The research takes its cue from a conjecture proposed in its critical edition by Susanna Braund (Oxford 2009) for Sen. clem. 1.15.7, where she writes non culleum, non serpentem, non canem decreuit instead of Non culleum, non serpentes, non carcerem decreuit. My intention is to show that the conjecture canem, however brilliant, not only has no right to enter the text, which becomes quite trivialised and impoverished, but is not even necessary in apparatus with a diagnostic function; this is even truer for serpentem. Similarly, E. Malaspina’s comment ad loc. (Alessandria 2005) should also be corrected, citing the hypotheses of execution in prison and perpetual detention only to exclude them outright. The sense of the presence of carcerem at the end of the tricolon is clarified, also thanks to controversy 4 by Calpurnius Flaccus (which no one had ever linked thus far to this passage), because it alludes to the peculiarities of the imprisonment that preceded capital punishment in the variant applied to parricides, with an ordo uerborum fully justified by parallel Senecan passages (epist. 24.3; 24.4; 87.25).