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Home , Alexamenos graffito, Immurement, Impalement, Poena cullei

How Did the Romans Really Crucify ? Richard Binder, September 27, 2020 (edited March 14, 2021)

This article is the conclusion of a secular exploration of an event that some people devoutly believe happened, while others deny the very existence of its central character. That event, or non-event, was the of Jesus of Nazareth. You can find the complete series of articles at this Web address:

http://www.richardspens.com/?crux=

For nearly two millennia, the method by which Jesus of Nazareth was crucified has been a subject of speculation by Christians, archaeologists, historians, and others whose interest might be based on little or nothing more than curiosity. There exist countless religious paintings, sculptures, and corpora on , and there exist also many ancient writings describing crucifixion as practiced by the Romans. This article is an attempt to pull together several applicable threads of information with the purpose of describing without religious bias just how Jesus’ crucifixion was carried out.

One thing we can be sure of is that Jesus’ death on the cross did not appear as it is portrayed in depictions intended for by the faithful, typified by the three images shown here—for it was horrifyingly unsuited to that purpose. In this article, I shall refer to works of this type as “traditional” depictions.

The Ancona Crucifixion, by Crucifixion from an English A modern Roman Catholic Titian, 1558 psalter, c. 1225

All three of the above images show nails through Jesus’ palms, one nail holding both feet to the front of the cross, and Jesus wearing a loincloth and hung on a cross. These four features are known, demonstrable errors. Let us take a look at how the Romans really crucified their victims. For the curious, a pronunciation guide for the Latin words used in this article follows the text.

Note: Dates in this article are in the Common Era (CE) unless identified as being before the Common Era (BCE).

First, it should be understood that crucifixion, possibly on the principle of deterrence, was an intentionally degrading form of public execution and that it was reserved for the lowest of the low, criminals of the worst sorts who were not even Roman citizens—for it was virtually impermissible to put a Roman citizen to death.1 Insurrectionists, pirates, murderous slaves, and the like were candidates for crucifixion or the equally brutal (but quicker) punishments of being impaled or beaten to death with rods of birch or elm wood. specified that a slave who killed his master was to be put to death—along with all of the master’s other slaves. On the other hand, a Roman citizen was essentially immune to the death penalty. For malefactors who were Roman citizens, the most extreme sentences that could be imposed legally—with one exception, the punishment for , the killing of one’s own father2—were or, for the very worst, ( alive).3

The Cross

Historically, crucifixion did not always involve the cross as we know it today. The principal meaning of the Latin word crux is a frame on which criminals are exposed to die, hence, a cross; but crucifixion could also, depending on circumstance, be accomplished on a plain wooden stake taller than the victim, or even on a handy tree. There are also stories, none of which has been archaeologically authenticated, of Latin crosses and St. Andrew’s (X-shaped) crosses. The Romans’ standard method of crucifixion, however, made use of a T-shaped cross, known as a Tau cross for its shape, which resembles the Greek letter tau (Τ).

Strong archaeological evidence for the use of the Tau cross exists. The earliest known artwork depicting what is believed to be the is the graffito shown below, scratched on a plaster wall in the paedagogium (training school for slaves for the royal palace) on the Caelian Hill in at some time between 85 and 300. It is known as the “Alexamenos graffito.”

Original graffito, on left, now in the Palatine Hill Museum, Rome. Right-hand image is modern artist’s reconstruction for clarification.

The graffito is obviously a mockery of Christianity, which was seen as an extension of Judaism. A common obloquy of the time said that the Jews (and therefore the Christians) practiced onolatry, the worship of an ass, and the head of the crucified is that of an ass. For this reason, the graffito is also referred to as the “blasphemous graffito.” The Greek text below the image reads as follows:

ΑΛΕξΑΜΕΝΟC CΕΒΕΤΕ ϑΕΟΝ

Alexamenos worships [his] God

The letter resembling a C in the text is a form of the Greek letter Σ (sigma) that was common in ancient times. The text aside, the image shows a view of a crucified victim from the back, and it clearly depicts a Tau cross.

A second graffito, dated to the second century CE, was found among a mass of other graffiti on the wall of a tavern in Puteoli (modern Pozzuoli).

The original graffito remains in situ, in Taberna 5 near the beginning of the ancient Via Campana.

