Crucifixion is a method of capital punishment and torture in which the condemned is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross, beam, or stake, and usually left to hang until eventual death, which could take minutes to days. Although this process typically takes many days while coupled with starvation, the executioner may deliberately or inadvertently sever an artery of the crucified subject while nailing them to the cross, killing them within a matter of minutes due to rapid and large-scale blood loss. Crucifixion was extremely common in the ancient world—Persia, Carthage, and Rome are among several civilizations that are known to have widely used this method to execute condemned individuals.Roger Bourke, Prisoners of the Japanese: Literary imagination and the prisoner-of-war experience (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2006), Chapter 2 "A Town Like Alice and the prisoner of war as Christ-figure", pp. 30–65. In the 21st century, it remains a legally sanctioned punishment in some Muslim-majority countries and is also frequently recorded in other parts of the world in connection with cases of murder, war crimes, and genocide.
The Roman practice is the most prominent historical example due to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, which became central to Christianity and is represented globally through the Christian cross and the crucifix. Other Christian figures are traditionally believed to have been subject to variations of the method, including Saint Peter, who is said to have been crucified upside-down; and Saint Andrew, who is said to have been crucified on an X-shaped cross. Today, Christians in some parts of the world voluntarily subject themselves to non-lethal crucifixions as a devotional practice, although these incidents have resulted in social and legal controversy as well as accidental deaths.
Terminology
Ancient Greek has two verbs for crucify: (), from (which in modern Greek only means "cross" but which in antiquity was used for any kind of wooden pole, pointed or blunt, bare or with attachments) and () "crucify on a plank",LSJ apotumpanizo ἀποτυμπα^ν-ίζω (later ἀποτύμπα^ν-τυπ- UPZ119 (2nd century BCE), POxy.1798.1.7), A. crucify on a plank, D.8.61,9.61:Pass., Lys.13.56, D.19.137, Arist. Rh. 1383a5, Beros. ap. J.Ap.1.20. 2. generally, destroy, Plu.2.1049d. together with ( "impale"). In earlier pre-Roman Greek texts usually means "impale".LSJ anastauro ἀνασταυρ-όω, = foreg., Hdt.3.125, 6.30, al.; identical with ἀνασκολοπίζω, 9.78:Pass., Th. 1.110, Pl.Grg.473c. II. in Rom. times, affix to a cross, crucify, Plb. 1.11.5, al., Plu.Fab.6, al. 2. crucify afresh, Ep.Hebr.6.6.Plutarch Fabius Maximus 6.3 "Hannibal now perceived the mistake in his position, and its peril, and crucified the native guides who were responsible for it."Polybius 1.11.5 Historiae. Polybius. Theodorus Büttner-Wobst after L. Dindorf. Leipzig. Teubner. 1893.
The Greek used in the Christian New Testament uses four verbs, three of them based upon (), usually translated "cross". The most common term is (), "to crucify", occurring 46 times; (), "to crucify with" or "alongside" occurs five times, while (), "to crucify again" occurs only once at the Epistle to the Hebrews 6:6. (), "to fix or fasten to, impale, crucify" occurs only once, at the Acts of the Apostles 2:23.
The English term cross derives from the Latin word , which classically referred to a tree or any construction of wood used to hang criminals as a form of execution. The term later came to refer specifically to a cross.Charlton T. Lewis, Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary: crux, ŭcis, f. (m., Enn. ap. Non. p. 195, 13; Gracch. ap. Fest. s. v. masculino, p. 150, 24, and 151, 12 Müll.) [perh. kindred with circus]. I. Lit. A. In gen., a tree, frame, or other wooden instruments of execution, on which criminals were impaled or hanged, Sen. Prov. 3, 10; Cic. Rab. Perd. 3, 10 sqq. B. In partic., a cross, Ter. And. 3, 5, 15; Cic. Verr. 2, 1, 3, § 7; 2, 1, 4, § 9; id. Pis. 18, 42; id. Fin. 5, 30, 92; Quint. 4, 2, 17; Tac. A. 15, 44; Hor. S. 1, 3, 82; 2, 7, 47; id. Ep. 1, 16, 48 et saep.: "dignus fuit qui malo cruce periret, Gracch. ap. Fest. l. l.: pendula", the pole of a carriage, Stat. S. 4, 3, 28. The related term crucifix derives from the Latin or , past participle passive of or , meaning "to crucify" or "to fasten to a cross".
Detail
Cross shape
In the Roman Empire, the gibbet (instrument of execution) for crucifixions took on many shapes. Seneca the Younger () states: "I see crosses there, not just of one kind but made in many different ways: some have their victims with head down to the ground; some impale their private parts; others stretch out their arms on the gibbet." According to Josephus, during Emperor Titus's Siege of Jerusalem (70 CE), Roman soldiers nailed innumerable Jewish captives to crosses in various ways.
