Fin des Voies Rapides (If Peak Oil Were no Object)

The Romans NEVER CRUCIFIED the Way We Think They Did! 6

2011-10-25T23:22:00.000-07:00

Part 5 - The First Crucifix.
Part 4 - The Tropaeum and the Furca.
Part 3 - Crux - Modern English Use and Ancient Quotidian Meanings.
Part 2 - Crux.
Part 1.

Part 6 - From Wax Image to Exposed Body.

A. Introduction.

Between Friday March 17, 44 BCE and the time Cassius Dio (155 or 163/164 to after 229 CE) wrote his Roman History people got the idea that Mark Anthony actually exposed the very body of Julius Caesar to public view.

And Antony aroused them [the people] still more by bringing the body most inconsiderately into the Forum, exposing it all covered with blood as it was and with gaping wounds, and then delivering over it a speech, which was very ornate and brilliant, to be sure, but out of place on that occasion.

Cassius Dio, Roman History 44.35.4

In my opinion, derived from the Alexamenos Graffito and the Orpheos Bakkikos pendant (now lost) it also influenced at least three religions, the chief of which is Christianity. The likely others, now extinct, were the Egyptian Gnostic sect of Typhon-Seth [i], an Iranian cult whose deity was a horse-headed god [ii], and the mystery cult of Bacchus - Dionysius.

The change in thinking happened probably due to the fact that Julius Caesar and his opponents were known to have been involved in crucifying others and also due to the fact that Caligula was assasinated in a theatre during the production of Catullus' Laureolus, a play that featured a crucifixion that was utterly fake.

B. Julius Caesar's Crucifixions (of Other People).

B.1. Ceasar and the Pirates.

Classical scholars and Christian apologists are all quite familiar with Julius Caesar's crucifixions of the pirates on an island off the coast of Asia Province (west coast of Turkey) near Pergamos. Let's see what the historians who record the episode have to say about this.

Plutarch (46 to 120 CE):

[1] To begin with, then, when the pirates demanded twenty talents for his ransom, he laughed at them for not knowing who their captive was, and of his own accord agreed to give them fifty. [2] In the next place, after he had sent various followers to various cities to procure the money and was left with one friend and two attendants among Cilicians, most murderous of men, he held them in such disdain that whenever he lay down to sleep he would send and order them to stop talking. [3] For eight and thirty days, as if the men were not his watchers, but his royal body-guard, he shared in their sports and exercises with great unconcern. [4] He also wrote poems and sundry speeches which he read aloud to them, and those who did not admire these he would call to their faces illiterate Barbarians, and often laughingly threatened to hang them all. The pirates were delighted at this, and attributed his boldness of speech to a certain simplicity and boyish mirth.

[5] But after his ransom had come from Miletus and he had paid it and was set free, he immediately manned vessels and put to sea from the harbour of Miletus against the robbers. He caught them, too, still lying at anchor off the island, and got most of them into his power. [6] Their money he made his booty, but the men themselves he lodged in the prison at Pergamum, and then went in person to Junius, the governor of Asia, on the ground that it belonged to him, as praetor of the province, to punish the captives. [7] But since the praetor cast longing eyes on their money, which was no small sum, and kept saying that he would consider the case of the captives at his leisure, Caesar left him to his own devices, went to Pergamum, took the robbers out of prison, and crucified them all, just as he had often warned them on the island that he would do, when they thought he was joking.

Plutarch, The Life of Julius Caesar 2.1-7 [1]

Plutarch uses the following Greek verbs for Caesar's promises to hang the pirates and how he carried the threats out. First, κρεμᾶν means (future infinitive active) "to hang , to hang up, to suspend." Any method will do, including crucifixion or impalement (Herodotus, Histories 3.125.3 & 4; Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, 16.35.6 & 16.94.4). Second, ἀνεσταύρωσεν (3rd person singular aortive indicative active of ἀνασταυρόω) means "he crucified," but also "he impaled." This same exact verb is utilized by Cassius Dio (Roman History, 24.8 & 75.7) to describe the Roman Emperor Alexander Severus (ruled 222 - 235 CE) fixing the heads of Niger and Albinus on poles.

