Crucifixion in the Greco-Roman World

While the crucifixion of Jesus is the most most well-known instance of this type of execution, crucifixion was a practice that was both common and taboo all over the Greco-Roman world for almost 1,000 years. Read the show notes here.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy Wilson. And so every spring, I guess for
two springs. Now, since we've just crossed the one year

(00:23):
mark of the two of us being on this podcast,
requests roll in for us to talk about the Shroud
of Turin at Easter time. So last year, because we
had basically just come onto the podcast as hosts, it
was way too soon. It was like three days before
Easter or something that we couldn't know what did it

(00:43):
in right, it would not have worked. So this year,
because so many people have asked, I started on research
way way way in advance, and it's still failed. Um, Basically,
there is so much research and study about the Shroud
of Turin, but equality of that research is vastly inconsistent.

(01:03):
And as I started going through it, I realized that
confirming and fact checking everything was going to be this
herculean effort, and it was going to be the kind
of effort that would need to yield a book, not
a thirty minute episode of a podcast. So I am
sad to say we do not have a Shroud of
Touring episode this year, but I really didn't want to

(01:25):
skip Easter entirely because I know how important it is
to a lot of people who listen to this podcast,
and because we've gotten so many requests related to it
that we have not been able to do anything about before,
And that is what led me to dive into researching
the historical context of crucifixion. So we're going to talk
about the Crucifixion of Jesus in this episode, but the

(01:47):
biggest focus is really crucifixion as a practice, and crucifixion
was really simultaneously very common and very taboo all over
the Greco Roman world for almost a thousand years, which
is a unique combo. Yeah, you don't usually get a
thing that is taboo and just right. So yes, we're

(02:10):
going we're going to talk about crucifixion as a practice
today and the history of this thing that is now
such a huge part of the consciousness of a lot
of people. So the historical documents mentioning crucifixion referred to
it as an act carried out by so called quote
barbarian people's living in southern and western Asia, and the
people's described this way included Indians, Assyrians, Scythians, who were

(02:34):
nomadic people from iran Uh. The Greek historian Herodotus also
makes many references to crucifixion among the Persians. So the
Greek and Roman writers alike, who were writing disparagingly about
these so called barbarian uses of crucifixion, we're also kind
of defending it among Greeks and Romans themselves. So, based

(02:58):
on kind of reconstructing all of the different references and timelines,
it seems as though the practice eventually spread from Asia
to Carthage and then to Rome, and then from the
Romans to German, Germanic and Britannic people's who used it
as a method of religious sacrifice. But it was really
in Greece in Rome that crucifixion became a commonplace method

(03:19):
of execution. And this was true from about the sixth
century b c. Until the fourth century c e U,
such a very long span of time, and bodies of
people who were already dead were also displayed in crucifixion
like poses as a sort of posthumous humiliation, and whether
someone was dying on across or was being placed there

(03:42):
after death, crucifixion was regarded as just extremely shameful and horrible. Uh.
People kind of write to us sometimes about applying modern
sensibilities to things that were commonplace at the past in
the past, but no, really. In Greece and Rome, the
overwhelmingly prevailing sentiment was that crucifixion was a really, really

(04:05):
shameful and horrifying thing. Yet crucifixions were carried out anyway,
and Greek and Roman writers and historians simultaneously wrote about
how it was extremely horrific and also defended its use.
So what they were not really writing about was exactly
how crucifixion was performed. Uh, it was so horrifying and

(04:26):
shameful that people living at the time seem like they
didn't really want to go into detail about what actually
happened in the process. Even the four Gospel accounts of
the crucifixion of Jesus just say that they crucified him.
They don't really describe the act of crucifixion. So there's
some debate today about whether all the historical executions that

(04:48):
are described as crucifixions were actually carried out in the
way that we envision crucifixion in modern times. It's simultaneously
a question of whether the modern unders ending of the
crucifixion of Jesus applies to all the other crucifixions, or
if there were various methodologies to it right, So the
dictionary definition and the mental image that comes to mind

