Final answer:
Historical punishments for public fighting or criminal involvement ranged from corporal penalties to death. The severity of the punishment was often proportional to the crime and included death for castration or harsh physical punishments for lesser offenses.
Step-by-step explanation:
The punishments prescribed by various historical laws for fighting in public or other crimes were often severe and proportional to the severity of the crime committed. For instance, according to the Edict mentioned in Ulpianus, On the Duties of Proconsul, Book VII, the physician who performed the operation of castration, as well as the person who willingly offered themselves for it, shall both be punished with death. In other historical texts, punishments for different crimes ranged from mutilations and corporal penalties to capital punishment, such as death by boiling under the Qin dynasty or receiving sixty blows with an ox-whip for striking someone of higher rank, as in law 202.
Additionally, certain decrees also aimed to discourage hiding criminals or failing to report them by enacting severe consequences, such as being chopped in two or being treated as one who surrendered to the enemy. These examples demonstrate the brutal and often life-threatening consequences of engaging in acts deemed unlawful in various historical legal systems.