Daniel 6:24

They cast them—their children, &c.— By the law of retaliation, which inflicted upon calumniators the same punishment that they would have brought upon others. They punished the children with their parents, as supposing that they would be infected by their ill example. We have various instances of this sort of chastisement; a sort of justice common among the Persians. Ammianus Marcellinus says, "They were abominable laws, by which a whole family suffered for the crime of one." Abominandae leges, per quas ob noxam unius omnis propinquitas petit.