(05:11):
for most people, and the Christian tradition involves being nailed
to a cross which has both an upright part and
a crossbar. The person being crucified is also stripped, beaten,
and mocked, and the cross itself is marked with a
sign that details that person's name and the crime that
they are being crucified for committing. And a lot of
that common knowledge about the death of Jesus and consequently

(05:34):
crucifixion in general comes from early Christian art and writings
that were created about two hundred years after the events,
so they weren't really contemporary accounts, right. Even the Gospels
are were written down significantly later Priss actually lived. One
of the earliest known visual depictions is the Alexamenos Graffito,
which is a derogatory and mocking etching on a wall

(05:56):
in Rome that dates to roughly two hundred years after
the crucifixion of Jesus. Another etching dates from about the
same time period and has some visual similarities. These visually
look like what we think of today as crucifixion, with
the it's a cross shaped cross basically with a person
nailed to it. But because all of these accounts, whether

(06:18):
they are written or visual, were created so long after
the crucifixion of Jesus took place, it's a little unclear
how well they match up with what actually happened, And
it's also unclear whether those accounts of the crucifixion of
Jesus can be just applied wholesale to all the other
crucifixions in history. There are some common themes that can

(06:39):
be gleaned from existing texts about crucifixion, though so. The
first is that before being crucified, the person who was
being executed was generally stripped and then beaten, flagged, or
otherwise tortured. The execution itself involved being tied or nailed
to some kind of vertical steak, and it may or

(06:59):
may not have had a horizontal crossbar. The person being
executed also generally had to carry one of the implements
of their death to the side of the execution, although
whether this was the vertical stake or the crossbar, or
something else hasn't really been specified in the text that
survived today that the sort of thing that people imagine

(07:22):
is that at the crossbar right, So, uh, we know
that crucifixions usually happened in public in heavily trafficked places.
They were as much about publicly displaying the person being
executed as about executing and punishing them, and there was
also usually a sign on the cross or nearby detailing

(07:43):
who was being crucified and why. And it is not
a big leap of logic to um guests. The crucifixion
led to a very slow and very agonizing death. Depending
on the person's health and physical state at the time
of being crucified, it to take days, and we don't
really have autopsy records to go on. There have been

(08:04):
some various theories over the years, but at this point
the general consensus is that the person's death ultimately came
from coronary failure alung collapse, and this is in part
because being suspended in the way that people were suspended
during crucifixion makes it really hard for the rib cage
to expand enough to take a good deep breath, and

(08:26):
if the executioners wanted to speed things along, they would
break the person's legs, and this would induce shock, and
it would speed up the rate of respiratory decline. The
person being crucified could no longer support themselves with their
legs long enough to assist in taking a good breath.
After death, a crucified person was normally also denied burial

(08:49):
and was instead fed to birds and wild animals, or
just left hanging there to rot and be fed upon
by scavengers. Humans are really good at devising really horrible
things to do to each other. No, it's just that's
what I constantly think of when looking through these notes,
like terrible creatures. Uh. There was widespread acknowledgement, as we said,

(09:11):
that crucifixion was a cruel, horrifying, and humiliating practice, but
it continued to be practiced anyway, sometimes because of its cruelty,
and sometimes out of the idea that such a horrifying
and shameful death would discourage others from committing the same offenses. Persia, Greece, Carthage,
and Rome all crucified people for similar reasons, which included

(09:34):
treason and other crimes against the state, pacifying and demoralizing
conquered nations, or rebels within a nation's and borders, or
punishing and persecuting political and religious dissenters. Carthage also crucified
high ranking military leaders who failed in battle, and Greece
and Rome also crucified robbers and pirates, and pirates sometimes

(09:57):
crucified their victims. In Rome, crucifixion was thought of as
the supreme punishment. The next two layers of punishment in
terms of severity were burning and decapitation. Rome also sometimes
used crucifixion as a form of popular entertainment, kind of
similar to throwing someone to the lions, and sometimes Rome