This graffito, also showing the victim from the back, again illustrates a Tau cross. It also appears to show the lacerations on the back that resulted from flogging (to be discussed later in this article). The stripes could, however, indicate that the victim was wearing the skin of an animal, possibly to attract the attention of beasts in the arena so that they would attack. The victim's legs in this example are crossed, with each foot secured to the stipes by a separate nail.

The Tau cross was made in two parts, as shown here:

• The stipes, a vertical stake tall enough to support a man off the ground with his arms stretched out sideways at approximately a 45° angle above his shoulders. When the stipes was standing upright, the visible part of it would have been about seven feet (~2.4 m) tall and about six to eight inches (~15 cm to ~20 cm) square. Traditional depictions of Jesus’ crucifixion that show him on a cross taller than those of the two men who were crucified with him are examples of religious idealism, raising the God-figure above the mere mortals. Given that Golgotha was an established place of execution, there would have been several stipites permanently installed, so that this is probably the size of the stipes on which Jesus was crucified.

• The patibulum, a crossbeam enough longer than the span of a man’s arms that the wrists could be nailed to it. A “proper” patibulum, as the one used for Jesus almost certainly was, would have measured approximately six feet (~1.83 m) long and had the same cross- section as the stipes. If it was made of oak, a wood commonly used by the Romans for structural purposes and readily available in Judaea, it would have weighed something on the order of 90 to 95 pounds (~41 to ~43 kg). To correspond with the readiness of the place of execution, there would have been a supply of prefabricated patibula available at or near Herod’s palace, where Pilate’s praetorium (commander’s residence) was located.4

The stipes could be set up by means of a stand, without wheels, that was similar in appearance to the wooden carriages of early cannons. This was a convenience that would allow the stipes to be lowered to the horizontal to make it easy to crucify the victim and to remove the body and the patibulum after the victim had died. Alternatively, the stipes could be buried with its base a few feet into the ground and wedged by pieces of wood pounded into the ground around it to ensure that it would remain standing upright. The choice of erection method was usually determined by whether the place of crucifixion was to be permanently established, or by circumstance. No stands were built, for example, for the crosses of the approximately 6,000 followers of Spartacus who were crucified along the Via Appia in 71 BCE because those crosses were not intended for repeated use.

At the top of the stipes was a square or rectangular peg, the cardo masculus, onto which the patibulum, with a matching hole cut into it, the cardo femina, could be fitted. Because the cardines were not round, the patibulum could not rotate atop the stipes.

Did Jesus really have to carry his own cross to Golgotha? One of several ancient writers who described crucifixion, the Greek philosopher and biographer , known as Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after he was granted Roman citizenship, wrote the following less than a century after Jesus’ death:

ἕκαστος κακούργων ἐκφέρει τὸν αὑτοῦ σταυρόν.5

Every malefactor must carry out his own cross. (author’s translation)

If that is not sufficient, we have only to turn to the four Gospels, which are united in saying that Jesus was made to carry his cross. Because he carried his cross, we can be sure that he was crucified on a Tau cross, not a stake or a tree, and that he did not carry the entire cross. As described above, the stipes was already at the place of execution. We do not know whether the stipes of Jesus’ cross was mounted in a stand or sunk into the ground. In either case, however, the only part of the cross that the victim would carry from the place of sentencing to the place of execution was the patibulum. It would be placed across his shoulders like a yoke and lashed to his arms to keep it from slipping, and he would carry it that way.

The Flogging

Carrying an object of the size and weight of a patibulum from Herod’s palace to the hill of 5 Golgotha, a distance of a little more than ∕8 mile (1 km), would have been a daunting task for a man in reasonably good condition. All four of the canonical Gospels state that Jesus was flogged before he was led out to his death. Flogging, flagellatio, was standard procedure before crucifixion, and it could apparently also be inflicted as a lesser punishment on a prisoner who was to be released.6 The victim was stripped and tied to a stake or a column with his back exposed, and the flogging was administered by two lorarii, whip men, with one lorarius standing on either side of and behind the victim, and alternately striking. This practice produced a distinctive pattern of V- shaped marks on the victim’s back, and there could also be marks on the chest if the thongs of the whip that was used, the flagrum, curled around the body. In most cases, the flagrum was a three- stranded whip like the one shown in the photo here. The handle was about eight inches (~20 cm) long, and the thongs, made of leather, were of different lengths in the range of one foot (~30 cm) long, with small bones or lumps of iron or lead fixed to them to cause greater pain and to tear the victim’s skin. This would leave shreds of skin and subcutaneous tissue down the victim’s back and chest, and it could bring on hypovolemic shock as a consequence of blood loss. Sometimes, depending on the number and severity of the strokes, the whips would cut entirely through the layers of subcutaneous muscle to expose bones and internal organs.

