trial, known as "Aizawa v. Japan", is famous in Japan because it led to a change in Japanese criminal law.-Early life and murder:...
case, however, the law was abolished.
- Sarah Marie Johnson
Sarah Marie Johnson is a convicted murderer who is currently incarcerated for killing her parents in 2003 when she was 16 years old.
- Murders :...
was convicted of killing her parents in Idaho in 2003. This represents an extremely rare case of parricide committed by a daughter. As such, Johnson's arrest gained much attention. Parricide is typically committed by males. One recent study indicates that only four girls in the United States have been convicted of parricide in the last 24 years.
Parricide in literature
- Le Père Goriot
Le Père Goriot is an 1835 novel by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac , included in the Scènes de la vie privée section of his novel sequence La Comédie humaine...
by BalzacHonoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of almost 100 novels and plays collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the fall of Napoléon Bonaparte in 1815.Due to his keen observation of detail...
: "...so much for providing black veils for parricides, so much for sawdust, so much for pulleys and cord for the knife."
- The Brothers Karamazov
The Brothers Karamazov is the final novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Dostoyevsky spent nearly two years writing The Brothers Karamazov, which was published as a serial in The Russian Messenger and completed in November 1880...
by DostoevskyFyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer, essayist and philosopher, known for...
: "But it's not an ordinary case of murder, it's a case of parricide. That impresses men's minds, and to such a degree that the very triviality and incompleteness of the evidence becomes less trivial and less incomplete even to an unprejudiced mind."
- The Prince
Il Principe is a political treatise by the Florentine public servant and political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli. Originally called De Principatibus , it was originally written in 1513, but not published until 1532, five years after Machiavelli's death...
by Niccolò MachiavelliNiccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was an Italian philosopher, writer, and is considered one of the main founders of modern political science. He was a diplomat, political philosopher, musician, and playwright, but, foremost, he was a civil servant of the Florentine Republic...
: "[Oliverotto] was captured there, a year after his parricide, and together with his former mentor in prowess and villainy, strangled."
- The Stranger
The Stranger or The Outsider, is a novel by Albert Camus, published in 1942. Camus' first novel, it is perhaps his best-known work, and a key text of twentieth-century philosophy...
by Albert CamusAlbert Camus was a French author, philosopher, and journalist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. He is often cited as a proponent of existentialism , but Camus himself refused this particular label...
: "He went so far as to hope that human justice would mete out punishment unflinchingly. But he wasn't afraid to say it: my callousness inspired in him a horror nearly greater than which he felt at the crime of parricide."
- Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy, born Charles McCarthy , is an American novelist and playwright. He has written ten novels in the Southern Gothic, western, and post-apocalyptic genres, and has also written plays and screenplays...
: "He moves north through small settlements and farms, working for day wages and found. He sees a parricide hanged in a crossroads hamlet and the man's friends run forward and pull his legs and he hangs dead from his rope while urine darkens his trousers."
- Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamné by Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a French poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
: "Jean Martin was the one who shot his father with a pistol as the old man was opening a window...it seemed to me as though the dungeon was full of men, strange men who carried their heads in their left hands, and held them by the mouth, because there was no hair upon them. Each raised his fist at me, the parricide excepted."
- Star Trek: Insurrection
Star Trek: Insurrection is a 1998 science fiction feature film, directed by Jonathan Frakes, written by Michael Piller , and with music composed by Jerry Goldsmith. It is the ninth film in the Star Trek franchise, and the third to feature the cast from the television series Star Trek: The Next...
written by Rick BermanRichard Keith "Rick" Berman is an American television producer. He is most famous for his work as the executive producer of several Star Trek series and movies, and succeeding Gene Roddenberry as head of the franchise until the cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005.-Early work:Berman...
and Michael PillerMichael Piller was an American television scriptwriter and producer, who was most famous for his contributions to the Star Trek franchise....
: "You've brought the Federation into the middle of a blood feud, Admiral. The children have returned to expel their elders, just as they were once expelled. Except Ru'afo's need for revenge has now escalated to parricide."
- Macbeth
The Tragedy of Macbeth, commonly just Macbeth, is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...
by William ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
: "We hear our bloody cousins are bestow'd / in England and in Ireland, not confessing/ Their cruel parricide, filling their hearers/ With strange invention."
- The Far Side of the World
The Far Side of the World is an historical novel and tenth in the Aubrey-Maturin series. It was first published by HarperCollins in 1984...
by Patrick O'BrianPatrick O'Brian, CBE , born Richard Patrick Russ, was an English novelist and translator, best known for his Aubrey–Maturin series of novels set in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars and centered on the friendship of English Naval Captain Jack Aubrey and the Irish–Catalan physician...
: "Mr. Consul Eliot and I arranged the neatest little parricide you can imagine, and I think I may promise a new and better disposed Dey at present."
- In the The 39 Clues
is a series of adventure books that are published by Scholastic. The main part of the series is ten books revolving around the adventures of siblings Amy and Dan Cahill. They agree to the offer in their grandmother Grace's will and search for 39 clues scattered around the world...
series, Amy and Dan's relatives frequently try to kill other relatives just so they can get their hands on the 39 Clues.
- See also "On Hospitality" by Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher born in Algeria, who is known as the founder of deconstruction. His voluminous work had a profound impact upon literary theory and continental philosophy...
External links