(10:19):
performed crucifixions as part of this big, violent and spectacle
that would include crucifixions, throwing people to wild animals, and
fights between glad years. And Crucifixion was such an abhorrent
punishment that in Rome it wasn't usually performed on citizens,
at least unless they committed a crime so heinous that
a crucifixion was deemed warranted. Instead, Romans usually crucified slaves,

(10:45):
so many slaves that it was referred to as a
slave's punishment, and Romans also were open to crucifying foreigners,
people who didn't have the civil rights that were kind
of conferred by being Roman citizens were for the most
part the people at Rome crucified. There were many others,
And before we talk about that, would you like to
take a moment and have a word from our sponsor.

(11:07):
So let's return to the subject of crucifixion and talk
about some of the people who were crucified during this
almost thousand year timespan. The most well known crucifixion today,
of course, is that of Jesus of Nazareth, whose crucifixion
was ordered by Ponscious Pilot. Two criminals were crucified along
with him, and today Jesus's death on the cross is

(11:28):
a crucial part of the Christian faith because of the
idea that Jesus died for the sins of all mankind.
But in the first years after the crucifixion it was
actually an added source of persecution for early Christians. We've
said so many times in this episode that crucifixion was
loaded with shame and horror, and in the minds of
many who were not of the Christian faith, the idea

(11:48):
that a divine being could have been put to such
a death was just absurd, so it completely discredited their faith. Today,
it's sort of part of it's one of the important
parts of of faith and of Christianity. Uh. But as
Christianity as a religion was sort of getting started early,

(12:09):
a lot of early Christians were heavily persecuted by people
around them, and this became sort of a source of
ridicule and mocking and attempts to discredit Christianity as a faith. Um.
There were many, many, many other people who were crucified
as well, though, and this is sort of a list
of highlights. We're going to start. Within the sixth century

(12:29):
BC and bat and Babylon, Darius the First, who was
the King of Prussia, ordered the crucifixion of about three
thousand political opponents. In the second century BC, slaves were
crucified on mass in response to a slave rebellion at
the end of the Second Punic War. And two A
one b C. E. Sipio Africanus the Elder punished Roman

(12:53):
deserters by crucifying them. And as we said before, Rome
didn't normally crucify its own set sins, but their treason
was deemed to be a big enough in fraction to
basically revoke that protection of citizenship. In a eight B
c e. Alexander Jennius, who was a high priest and
king of Judea, crucified eight hundred Pharisees, who were also

(13:17):
his political opponents. The Roman general Publicius Quinctilius Verus crucified
about two thousand Jews in the first century CE due
to a rebellion, Nero ordered many crucifixions, including many early Christians,
as part of a campaign of religious persecution. Also during

(13:37):
Nero's reign, the Senate revived an older custom of executing
all of a household slaves, usually by crucifixion, if the
head of that household was murdered. Flaccus, the governor of Egypt,
employed crucifixion in the persecution of Jews. So this went on,
like we've said, for a very very long time, and

(13:58):
a lot of people were put to by crucifixion. The
general consensus is that Emperor Constantine was the one who
put an end to crucifixion, although there is some debate
about that today, it's pretty clear that he really wanted
to put a stop to crucifixion, and it does look
like officially sanctioned crucifixions did end after he made this directive,

(14:21):
But it also seems like the practice itself continued without
it being something that was allowed at that point. There
you could say we're not doing that anymore, but it
takes a while for it to really be eradicated. Yeah. Well,
and then also the practice was was introduced into other
cultures later in history and was practiced sort of after

(14:43):
having learned it from from history or from Roman example. Um.
But I didn't really get into that in this particular
episode because I really I wanted to focus on it.
It's heyday. Seems like a flippant word, but that whole
era in Rome and Greece when it was just like
the way that people were executed for a whole lot

(15:05):
of different things. Um. It's interesting to read the points
of view of the people who were writing about it
at the time, who would very spontaneously being decrying it
as a terrible thing to do, and then just sort
of resignedly accepting that it was something that needed to
be done in order to basically keep people in their place.
It was a sort of idea of, well, if we

(15:26):
stopped crucifying people, there will be lots of crime and dissent,
and that doesn't sound good. The man who wrote several
of the things that I read researching this episode, whose
name was Gunner R. Samuelson wrote a whole book that
was sort of about, uh, crucifixion and the historical context
of Crucifixion, which when the book came out, a lot
of news newspapers completely mischaracterized and like very sensational headlines.