(Flagrum reproduction by Indy Magnoli, based on evidence from the Shroud of Turin7 and from the study of Roman artifacts from the first century CE. Original image © Indy Magnoli, MagnoliProps.com. Used with permission.)

People have been known to die under such a severe beating. There has long been a tradition saying that Jesus received 39 strokes, but that is a Jewish construct; a limit of 40 strokes was set by Deuteronomy 25:3 in order that the victim not be degraded, and it is thought that the man plying the whip would stop one short so as to be sure he had not gone over the allowable , which could result in his own flogging. The Romans had no such limit. What is clear is only that the Romans wanted their victims to be able to carry their own patibula to the place of execution. For a man who had just been flogged in that fashion and then further brutalized by being crowned bloodily with thorns and beaten about the head, carrying the patibulum that distance would have been impossible. All three Synoptic Gospels state that the legionaries escorting Jesus to be crucified picked a spectator from the crowd and made that man, Simon of Cyrene,8 carry the patibulum.9

The Nails in the Hands

It has long been thought that the nails—spikes, actually—in Jesus’ hands were driven through the wrist as shown below, just at the base of the hand.10 Depictions showing the nails through the palms of the hands are impossible, as that area is not strong enough to support a person’s weight. Experimentation done in the late 1940s with cadavers by Pierre Barbet, M.D., chief surgeon at l’Hôpital Saint Joseph in Paris, and since verified by others, shows that nails placed there, between the metacarpal bones, would simply have torn out between the fingers with a weight of only 45 pounds (20.4 kg). By contrast, the wrist is more than adequately strong, with the transverse carpal ligament and the carpal bones of the hand providing good support. Driven through the wrist, a spike like those used by the Romans passes between the third and fourth carpal bones, damaging the median nerve and causing intense pain.11 In some cases, but not all, the thumb would flex toward the palm such that it would not be visible from the back side of the hand. In all cases, the four fingers would flex to some degree.

(Fragment of a painting from Center of the American Experiment, Golden Valley, MN; also appears on several other websites. Used under U.S. Fair Use copyright provision.)

Even driving the nails through the wrists, however, is not necessarily sufficient to keep the victim from twisting around and ripping his hand free, although the damage to the wrist would be terrific. The Romans solved that problem by placing on each nail, before driving it through the victim’s wrist, a “washer,” in the form of a piece of wood a few inches long, a few inches wide, and thick enough that it would not split if the victim struggled. The washer had a hole predrilled to avoid splitting as the victim was being fixed to the cross. It would lie between the wrist and the head of the nail, effectively restraining any motion that could twist the hand free. Archaeological evidence for the use of these washers will be discussed later in his article.

Being suspended from nails through the wrists, as in crucifixion, causes nerve damage extending all the way up to the shoulders. The hands of a body hung for a sufficient length of time12 might assume the two-fingered “blessing” pose traditionally associated with Jesus, with the thumb and index and middle fingers flexed only very slightly or not at all due to loss of flexion from damage to the median nerve while the ring and little fingers would be curled into the palm as the ulnar nerve, because of its location in the arm, was unstressed and undamaged.13

It is possible, but I consider it unlikely, that the nails were not driven through Jesus’ wrists as described above. Archaeological evidence, in the form of bones discovered in 1970 in the tomb of Antigonus II Mattathias, the last of the Hasmonean kings, shows that there was at least one other way. Antigonus was an enemy of Herod the Great, and in 37 BCE he was crucified and beheaded by order of the Roman general Marcus Antonius. The bones of one of the hands in his tomb still had small nails attached to them, and the nails had been driven through the palm. In the form of crucifixion demonstrated by these nails, as described by Professor Israel Hershkovitz of the Sackler Medical Center of Tel-Aviv University, the arms were secured to the patibulum by ropes, and the nails were driven through the palms to keep them immobile so that the victim could not squirm about and loosen the ropes. This description is partially supported by the Roman historian Lucius Cassius Dio, who wrote in Greek:

ἐκείνους μὲν οὖν Ἡρώδῃ τινὶ Ἀ Ἀντώνιος ἄρχειν ἐπέτρεψε, τὸν δ᾽ Ἀντίγονον ἐμαστίγωσε σταυρῷ προσδήσας, ὃ μηδεὶς βασιλεὺς ἄλλος ὑπὸ τῶν Ῥωμαίων ἐπεπόνθει, καὶ μετὰ τοῦτο καὶ ἀπέσφαξεν.

