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Encyclopedic overview
Decimation. Etching by William Hogarth in Beaver's Roman Military Punishments (1725)
In the military of ancient Rome, decimation (from Latin decimatio 'destruction of a tenth') was a form of military discipline in which every tenth man in a group was executed by members of his cohort. The discipline was used by senior commanders in the Roman army to punish units or large groups guilty of capital offences, such as cowardice, mutiny, desertion, and insubordination, and for pacification of rebellious legions.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “decimation” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.