Suetonius (69/75 – after 130 CE):

For he had instantly dispatched his other servants and the frends who accompanied him, to raise money for his ransom. Fifty Talents having been paid down, he was landed on the coast, when, having collected some ships, he lost no time in putting out to sea in pursuit of the pirates, and having captured them, inflicted upon the the Punishment which he had often threatened in jest.

Suetonius, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Julius Caesar 4.2 [2]

Now here, Suetonius simply states that he inflicted the Punishment (supplicio adficeret), which Martin Hengel has demonstrated was the punishment for slaves. [iii] This, of course, was crucifixion or direct impalement (Seneca, Dialogue 6 (De Consolatione) 20.3)

Even in avenging wrongs he was by nature most merciful, and when he got hold of the pirates who had captured him, he had them crucified, since he had sworn beforehand that he would do so, but ordered that their throats be cut first.

Suetonius, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Julius Caesar 74.1 [3]

Suetonius here uses suffixurum (verb-participle plural perfect passive masculine genitive) and suffigi (present passive infinitive) mean respectively "of being suffixed" and "to be suffixed" where suffigere means "to fix or fasten beneath," which could mean "to crucify" but definitely "to impale." Indeed, he the verb to describe the head of Emperor Galba being carried around a legion's camp stuck on a pike: "ille lixis colonibusque donauit, qui hasta suffixum non sine ludibrio circum castra portarunt (he handed it [Galba's severed head] over to his servants and camp-followers, who fixed it on a spear and paraded it round-about the camp with mockery)," The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Galba 20.3.

And of course, crux can also mean "impaling stake," e.g., acuta crux or punica crux. It could be a simple stake or, as we have seen, a riding thorn outrigged to a gallows.

Valerius Maximus (1st Century CE):

Also, Caius Julius Caesar, whose virtues provided him with an entry into Heaven, during the beginnings of his early youth while travelling to Asia as a private citizen, [was abducted and held captive] by seafaring pirates around the Isle of Pharmacuse, except one redeemed him with 50 Talents. So, then! With an unimportant sum he wishes perchance the most brilliant Star of the World to be brought back in a pirate boat. What is it, then, that I might complain about it any longer if he spared not the fellow-partakers [lit.: consorts] of his own divinity? But in fact the heavenly divinity vindicated himself in an unjust manner: indeed the captured robbers he crucified!

Valerius Maximus, Factorum et Dictorum Memorabilium 6.9.15 [4]

Now here the term for crucified is "crucibus adfixit." Its traditional meaning, of course, is "he fastened [them] to crosses" but its alternative meaning could mean "he impaled [them] on stakes." The latter meaning is clear in Memorabilium 6.9.ext.5 "Orontes Darii regis praefectus in excelissimo Mycalensis montis uertice cruci adfixit (Orontes, Prefect of Darius the King, impaled Polycrates in the highest peak of the Mycalenian Mountains)"[iv] and 9.2.3 "Carbonisque Aruinae truncum corpius patibulo adfixum gestatum est (And the dismembered body of Carbo Arvina was carried about, spitted on a carrying-pole)."[v]

So it is evident that Julius Caesar was associated with crucifixion early on... but was it mere crucifixion, or the full-blown variety with a riding thorn? (Only the latter is positively supported by the epigraphy without scholars making assumptions.) Or was it simple impalement? For us'ns, the verbiage is usually far too laconic, but for the ancients, they knew exactly what was going on. Because we moderns think they are two or three entirely different things but to the people back then they were one in the same (Seneca, Dialogue 6 (De Consolatione) 20.3).

And indeed, later writers like Valleius Paterculus (who wrote 395 CE) and Xylander (1532-1576 CE) describe Caesar's execution of the pirates. On the one hand they would just have meant mere crucifixion, since the knowledge of the Roman practice had by then died out, but then again, they could have figured out the meaning of the veribage. V. Paterculus (The Roman History 42.3) wrote that Caesar returned with maximum speed and "crucified them" (suffixit cruci), which, as we have seen before, could have meant impaled; Xylander stated in his work that "having wrought in the midst of the World as he had predicted: the pirates he led to the cross" (in crucem egit), which, the literal meaning is to force on to the actual instrument of execution itself: i.e., to force onto the cross (for fastening), or to thrust onto the stake, that is, impale.

