PARRICIDE

Parricide (Latin "parricida", killer of a close relative) stemming from (Latin "parri", alike or equal, and "-cida", -cide, or killer) is defined as:

1. the act of murdering one's father, mother, or other close relative
2. the act of murdering a person (such as the ruler of one's country) who stands in a relationship resembling that of a father
3. a person who commits such an act

Notes

Various definitions exist of the term parricide. The biggest discrepancy is whether or not the killing has to be defined as a murder (usually killing with malice aforethought) to qualify as a parricide.

In pre-revolutionary France, cases of notoriously accidental killings were still treated as parricides, with the offenders facing the extra harsh penalties destined for authors of such heinous crimes.

Ancient Rome had a unique punishment for parricide, which is described in gruesome detail in Steven Saylor's novel Roman Blood, based on one of Cicero's actual murder trials. 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. 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. Lucius Hostius reportedly was the first parricide in Rome, sometime after the 2nd Punic War.

In Japan, the originally penalty of the parricide was heavy. Because of the Chiyo Aizawa's case, however, the law was abolished.

Parricide in literature

* Pere Goriot by Balzac: "...so much for providing black veils for parricides, so much for sawdust, so much for pulleys and cord for the knife."

* The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky: "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."