In the Digests (law 28, On Punishments): “The highest punishment,” says Callistratus, “[is] condemnation to the fork [gallows], the burning of the living, [and] the amputation of the head.” And in book 21, Celsus [says]: “By ‘the last,’ we interpret the punishment to be death alone.” But if death is the highest and last punishment, why is [cruelty] still exercised upon corpses, or rather upon the unhappy remains and ashes of corpses? But [these are] doubtless [signs] of the extreme and highest punishment there; and by Apuleius (bk. 10) death is styled “the extreme [punishment],” by Suetonius and Livy “the last punishment,” because after it — [seeing] that it may bring present pain to the body — nothing more can be inflicted. Whence also our Lord (Luke 12:4): “Be not terrified by those who kill the body, and after this have no more what they may do.” Nay, as the Latin [sage] of the Gentile wise men [Seneca] discourses (epistle 93): “as we neglect hairs shorn from the beard, so that divine mind, about to go out of the man, judges [it] to pertain to itself no more — whether the fire burn up that receptacle in which it is kept, or a wild beast tear it apart, or earth cover it — than [it does] the afterbirth to a newborn infant. Whether the birds scatter [it] cast forth, or it be consumed, given as prey to the dogs of the sea — what [is that] to him?” Yet the force of the living strives, for various causes, still to torment corpses. And this [is] either well or ill. Well indeed, first, while it shows that foulness and magnitude of some [man’s] wickedness to be [such] that, if it could be, more punishments would have to be heaped upon the wicked [man]. Secondly: While by that very [act] it wishes to terrify the living and watching mortals, that they abstain from such crimes, for which [there] survive punishments so dire and infamous beyond death. Thirdly: That to the wicked and criminal [men] themselves, while living, some pain be inflicted from the future evil, while it is signified to them that their bodies are so contumeliously to be handled, torn, and mangled. But ill [is] the same [thing] done in quite various ways; but concerning which there is now
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no need to treat [further]. And that this contumely of corpses is sometimes very bitter, Plutarch indicates (in the book On the Delayed Vengeance of the Deity), when he says that Dionysius the Tyrant seemed to be afflicted with a greater injury when his dead body was cast out by the Syracusans, than if a divine vengeance had been sent upon his sons. But of those three causes, the two former stirred up this [hail of stones] upon the burned Achan and his things. For the Israelites wished, each for himself, to make attested how greatly they detested the committed sacrilege, the violation of the divine precept, and [to attest] their own future obedience thenceforth in these and other such [matters]. For because the individuals could not bring the flame to those [things], they each seized stones, by the throwing of which they might show themselves to abhor this crime, and might render the angry God propitious. But whether this very thing was foretold to Achan, some conjecture can be made from this, that to Abulensis (qq. 55 and 65) this stoning seems then to have been commanded by God, when the cremation was ordered. But Masius and others think [it] was as it were fortuitous and sudden, born from the impetus of the people, indignant and raging against the wicked [man], as [was] intimated above (q. 29). If [it] was then commanded by God, surely those two [things] were pronounced to Achan at once — the burning-alive and the stoning — so that, from a certain foretelling, as it were, of those punishments, he might perceive beforehand some trouble and grief. But if [it was] not then commanded, [it was] not even foretold. Either is probable.