The punishment for sin must be some form of expiation. This is the _piaculum_ adjudged in the monarchy as in Republican times by the head of religion; and not adjudged arbitrarily, for even by the close of the monarchical period classes of offences had doubtless been drawn up by the pontiffs with the equivalent expiation, which was directed to avert the anger of the gods from the whole community. Apart from the regularly recurring lustrations at the census—the consequence of the sense of universal sinfulness in the community—individual misdeeds could be expiated in this way. Such was a murder that was unintentional or in which mitigating circumstances were present,[212] and such was the violation of the chastity of Juno’s person through the touching of her altar by a _paelex_.[213] In graver cases expiation could only be accepted where there was no intent,[214] as in the wrong done to a god by swearing falsely in his name.[215] There was also a class of deadly sins for which the gods would accept no atonement but the life and the goods of the sinner himself. Amongst the acts which called forth this _consecratio capitis_ were the violation of the relations of client and patron,[216] the ill-treatment of elders by their children,[217] the pulling up or alteration of boundary stones,[218] the destruction of a neighbour’s corn by night.[219] The god thus appeased was often the deity who was held to be specially offended by the act; but sometimes the head and the goods were not dedicated to the same divinities. The person was adjudged to Jupiter, the dispenser of life; the landed property to the gods who nourish the human race, Ceres and Liber.[220] This custom of consecration gradually ceased to have its literal fulfilment. A man might still be declared _sacer_, but excommunication had taken the place of immolation. Such a man was cut off from all divine and, therefore, from all human help, and his slayer was blood-guiltless.[221] This theory, of a man being cut off from the community while his life was spared, became of great importance in the history of Roman criminal law. It survived in the “interdiction of fire and water” (_aquae et ignis interdictio_), and familiarised the Romans with the idea that the severest penalty did not require the sacrifice of life.