And if we apply Ockham's Razor to all this, knowing that Caesar had captured the pirates by surprise, he would have executed them in haste as well. And knowing from Suetonius that he slit their throats first, the likely method of crucifixion here was impalement.

B.2. African War.

Julius Caesar doesn't crucifiy any one here as far as we know, but due to reinforcements led by him, some Numidian fugitives are lifted up in order to be put down the next day.

Caesar, being informed of the ambuscade of the Labienus by deserters, delayed there a few days, till the enemy, by repeating their practice often, had abated a little of their circumspection. Then suddenly, one morning ordering eight veteran legions with part of the cavalry to follow him by the Decuman Gate, he sent forward the rest of the cavalry; who suddenly was coming upon the enemy's light-armed foot, that lay in ambush along the valleys, slew about five hundred, and put the rest to flight. Meanwhile Labienus advanced, with all his cavalry, to support the fugitives, and was on the point of overpowering our small party with his numbers, when suddenly Caesar appeared with the legions, in order of battle. The day after, Juba ordered all the Numidians who had deserted their post and fled to their camp to be crucified.

Julius Caesar, Commentary on the African War 66 [5]

Here the Latin for crucified is in cruce suffixit. Traditionally thought of as "nailing up to a cross (tropaeum)" but it could just as easily refer to nailing up to and impaling on a Priapean version of a cross, or simply impaling on a stake. Application of Ockham's Razor here would lead the reader to rightly conclude that the deserters were simply impaled, unless the numbers were few (which we cannot figure out from the material). And again, what kind of crucifixion?

B.3. Hispanic War.

Here three slaves have been recorded to have lost their lives.

Pompey, being informed by some deserters that the town had surrendered, removed his camp toward Ucubis, where he began to build redoubts, and secure himself with lines. Caesar also decamped and drew near him. At the same time a Spanish legionary soldier deserting to our camp, informed us that Pompey had assembled the people of Ucubis, and given them instructions to inquire diligently who favored his party, who that of the enemy. Some time after in the town which was taken, the slave, who, as we have related above, had murdered his master, was apprehended in a mine and burned alive. About the same time eight Spanish centurions came over to Caesar, and in a skirmish between our cavalry and that of the enemy, we were repulsed, and some of our light-armed foot wounded. The same night we took of the enemy's spies, three slaves and one Spanish soldier. The slaves were crucified, and the soldier was beheaded.

Julius Caesar, Commentary on the Hispanic War, 20 [6]

The Latin for the last sentence is tersely, "Servi sunt in crucem sublati, militi cervices abscisae." Meaning, the slaves were "hoisted up into the assembly of a gallows" or "pushed / borne up onto a stake and impaled thereon." Nota bene: crucem is the accusative of crux, and when the preposition in is used with an accusative, it indicates motion towards an object and entry into or contact with it. Since only three slaves were put to death in this manner, I am holding the opinion that it is the full-blown Priapean variety described above.

C. A Threat to Caesar from Pompey's Faction - and their Final Success!

Indeed, during the first civil war, Julius Caesar perceived himself to be under the threat of crucifixion, or at the least, torture. He expressed exactly that in a speech before Pharsalus:

Today either the reward or the penalty of war is before
us. picture to yourself the crosses and chains in store for Caesar, my
head stuck upon the rostrum and my bones unburied.

Lucan, The Civil War (Pharsalia) 7.303-5 [7]

Now here the latin for "crosses" is cruces, accusative plural of crux. it could mean crosses, crucifixions, direct impalements, or simply tortures, or a combination thereof, for a person can only be put to death once by crucifixion or by single or simultaneous multiple direct impalement. My opinion? It means tortures, followed by beheading and (possibly) post-mortem crucifixion or impalement of the corpse.