These people Antony entrusted to a certain Herod to govern; but Antigonus he bound to a cross and flogged, a punishment no other king had suffered at the hands of the Romans, and afterwards slew him.14

It should be noted that the crucifixion and beheading of Antigonus took place some 69 years before the crucifixion of Jesus and that circumstances differed between the two. Antigonus would have been crucified in the usual manner, after having carried his patibulum to the place of execution. The Romans were efficient in their methods, and the ropes that held the patibulum to his arms for carrying would likely have been the same ones that bound his arms to the cross as he was crucified. Jesus, however, did not arrive at the place of execution carrying his own patibulum. We do not know whether it was planned that Jesus would be crucified as was Antigonus. If it was, that plan was upset when he was released from the ropes that held the patibulum for carrying so that it could be transferred to Simon. Thus, Jesus arrived at Golgotha without his arms bound to the patibulum. A supply of spikes for the feet was handy, and the most expeditious method of completing the crucifixion would simply have been to use a couple of extras to nail his wrists in place.

Whichever method was actually used to secure Jesus’ hands to the cross, none of the traditional depictions shows it done correctly. With nails in the palms, ropes are required; without ropes, the nails must be in the wrists. In either case, washers are necessary.

The Nails in the Feet

Virtually all traditional depictions of Jesus’ crucifixion show a single nail passing through the metatarsal area of one foot, then of the other, and then into the wood of the cross. A few paintings take issue with the number of nails, showing two nails, one passing through the metatarsal area of each foot and then into the wood. Architectural evidence discovered in 1968 disproves both of these versions.

Nicu Haas, an archaeologist at Hebrew University, examined the contents of an ossuary discovered in 1968 during excavation for modern construction. The bones in the ossuary were identified by engraving on the ossuary itself as those of a man, one Yehohanan, son of Hagakol, who was crucified in the first century CE, within about 70 years of Jesus’ crucifixion. Among the bones was the right heelbone shown in the archaeological painting below, with a spike driven through it sideways, not from the front through the metatarsal area. A 1985 analysis of the artifact by Joseph Zias, curator of the Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums, and Dr. Eliezer Sekeles, from the Hadassah Medical Center, determined that the nail was not long enough to have pinned two heels to the cross as Haas had earlier theorized. Two nails would have been required, and these nails would have been driven one through each heel and then into the sides of the stipes, not its front. Between the bone and the head of the spike are fragments of the wooden washer that prevented the heel bone from twisting around and possibly splitting if the foot was forcibly supinated as the victim struggled, which could in turn release the foot from the spike as the flesh around the wound tore away.

Painting by Rubén Betanzo S., image in the public domain.

The Position of the Body

Experiments with both corpses and live volunteers by Frederick T. Zugibe, M.D., Ph.D., an experienced medical examiner, have shown that when crucified in the manner heretofore described, the body will sway forward, curving away from the cross like an archer’s bow. In this position, breathing is severely restricted, and death by suffocation comes very quickly. Early on, the Romans discovered this impediment to making the spectacle last a satisfyingly long time, and they devised a solution. At first, they attached to the stipes a sedile (seat) on which part of the victim’s weight could rest for relief. Because the sedile alone was insufficient to keep the body from sliding forward, the victim was tied to the stipes with a rope around his waist or hips. Over time, the sedile evolved into the cornu (horn, as of an animal). The cornu (which appears in 1 the Puteoli graffito, to the right of the stipes and about ∕3 of the way up from the bottom) was installed into a hole in the stipes, with its sharpened outer end pointed upward, and the victim was impaled on it such that he could not raise his body far enough to lift himself free. Not only did the cornu simplify the process of crucifying the victim, but it also caused agonizing pain, providing the spectators with additional entertainment. We do not know whether Jesus was crucified with a sedile and a rope or with a cornu; but in the case of the Alexamenos graffito, there is a horizontal line across the buttocks area that suggests the former.15

