Public Executions: From Ancient Rome to the Present Day Read Free

housed in the Abbey at Dunfermline. Known as the Black Rood, it was later seized by the English who took it to Durham, where it was later lost.

Variations of Crucifixion
    Although the Romans had crucifixion down to a fine art, there were variations. In his
Dialogues
Seneca states, 'I see crosses there, not just of one kind but made in many different ways: some have their victims with heads down to the ground; some impale their private parts; others stretch out their arms on the gibbet'.
    The Romans devised the
crux immissa
with two cross-pieces set at right angles. Four victims could be crucified together, with weights tied to their feet. A variation of this was the
crux commissa
which had three arms. There was another device that resembled soccer goal posts, where two offenders could be nailed up by one arm and one leg each, and there was the
crux decussata
or St Andrew's Cross, on which the victim was spread-eagled and mutilated. According to Seneca, when people were crucified upside down it was more merciful, because the victim soon lost consciousness.
    Although crucifixion was banned in 345 by Constantine, Rome's first Christian emperor, the practice continued in the more barbaric provinces. In France, the assassin Bertholde, who killed Charles the Good, was crucified in 1127 on the orders of Louis the Fat. There are records from the thirteenth century of a religious fervour in England, where men declared themselves to be Christ and were duly crucified. In nineteenth-century Japan, victims were tied to crosses and slowly impaled with narrow spears. If a substantial bribe was paid beforehand, the executioner would push the first one through the heart for a speedy demise.

The Roman Arena
    In ancient Rome, there were plenty of other ways to meet a public death. In one case, 4,500 prisoners were tied to stakes in groups of thirty at the Forum. The tendon at the back of the neck was cut and they were dragged out of the city while still half alive and left behind as carrion for vultures and dogs.
    The arena was a popular method of executing condemned criminals, Christians, and other religious or political dissenters perceived to be the enemies of the State. The average untrained man stood no chance when pitted against a gladiator.
    It was more common for crowds of condemned criminals to be herded naked into the arena. Armed only with rusty swords, they were forced to fight to the death. Attendants lashed them into action with whips and anyone who refused to fight risked having a red-hot branding iron pressed against his genitals. These wretched souls fought until only one man was left standing but there was no reprieve even for him. As he raised his arms in apparent victory, a black-helmeted giant carrying a two-handed axe would enter the arena and slice him in half.
    Romans particularly enjoyed the re-enactment of mythological scenes. In a re-staging of
Pasiphae and the Bull,
in which the legendary queen of Crete conceived the Minotaur, a real bull was lowered in a cage and harnessed to a naked female victim. This act was presumably performed as an execution as it must surely have been fatal.
    Christians were famously thrown to the lions. This punishment was originally added to the law books to deal with recalcitrant slaves, but other victims were found when it proved a popular entertainment. The most feared aggressor was the Libyan lion with its razor-sharp claws. Once captured, the beast would be sedated with copious quantities of Armenian brandy and shipped across the Mediterranean to the port of Ostia and up the river to Rome. There it would be caged and starved. Ravenous and fully sober, it would finally be released into the arena to face a crowd of defenceless victims who often had their feet fixed to hollow stones by molten lead. Some magicians claimed the power to halt a lion in its tracks with a series of hand gestures. One animal could be mesmerized – ten could not – so more than one lion was released.
    Bulls,