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Authors: Daniel Diehl
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Patricides were tossed into a large canvas sack. Before the bag was sewn shut a handful of poisonous snakes were tossed in and the entire package was then thrown into a convenient river, lake or the Mediterranean.
All these creative tortures not withstanding, the method of execution most identified with the Romans will always be crucifixion. As early as the late Republic, crucifixion was adopted as a means of executing slaves convicted of capital offences, but it was not until the Empire that people other than slaves could be condemned to this particularly nasty fate. Because crucifixion was such a slow, painful death, and because it made such a grand public spectacle (particularly when large groups of victims were crucified together), it became a favourite method of disposing of ‘enemies of the state’. It was crucifixion that would eventually become the execution of choice for disposing of both the recalcitrant Jewish population in Palestine and the proliferating number of bothersome Christians who began infesting the Empire during the second and third centuries after Jesus.
At the time of Jesus’s crucifixion, around 27 or 28 AD, wholesale terror in the provinces was still in its infancy; Emperor Tiberius was too busy wreaking havoc back home. A half century later, when the Jews rose against Rome, Emperor Vespasian had plenty of time on his hands to crush the life out of them. When General Titus besieged Jerusalem in 70 AD, he crucified Jews at the rate of 500 a day. The problem was never finding enough Jews to murder, but finding enough wood in that arid land to build all those crosses.
Here we witness the execution of four women by crucifixion. Note that the women are merely tied to the crosses and left to die of hunger, thirst and exposure. The woman on the left has been pieced through by lances and as such will die fairly quickly. It is uncertain whether the other three women will be granted a similar ‘mercy’.
Tiberius, mentioned above, reigned from 14–37 AD and was a paranoid misanthrope who hated his subjects nearly as much as they hated him. Never being a hands-on kind of ruler, he spent much of his later years isolated on the Isle of Capri and left the brutalising of Roman citizens to his henchmen. To wile away his idle hours, Tiberius had a constant string of prisoners brought to his island where he enjoyed thinking up particularly inventive ways of murdering them. Most of these victims were his political enemies, or at least he thought they were, and they were seized and hauled to Capri without either a trial or an arrest warrant. They simply disappeared. It was an amazingly subtle method of terrorising his opponents and one that would be used again and again over later centuries – specifically by dictators in Africa, South America and by one particularly vicious German despot. As was true under dictators in all time periods, there were a few who spoke out against the Roman use of torture. One of these was the philosopher Seneca (4 BC–65 AD), who recognised that torture was not only unjust but a terribly flawed way to discover the truth. Fortunately, Seneca never pointed a finger directly at the emperor and was never invited to spend a weekend on Capri: his message, if it ever reached Tiberius’ ears, went unheeded. As a last insult to the Roman people, Tiberius selected his insane nephew to succeed him – his name was Caius Caesar. We know him better as Caligula.
Like his uncle, Caligula preferred torturing people in private (such as in the same room where he was throwing dinner parties) over imposing terror on the population as a whole. Indeed, Caligula knew how to curry favour with the people of Rome and it was he who changed the Roman Games from true athletic competitions into the orgies of blood and death for which they are remembered. Fortunately, Caligula only ruled for four years before being murdered at the age of twenty-nine. Although his successor, Claudius, strove to return
All these creative tortures not withstanding, the method of execution most identified with the Romans will always be crucifixion. As early as the late Republic, crucifixion was adopted as a means of executing slaves convicted of capital offences, but it was not until the Empire that people other than slaves could be condemned to this particularly nasty fate. Because crucifixion was such a slow, painful death, and because it made such a grand public spectacle (particularly when large groups of victims were crucified together), it became a favourite method of disposing of ‘enemies of the state’. It was crucifixion that would eventually become the execution of choice for disposing of both the recalcitrant Jewish population in Palestine and the proliferating number of bothersome Christians who began infesting the Empire during the second and third centuries after Jesus.
At the time of Jesus’s crucifixion, around 27 or 28 AD, wholesale terror in the provinces was still in its infancy; Emperor Tiberius was too busy wreaking havoc back home. A half century later, when the Jews rose against Rome, Emperor Vespasian had plenty of time on his hands to crush the life out of them. When General Titus besieged Jerusalem in 70 AD, he crucified Jews at the rate of 500 a day. The problem was never finding enough Jews to murder, but finding enough wood in that arid land to build all those crosses.
Here we witness the execution of four women by crucifixion. Note that the women are merely tied to the crosses and left to die of hunger, thirst and exposure. The woman on the left has been pieced through by lances and as such will die fairly quickly. It is uncertain whether the other three women will be granted a similar ‘mercy’.
Tiberius, mentioned above, reigned from 14–37 AD and was a paranoid misanthrope who hated his subjects nearly as much as they hated him. Never being a hands-on kind of ruler, he spent much of his later years isolated on the Isle of Capri and left the brutalising of Roman citizens to his henchmen. To wile away his idle hours, Tiberius had a constant string of prisoners brought to his island where he enjoyed thinking up particularly inventive ways of murdering them. Most of these victims were his political enemies, or at least he thought they were, and they were seized and hauled to Capri without either a trial or an arrest warrant. They simply disappeared. It was an amazingly subtle method of terrorising his opponents and one that would be used again and again over later centuries – specifically by dictators in Africa, South America and by one particularly vicious German despot. As was true under dictators in all time periods, there were a few who spoke out against the Roman use of torture. One of these was the philosopher Seneca (4 BC–65 AD), who recognised that torture was not only unjust but a terribly flawed way to discover the truth. Fortunately, Seneca never pointed a finger directly at the emperor and was never invited to spend a weekend on Capri: his message, if it ever reached Tiberius’ ears, went unheeded. As a last insult to the Roman people, Tiberius selected his insane nephew to succeed him – his name was Caius Caesar. We know him better as Caligula.
Like his uncle, Caligula preferred torturing people in private (such as in the same room where he was throwing dinner parties) over imposing terror on the population as a whole. Indeed, Caligula knew how to curry favour with the people of Rome and it was he who changed the Roman Games from true athletic competitions into the orgies of blood and death for which they are remembered. Fortunately, Caligula only ruled for four years before being murdered at the age of twenty-nine. Although his successor, Claudius, strove to return
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