The Loincloth

Traditional depictions of the crucifixion show Jesus wearing a loincloth, but this is a concession to modesty. Ancient writers describing the process of crucifixion are unanimous in saying that the victim was stripped naked. All four Gospels are perfectly clear in saying that after Jesus was fastened to the cross, the soldiers took his clothes and divided them up amongst themselves. The Gospel of John also mentions his seamless garment, for which the soldiers threw dice.16 That garment, the ordinary wear of the average man in that time and place, was a χιτῶν (chitōn), a tunic that went down just past the wearer’s knees. The bottom was folded up and secured by a ζώνη (zṓnā, a belt or waistband) to create a “pocket” in which the wearer could carry money and small personal items. Jesus would also have had sandals, a cloak or wrap, and a loincloth, and possibly a handkerchief. He would not have owned a long robe like the ones that we are used to seeing in paintings; only the wealthy wore long robes.

Neither the leather “loincloth” that John the Baptist wore (Matthew 3:4, Mark 1:6) nor the “loincloth” that Philip the evangelist took from Paul (Acts 21:11) was a loincloth as we know the term. The word used in all three instances is ζώνη, as described in the preceding paragraph, and “loincloth” is a mistranslation. Some sources around the Internet suggest that Pilate might have instructed his men to leave Jesus’ loincloth in deference to the Jews, to whom nakedness was shameful and sinful, but the only “loincloth” mentioned in the New Testament was not a loincloth at all. There is no mention of Jesus’ real loincloth, which would have been a piece of linen or cotton fabric, called a περιζώμα (perízōma, a girdle), which was worn much like a diaper: shaped like a triangle, wrapped around the waist, and tied in front, with the third corner brought forward between the legs from the back and tucked upward behind the tied ends, with the loose end hanging down. The zṓnā also secured the perízōma. The soldiers would not have left the perízōma with Jesus because crucifixion was deliberately designed to make a spectacle of a humiliating, dehumanizing punishment, and stripping the victim naked was part of it.

The final humiliation endured by a victim of crucifixion provided further reason for stripping the crucified naked. It arose, quite literally, as a result of the slow suffocation that was the ultimate cause of death: as death approached, the victim’s blood pressure fell, resulting in an erection of the penis and, finally, ejaculation. In addition to the two graffiti illustrated earlier, there exist two gems that depict crucifixion and might have been created by people who had first-hand knowledge of the process. One of these gems, which has been dated to the late second or early third century CE, identifies the crucified as IHCOY XPICTE (Jesus Christ) and shows the suggestion of an erect penis.

British Museum, object 1986,0501.1. Jasper, 25 mm × 30 mm × 6 mm. Edges chipped.

Like the two graffiti illustrated earlier, this gem shows a Tau cross; and like the Puteoli graffito, it portrays the victim with his legs widely spread as though by . The other gem, created somewhat later, shows the crucified victim with legs spread and accompanied by two kneeling onlookers—but no cross, as if the artist considered the cross itself too obscene to portray.

The Titulus

Titulus is the Latin word for a small placard that was customarily made to describe the condemned person’s . It was carried aloft at the head of the procession to the place of execution, where it would then be hung around the neck of the condemned or nailed to the cross over his head. The Gospels tell us that Jesus’ titulus was nailed to his cross. The four accounts disagree on the exact wording of the charge against him, but the Gospel of John (John 19:19-20) says that the inscription read “Jesus the Nazarene the king of the Jews” and was written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek.

The Gospel of John refers specifically to Hebrew (Ἑβραϊστί), not “the language of the Hebrews” or any other euphemism. The consensus among many modern commentators, however, is that because Aramaic, not Hebrew, was the lingua franca of the western Levant in the first century CE, it is more likely that the “Hebrew” of which John wrote was actually Aramaic, which—like Hebrew—reads from right to left. Because Aramaic was most frequently written in Hebrew characters at that time, the writing on Jesus’ titulus, therefore, would probably have appeared as follows:17

ישוע נצריא מלכא דיהודיא IESVS·NAZARENVS·REX·IVDÆORVM ἸΗCΟΥ͂C·Ὁ·ΝΑΖΩΡΑΙ͂ΟC·Ὁ·ΒΑCΙΛΕῪC·ΤΩ͂Ν·ἸΟΥΔΑΊΩΝ

