Mitte in Aquam.

A phrase for which we have no direct substitute. Take him away, to the river with him. To the pump or to the horse pond, is sometimes the cry of the mob in this country, when they take upon themselves to execute summary justice on some poor wretch taken in the act of picking a pocket, or in the commission of some crime for which they conceive them properly to be amenable to their tribunal. But among the ancients, certain criminals were condemned to be tied in a sack and drowned, which is what the adage alludes to, and this kind of punishment is still used in Germany. Parricides in Rome were put into a sack with a cock, a monkey, a serpent, and a dog, and thrown into a river or into the sea, to which Juvenal alludes, in the following lines, as translated by Hodgson.

«If votes were free, what slave so lost to shame.
Prefers not Seneca's to Nero's name,
Whose parricides, not one close sack alone,
One serpent, nor one monkey could atone?»

Nero, it is known, caused his mother, two of his wives, and Seneca his tutor to be put to death.