The History of Crucifixion, Culminating With Romans Against Jews

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

Crucifiction was capital punishment by being nailed or tied to a cross, a common practice among the Greeks and Romans that they learned from Persia (today's Iran).  They enjoyed torturing people before.  Someone who gets pleasure from hurting or humiliating others is a sadist.  That's what many of the Roman soldiers were becoming; sadists.  

           General  Publius Quinctilius Varus, b:46 BCE-d:9 CE

In 4 BCE,  the Roman general Varus crucified 2,000 Jews, and there were mass crucifixions during the first century A.D., according to the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus.Three years before, in 7 BCE, Varus had arrived in Syria, one of the most important provinces of the empire. One of these was Judaea, where Herod had been Rome's most loyal ally. The old king had always been suspicious of his relatives, but at the end of his reign, he became paranoid and accused his son (and intended successor) Antipater of high treason. Varus, who had just arrived in Syria, supported the accusation, and Antipater was executed in 4 BCE, but not by crucifixion, as he would have been exempt due to his station in life.

       One of Odysseus' men transforming into a pig. Via Wikimedia Commons.

 The incident made Augustus remark that it was preferable to be Herod's pig (hus) than his son (huios) - a very insulting remark to any Jew.

Romans had practiced crucifixion for a long time before Jesus.  The Romans judged that the slaves had forfeited their right to live. In 71 BCE, 6,000 slaves were crucified along the 200-kilometer (120 mi) Via Appia from Rome to Capua. 

The crucifixion was not invented by the Romans, but they used it a lot.  It was thought of as the most horrible, painful, tortuous, and humiliating form of execution possible.   If Romans wanted simply to kill someone without a fuss, there were plenty of other means available – for example, beheading.  They used crucifixion for any accusation against the state.  

Remember Spartacus, the slave who organized others and rebelled.Spartacus is said to have hacked down two centurions in this final attempt, however it was in vain. There are varying accounts about Spartacus's death but they all end with him being surrounded and killed. With his death his army fell apart and Crassus and the other Roman forces hunted down the remaining rebels.  They would have been killed by crucifixion.

But there were lots of special cases.  Two of the most common were low-life criminals and enemies of the state.   These are two very different matters – they are not the same thing.  Low-life criminals would include, for example, slaves who had escaped from their masters and committed a crime.   If caught, a slave could be crucified.   There were two reasons they were subjected to such a tortuous, slow, and humiliating death.

They were receiving the “ultimate” punishment for their crime.  But possibly more important, they were used as a spectacle to warn any other slave who was thinking about escaping or committing crimes about what could happen to *them.

Worse than escaping as a slave or stealing a horse –very much worse – was opposing the Roman state itself.  This is something the Romans WOULD NOT tolerate.  Enemies of the state were shown what the power of the state was.  And crucifixion was how it was done.   If you were a resistor to Roman military action – crucified.  If you were caught attacking Roman troops – crucified.  If you plotted to overthrow the local Roman government – crucified.

 Those who were opposed to Rome. those people who actively sought to oppose the state, or at least were *thought* by the Roman authorities to seek to oppose the state were unceremoniously condemned to be crucified precisely in order to show how absolutely HELPLESS anyone is who thinks they can oppose the power of Rome.                                     

In antiquity, thousands upon thousands of people were crucified, which at the time was considered to be one of the most brutal and shameful ways to die. In Rome, the crucifixion process was a long one, entailing scourging  before the victim was nailed and hung from the cross. In Rome, people condemned to crucifixion were scourged beforehand, with the exception of women, Roman senators and soldiers . During scourging, a person was stripped naked, tied to a post, and then flogged across the back, buttocks and legs by Roman soldiers.(Retief and Cilliers, researchers).  

        Christians in with lions, probably scoured first

This excessive whipping would weaken the victim, causing deep wounding, severe pain and bleeding. "Frequently the victim fainted during the procedure and sudden death was not uncommon," the authors wrote. "The victim was then usually taunted, then forced to carry the patibulum [the crossbar of a cross] tied across his shoulders to the place of execution." [In Photos: A Journey Through Early Christian Rome]

"The cruelty didn't stop there. Sometimes, the Roman soldiers would hurt the victim further, cutting off a body part, such as the tongue, or blinding him. In another heinous turn, Josephus reported how soldiers under Antiochus IV, the Hellenistic Greek king of the Seleucid Empire, would have the victim's strangled child hung around his neck". (Such cruelty is unbelievable!)  True sadists !

