Homo Sacer, an Ancient Roman Legal Concept

This painting and other works on exhibit during the Spring 2023 explored the idea of homo sacer, meaning literally a sacred or accursed man. This concept is the ancient Roman legal idea that a person can be punished by being removed from and placed outside the law and society. Accordingly, such persons can be killed by anybody without consequence but must not be sacrificed in a religious ritual.

Through sculptures, paintings, and video artworks, the Homo Sacer: Life Unlawed exhibition demonstrated how the law is not only embedded in (our) bodies but creates our sense of material and social reality. This status of an outlaw, of someone excommunicated from society, persisted throughout the Middle Ages.

This concept also appears in my short story, “The Confession”. A magistrate in Roman-occupied Alexandria declares a scoundrel to be a homo sacer for his enumerable petty crimes and finally for his attempt to obstruct justice. The story is about the murder of a sandal maker in a public latrine. The killer shoved a sponge stick down the craftsman’s throat during an argument about the winner of a chariot race.

The story was published in June 2024 by Gargoyle Magazine, an international literary magazine specializing in the recklessly eclectic. You can read it for free by clicking here.