DEATH IN SLOW MOTION. It could take a body days to die on a cross. That’s why Romans in a hurry beat the stuffing out of condemned souls, and broke their legs when necessary. Victims had to push up to exhale. That’s hard to do with two broken legs nailed into timber. Painting by Fyodor Bronnikov.
THE BIBLE isn’t the only book that talks about how horrifying crucifixion was. Roman eyewitnesses wrote about what they saw- “He was whipped until his bones showed.”[Josephus (AD 37-100), Wars of the Jews, 6.5.3]
- “Each criminal who goes to execution must carry his own cross on his back.”[Plutarch (AD 46-about 120), Sera, 554]
- “Sixteen men . . . . were paraded out, chained together by the foot and neck, each carrying his own cross. The executioners added this grim public spectacle to the punishment as an extra deterrent to anyone thinking about committing the same crime.”[Chariton (about 25 BC-AD 50), Chaereas and Callirhoe, 4.2.7]
- “Some hang their victims upside down. Some impale them through the private parts. Others stretch out their arms onto forked poles.”[Seneca (about 4 BC-65 AD), To Marcia on Consolation, 20.3]
- “Is there such a thing as a person who would actually prefer wasting away in pain on a cross—dying limb by limb one drop of blood at a time—rather than dying quickly? Would any human being willingly choose to be fastened to that cursed tree, especially after the beating that left him deathly weak, deformed, swelling with vicious welts on shoulders and chest, and struggling to draw every last, agonizing breath? Anyone facing such a death would plead to die rather than mount the cross.”[Seneca, (about 4 BC-65 AD), Epistulae morales (Moral Letters), 101.14]
- “Reliable witnesses . . . . saw the man being dragged to the cross while crying out that he was a Roman citizen. And you, Verres, confirm that he did cry out that he was a Roman citizen, yet you sent him to a most cruel and shameful death anyhow!”[Cicero, Against Verres, 70 BC, 2.5.64]
- “Every day Roman soldiers caught 500 Jews or more. . . . The soldiers driven by their hatred of the Jews nailed them to crosses. They nailed them in many different positions, to entertain themselves and to horrify the Jews watching this spectacle from inside the walled city of Jerusalem. In time, the soldiers ran out of wood for crosses, and room for crosses even if they had found more wood.”[Josephus (AD 37-100), Wars of the Jews, 5.11.1]
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