Crucifixion most likely began with the Assyrians and Babylonians, and it was also practiced systematically by the Persians in the sixth century BCE, according to a 2003 report in the South African Medical Journal (SAMJ). At this time, the victims were usually tied, feet dangling, to a tree or post; crosses weren't used until Roman times, according to the report.

From there, Alexander the Great, who invaded Persia as he built his empire, brought the practice to eastern Mediterranean countries in the fourth century BCE,  But Roman officials weren't aware of the practice until they encountered it while fighting Carthage during the Punic Wars in the third century BCE.                                 

    A nail was found hammered into one of the man's heel bones, evidence that he was crucified. (Image credit: Albion Archaeology)  in Britain.  A man in Roman England, possibly a slave, died brutally when he was crucified in the third or fourth century CE., according to the archaeologists who found his remains, including a nail hammered through one of his heel bones. 

For the next 500 years, the Romans "perfected crucifixion" until Constantine I (The Great) who ruled from 312 to 337 CE, abolished it in the fourth century CE., co-authors Francois Retief and Louise Cilliers, professors in the Department of English and Classical Culture at the University of the Free State in South Africa, wrote in the SAMJ report.

The 2 men who were killed along with Jesus are identified in some translations as "thieves," but the word can also mean "insurgents," supporting the idea that crucifixion was a political weapon used to send a message to those still living:  Do not stir dissent or this will be the result.  It was a popular method of dispatching threats to the empire.  "Romans practiced both random and intentional violence against populations they had conquered, killing tens of thousands by crucifixion," says New Testament scholar Hal Taussig, who is the Union Theological Seminary in New York.  

"Christian tradition holds that Gestas was on the cross to the left of Jesus and Dismas was on the cross to the right of Jesus. In Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend, the name of the impenitent thief is given as Gesmas. The impenitent thief is sometimes referred to as the "bad thief" in contrast to the good thief."  Both most likely were Jews.  (In apocryphal writings, the impenitent thief is given the name Gestas, which first appears in the Gospel of Nicodemus, while his companion is called Dismas).

Constantine wrote his so-called edict of toleration which he issued at Milan in 312 in effect establishing the supremacy of Christianity.  By 315,, his decrees took an anti-Jewish turn, canceling Jewish exemptions from municipal office and prohibiting proselytization or interference with Jewish converts to Christianity.  Constantine's legislation started the legal degradation  of Jews we see in the Middle Ages, where anti-Semitism was at its height.  

Resource:

https://www.livescience.com/65283-crucifixion-history.html#:~:text=In%204%20B.C.%2C%20the%20Roman,the%20Roman%2DJewish%20historian%20Josephus.

https://www.livescience.com/65283-crucifixion-history.html

https://ehrmanblog.org/why-romans-crucified-people/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appian_Way#:~:text=The%20Romans%20judged%20that%20the,Appia%20from%20Rome%20to%20Capua.

https://theconversation.com/from-psychopaths-to-everyday-sadists-why-do-humans-harm-the-harmless-144017#:~:text=Someone%20who%20gets%20pleasure%20from,And%20they%20enjoy%20it.

https://www.newsweek.com/how-romans-used-crucifixion-including-jesus-political-weapon-318934

https://www.thattheworldmayknow.com/the-jewish-revolts  (interesting read)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impenitent_thief#:~:text=Christian%20tradition%20holds%20that%20Gestas,contrast%20to%20the%20good%20thief.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antipater_(son_of_Herod_the_Great)#:~:text=Ant%C3%ADpatros%3B%20c.,BC%20to%20marry%20Mariamne%20I.

https://www.livescience.com/39730-spartacus.html#:~:text=Spartacus%20is%20said%20to%20have,hunted%20down%20the%20remaining%20rebels.