At times the gibbet was a simple vertical stake, called in Latin crux simplex. Frequently, however, there was a cross-piece attached either at the top to give the shape of a T (crux commissa) or just below the top, as in the form most familiar in Christian symbolism (crux immissa)."The ... oldest depiction of a crucifixion ... was uncovered by archaeologists more than a century ago on the Palatine Hill in Rome. It is a 2nd-century graffiti scratched into a wall that was part of the imperial palace complex. It includes a caption – not by a Christian, but by someone taunting and deriding Christians and the crucifixions they underwent. It shows crude stick-figures of a boy reverencing his 'God', who has the head of a jackass and is upon a cross with arms spread wide and with hands nailed to the crossbeam. Here we have a Roman sketch of a Roman crucifixion, and it is in the traditional cross shape." Clayton F. Bower Jr. "Cross or Torture Stake?" The most ancient image of a Roman crucifixion depicts an individual on a cross. It is a graffito found in a taberna (hostel for wayfarers) in Puteoli, dating to the time of Trajan or Hadrian (late 1st century to early 2nd century CE).
Writers in the 2nd century who speak of the execution cross describe the crucified person's arms as outstretched, not attached to a single stake: Lucian speaks of Prometheus as crucified "above the ravine with his hands outstretched". He also says that the shape of the letter Τ (the Greek letter tau) was that of the wooden instrument used for crucifying."It was his body that tyrants took for a model, his shape that they imitated, when they set up the erections on which men are crucified" (Lucian, Trial in the Court of Vowels, p. 30) Artemidorus, another writer of the same period, says that a cross is made of posts (plural) and nails and that the arms of the crucified are outstretched. Speaking of the generic execution cross, Irenaeus (), a Christian writer, describes it as composed of an upright and a transverse beam, sometimes with a small projection in the upright."The very form of the cross, too, has five extremities, two in length, two in breadth, and one in the middle, on which [last] the person rests who is fixed by the nails" ( Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses II, 4).
New Testament writings about the crucifixion of Jesus do not specify the shape of that cross, but subsequent early writings liken it to the letter T. According to William Barclay, because tau is shaped exactly like the crux commissa and represented the number 300, "wherever the fathers came across the number 300 in the Old Testament they took it to be a mystical prefiguring of the cross of Christ". The earliest example, written around the late 1st century, is the Epistle of Barnabas,Epistle of Barnabas, chapter 9 with another example being Clement of Alexandria (c. 215).
Justin Martyr () sees the cross of Christ represented in the crossed spits used to roast the Passover lamb.
Nail placement In popular depictions of the crucifixion of Jesus (possibly because in translations of the wounds are described as being "in his hands"), Jesus is shown with nails in his hands. But in Greek the word "χείρ", usually translated as "hand", could refer to the entire portion of the arm below the elbow,In the Homeric Greek of the Iliad XX, 478–480, a spear-point is said to have pierced the χεῖρ "where the sinews of the elbow join" (ἵνα τε ξενέχουσι τένοντες / ἀγκῶνος, τῇ τόν γε φίλης διὰ χειρὸς ἔπειρεν / αἰχμῇ χακλκείῃ). and to denote the hand as distinct from the arm some other word could be added, as "ἄκρην οὔτασε χεῖρα" (he wounded the end of the χείρ, i.e., "he wounded him in the hand".
A possibility that does not require tying is that the nails were inserted just above the wrist, through the soft tissue, between the two bones of the forearm (the radius and the ulna).
A foot-rest (suppedaneum) attached to the cross, perhaps for the purpose of taking the person's weight off the wrists, is sometimes included in representations of the crucifixion of Jesus but is not discussed in ancient sources. Some scholars interpret the Alexamenos graffito (), the earliest surviving depiction of the crucifixion, as including such a foot-rest. Ancient sources also mention the sedile, a small seat attached to the front of the cross, about halfway down, which could have served a similar purpose.
In 1968, archaeologists discovered at Giv'at ha-Mivtar in northeast Jerusalem the remains of one Jehohanan, who was crucified in the 1st century CE. The remains included a heel bone with a nail driven through it from the side. The tip of the nail was bent, perhaps because of striking a knot in the upright beam, which prevented it being extracted from the foot. A first inaccurate account of the length of the nail led some to believe that it had been driven through both heels, suggesting that the man had been placed in a sort of sidesaddle position, but the true length of the nail, , suggests instead that in this case of crucifixion the heels were nailed to opposite sides of the upright beam.David W. Chapman, Ancient Jewish and Christian perceptions of crucifixion (Mohr Siebeck, 2008), pp. 86–89 As of 2011, the skeleton from Giv'at ha-Mivtar was the only confirmed example of ancient crucifixion in the archaeological record. A second set of skeletal remains with holes transverse through the calcaneum heel bones, found in 2007, could be a second archaeological record of crucifixion. The find in Cambridgeshire (United Kingdom) in November 2017 of the remains of the heel bone of a (probably enslaved) man with an iron nail through it, is believed by the archeologists to confirm the use of this method in ancient Rome.
Cause of death The length of time required to reach death could range from hours to days depending on method, the victim's health, and the environment. If a nail severed an artery, death could occur within minutes. Some Roman crucifiers are reported to have taken bribes to sever an artery for a quick death.