The use of three languages for the titulus emphasizes the polyglot nature of the society in which Jesus moved; Pilate clearly wanted as many people as possible to see, read, and understand the words. Because writing materials were very expensive, the ancient Greeks and Romans used no spacing between words in their day-to-day writing, a form known as scriptio continua (continuous writing). In their public inscriptions, however, the Romans often separated words using mid-dots as shown above. It is not known whether Pilate’s inscription used scriptio continua or mid-dots; but for clarity, I have chosen to include mid-dots in both the Greek and the Latin. The four-letter text, I·N·R·I or INRI, shown on the titulus in the first and third, respectively, of the images at the top of this article, is taken from the first letters of the four Latin words. The text in the second image includes abbreviations in common use during the Middle Ages but unknown in Jesus’ time.

The traditional belief that Jesus was crucified on a Latin cross might come from the fact that the titulus was placed above his head, coupled with the fact that after crucifixion was banned by the emperor Constantine in the 4th century CE, people gradually forgot what it looked like. Many traditional depictions show the arms outstretched nearly straight and the head overlying the patibulum. (See the two paintings at the top of this article.) Given the position of the head in most such depictions, it would be necessary to extend the cross upward to provide a place for the titulus, and that requirement would speak to a Latin cross. But experiments by Barbet and others show that when a man is crucified, his body hangs from his wrists, and the arms are pulled to an angle over his head that can range from 30° to 45°. When this happens, the head sinks below the bottom edge of the patibulum, leaving more than enough room to nail the titulus in place.

The Conclusion

In the end, we are left with a relatively clear picture of what Jesus’ crucifixion must have looked like, and it is not even a remotely pleasant one; quite to the contrary, it is a form of execution that we today find appallingly barbarous and cruel. Representations of crucifixion created after the practice was outlawed in the Roman Empire by Constantine in 337 became less realistic and more idealized as memory of the process faded and religion took over. It is only within the last century or so that science, history, and art have collaborated to produce depictions that more closely resemble reality, and that process is still continuing. The best modern representation of crucifixion that I have seen was shown in the 2016 motion picture Risen, about a man who is set by the authorities to investigate the rumor that Jesus was raised from the dead. Here is an image from the film showing one of the robbers crucified in the middle of the picture while the cross of Jesus, the only one with a titulus, is toward the left. Note that there is no rope around either man’s waist and that in a concession to modern modesty, the crucified are wearing loincloths. Close examination of other frames from the film shows that there are also no sedilia or cornua and that the washers are metal disks instead of wood.

From the motion picture Risen (2016).

Latin Pronunciation Guide

The pronunciations in this guide are those of classical Latin, as it was spoken in the time of Jesus, using the following English-based sound patterns: ah sounds as in fall ee sounds as in meet eh sounds as in pet g sounds as in go ide sounds as in ride ite sounds as in write oh sounds as in go oo sounds as in boot ss sounds as in less

CAPITALS show syllables with emphasis. An apostrophe indicates a glottal stop between two otherwise identical syllables. cardo femina. CARD-oh FEHM-een-ah. cardo masculus. CARD-oh MAHS-cool-ooss. cornu, plural cornua. CORN-oo, CORN-oo-ah. crux. croox. culleus, genitive cullei. COOL-eh-ooss, COOL-eh-ee. flagellatio. flag-ell-AHT-ee-oh. flagrum. FLAHG-room. lorarius, plural lorarii. lore-AHR-ee-ooss, lore-AHR-ee’ee. paedagogium. pide-ah-GOHG-ee-oom patibulum, plural patibula. paht-EEB-ool-oom, paht-EEB-ool-ah. poena. POH-ehn-ah. praetorium. prite-OR-ee-oom. scriptio continua. SCREEP-tee-oh kont-EEN-oo-ah. sedile, plural sedilia. SED-eel-eh SED-eel-ee-ah. stipes, plural stipites. STEEP-ehss, STEEP-eet-ehss. tali. TAHL-ee. titulus. TEET-ool-ooss.

Notes:

1. Roman citizenship was not automatic. Only free males could be citizens, and a freedman could become a citizen only through an explicit act of the Roman senate.