(15:51):
So if if you ever read them, I got maybe
very angry at this person we're having made uh, seemingly
blasphemous statements. That's not really what the book is about.
The book is a lot more about what happened and
how do we know what happened and what was the
historical context for this? Even having learned so so much

(16:11):
about the role that the Crucifixion plays in a lot
of modern Christianity, I had no idea of sort of
its placed in its society, Yeah, or how much of um,
like the the image that comes to mind when we
say crucifixion, how much of that comes from later later

(16:32):
writings and artwork, And it's a little unclear how well
those reflect what happened at the time, which doesn't lessen
anything at all, but uh, there are some things that
we sort of take for granted now that may or
may not have happened the way that we imagine them.
All right, all right, do you have slightly peppier listener? Man?

(16:56):
And it kind of is peppier in a way. It's
also h related to distressing subject matter, but is kind
of uplifting in what it's about. This is from Terry
and it is on our episode are two part episode
on Rosa Parks. Terry says, Hi, Holly and Tracy have
been catching up on podcasts and just listen to the
Rosa Parks double. I'm so glad to hear someone talk

(17:18):
about the backstory that led Rosa to the place where
she ended up and her previous involvement in the movement.
So often that's all glossed over, and all we hear
is she didn't stand up without any mention of how
the buses really worked, or that she was involved in
the n Double a CP and had been some non
violence training. However, I was sad that he missed a
real opportunity to name another woman who was forgotten in

(17:40):
the midst of the story. You talked extensively about the
leaflets advertising the bus boycott, but nary a mention of
the woman who made them. Happen literally overnight. Joe and
Robinson snuck into the school office and mimiographed thirty five
thousand leaflets at three am, and then later, when she
talked about it with the administrator, he chose not to

(18:01):
discipline her, though he could not find his way to
taking a public stand. These two people, in many ways
made the boycott possible and his success, and they are
left out of the story. Perhaps an episode on Joanne
is in order. Maybe someday. Thank you so much for
all you do to inform and entertain us. I love
listening and learning with you. Peace Terry memiographing, I know

(18:24):
I suddenly have like sense memory. I know instantly. I
would imagine that we have listeners who are young enough
that they had all their things in school. Xerox if
you if you don't really know, uh, memiographs printed this
like purplely onto paper. It had a very particular smell
that Holly and I are both remembering right now. It's

(18:45):
also extremely fiddly and cantankerous technology that could go terribly awry.
So the idea of memiographing thirty thousand leaflets at three
o'clock in the morning, I wonder how long it took.
I don't know, it would depend on whether like the
machine got jam or whether you know that the fluid
had been pumped correctly. Like, yeah, that is a task.

(19:11):
I mean I remember teachers complaining about you know, just
memo graphing o our thirty quizzes for the day. Yeah,
me too, distinctly, or like when they would hand out packets.
There were a couple of times that I remember in
school where we had to share packets because the teacher
just got fed up and was done with fighting with
the mimograph machine. Ah it conjures, like I said, instant

(19:34):
since memories like that smell and yeah, if we um,
I will see if I can find for for those
those listeners who may have never had mimio graph things
in school. Uh. I will see if I can find
some some cool things about mimi graph machines and maybe
put them in our share notes or on our Facebook
or something. So uh yes, thank you so much, Terry.

(19:57):
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(20:18):
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you would like to learn about one of the punishments

(20:40):
that gradually replaced crucifixion once it had been outlawed, you
can come to our website and put the word hanging
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does death by hanging work? You can do all of
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(21:00):
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