2. Under Roman law, the punishment imposed on a parricide was poena cullei, the “penalty of the sack,” which consisted of the malefactor’s being beaten bloody with wooden rods and then sewn up in a leather sack with an assortment of live animals and thrown into a river. Over time, the animal types varied; the final form, adopted under the emperor , comprised a dog, a viper, a monkey, and a chicken or rooster. (Hadrian also made poena cullei optional; the alternative was to be thrown to the beasts in the arena.)

3. The execution by strangulation in 63 BCE of the principal members of the Second Catilinarian Conspiracy, ordered by consuls Marcus Tullius and Gaius Antonius Hybrida, was extrajudicial and illegal.

4. This was the palace built by Herod the Great, who ruled from 37 BCE until his death in 4 BCE. It was located on the western hill of the city. Modern excavation and scholarship have shown that the praetorium was not at the Fortress Antonia, where it was thought for many centuries to have been.

5. Plutarch. De sera numinis vindicta, 554a: Gregorius N. Bernardakis, Ed., www.perseus.org. This sentence is frequently translated something like “Each criminal who goes to execution must carry his own cross on his back,” but the italicized addition is not necessary, as the cross was used for no purpose other than execution.

6. The Gospels of Luke and John state explicitly that Pilate had tried to release Jesus by saying that he found no fault in him. (Luke 23:4 and John 18:38) 7. The Shroud of Turin is not the shroud of Jesus. It is almost certainly the shroud of Jacques deMolay, Grand Master of the Knights Templar, who was executed on October 13, 1307, in a copycat crucifixion. Carbon dating of the linen of the shroud proves that the cloth is no more than 750 years old. The artifact is scientifically valuable, however, for certain medical evidence it contains.

8. Cyrene was a city in what is now northeastern Libya. It was abandoned after two devastating earthquakes, one in 262 and another in 365, and its ruins lie near the present-day town of Shahhat.

9. According to tradition, Jesus stumbled and fell three times on the way to Golgotha before the soldiers pulled Simon of Cyrene from the crowd. The Synoptic Gospels, however, are silent on this matter, and the Gospel of John makes no mention of anyone other than Jesus carrying the patibulum. For this reason, I do not bring up any falls in the text.

10. In the New Testament, the Greek word that is translated as “hand” is χείρ (cheir), and it means the hand and arm.

11. Barbet, Pierre, M.D., Doctor at Calvary, A (translation of La Passion de N.–S. Jésus-Christ selon le Chirurgeon, 1950), New York: Kennedy & Sons, 1953.

12. The length of time required for the described behavior to appear would depend on factors such as the exact location of the spike between the carpal bones, the exact path of the median nerve through the carpal tunnel, how much the victim struggled, etc.

13. The necks of fossils such as dinosaurs and other ancient animals are frequently found with the head thrown far backward rather than in its normal position. As the animal died, its head was pulled backward by the extensor muscles of the neck. Those muscles, since they were developed to fight gravity, were stronger than the flexor muscles, which relied on the assistance of gravity, and they responded to the last uncontrolled triggering of the animal’s nerves by pulling the head backward. In the hand of a crucifixion victim, this situation is reversed. The flexor muscles are more powerful than the extensors, and the fingers controlled by the ulnar nerve flex accordingly.

14. Lucius Cassius Dio Cocceianus, Historiae Romanae, Earnest Cary, Herbert Baldwin Foster, & William Heinemann, Ed., London & New York: Harvard University Press, 1914. Translation © William Thayer.

15. Some of the modern drawings that have been made to clarify the Alexamenos graffito omit the horizontal line across the buttock area, a critical omission that would revise the method of crucifixion to suggest that a cornu was used.

16. The word used in the Greek is λάχωμεν (láchōmen) which is commonly translated as “Let us cast lots.” It is a form of the verb λαγχάνω(lagchánó, which means to cast lots or to obtain one’s portion. To a Latin-speaking Roman soldier in the time of Jesus, that would almost certainly have been “TALOS IACIAMVS,” meaning “Let’s throw the tali.” Dice of the type favored by soldiers, the tali, were made from the knucklebones of animals and were marked on four sides but not on the ends.

17. The Aramaic version is from the Peshitta, the standard version of the for churches in the Syriac tradition. (If the “Hebrew” of which John wrote was actually Hebrew rather than Aramaic, it The Latin version is the author’s (ישוע הנצרי ומלך היהודים :would have appeared like this translation. The Greek version is from the Berean Interlinear Bible, © 2016, 2018 by Bible Hub; Used by Permission; All Rights Reserved Worldwide.