Indeed, the Pompeiian threat never went away, for even after the Senate had bestowed many honors upon Caesar, including those of dictator, pontifex maximus, and (to be bestowed post-mortem) of a divus, what did the Pompey loyalists do? They assasinated Julius Caesar in Pompey's Curia, in the portico section that was used as temporary quarters for the Senate, with twenty-three stab woulnds in what must have been felt like torture. It was Cassius Longinus who dealt the fatal blow, and Caesar fell backwards with his arms out toward his side at the base of a statue of Pompey himself.

And when, and even before, Mark Anthony displayed the wax image on the tropaeum?

The people could endure it no longer. It seemed to them monstrous that all
the murderers who, with the single exception of Decimus Brutus, had been made
prisoners while belonging to the faction of Pompeius...

Appian, The Civil Wars 2.20.146 [8]

Indeed, the killer who struck the fatal blow, Cassius Longinus, had previously in 53-52 BCE subjugated Judea by force after Crassus' defeat at the hands of the Parthian Empire. In quelling a rebellion there, he captured 30,000 Jews including a certain Pitholaus who had defected and led the Jewish rebellion after Aristobulus passed on and had Pitholaus executed on the advice of Aristobulus' son, Antipater, whom Cassius held in high regard (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 14.7.3, Jewish War 1.9). There is little doubt that the mode of this execution was crucifixion or impalement because it was Aristobulus' father, Alexander Jannaeus, who had done the same to 800 Pharisees in the middle of the City of Jerusalem and earned the bon mot of "Thracian." [vi] [vii]

And nine years after he crucified in Judea, Cassius Longinus has killed again! To all the Romans attending the funeral, including not a few Jewish people, the exposition of the tortured body in imagino must have struck the assassins' deed as tantamount to a crucifixion!

D. Mark Anthony's Execution of Antigonus.

Mark Anthony, the one who displayed the wax image of Julus Caesar's slain body on a cruciform tropaeum, went on to slay a beloved ruler himself.

During the Civil War that was to follow in the wake of Julius Caesar's assasination, Antigonus, the last of the Jewish Hasmonean Kings, met his demise on the orders of Mark Anthony, to allay the fears of Herod, who would become Kind Herod the Great, because he, Herod, was a very unpopular private citizen of Arab-Idumean stock whereas Antigonus was a well-loved monarch of royal blood. The method of execution was by beheading with an axe (Cassius Dio, Roman History 49.22.4-6; Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 14.16.4 [487-91], 15.5-10; Jewish War 1.18.3 [354-7]; Plutarch, Anthony 36.2). All agree that it was a most dishonorable death for a king and Mark Anthony gained quite a bit of notoriety from that; Cassius Dio was the only one who noted what went on before he was beheaded:

These people (the Jews of Judea) Anthony entrusted to a certain Herod to govern;
but Antigonus he bound to a cross and scourged, -- a punishment no other king
had suffered at the hands of the Romans -- and afterwards slew him.

Cassius Dio, Roman History 49.22.4-6 [9]

It should be noted that the word for "to a cross" here is σταυρῷ which also means "to a post" and the word for "flogged" is ἐμαστίγωσε, which is commonly translated in the New Testament as "scourged," i.e., "torn up by blows." It appears to be related to μαστιχάω (mastikhaō, “I grind the teeth”) from which the word "masticate" (to chew) is derived.

It is possible that the death of the last of the Hasmoneans at the hand of Mark Anthony might have had a hand in transmorphing the exhibitied wax image of the cruciatus, Julius Caesar, and his hidden body into an exposed cruciarius himself! [viii]

E. Threats against Octavian Caesar (Augustus).

Now before Caesar's nephew and adopted son, Octavian, would be able to rise to the throne, he basically has to fight a multiple-way civil war with Decimus Brutus, Marcus Lepidus, Mark Anthony, and the Pompey partisan / nobleman faction. He had first aligned himself with the latter alliance but when he discovered that they were making threats against him and found out that Anthony and lepidus had formed an alliance themselves, he defected to to Lepidus and Anthony's side.

But when he had learned that Anthony after his flight had found a protector in Marcus Lepidus, and that the rest of the leaders and armies were coming to terms
with them, he abandoned the cause of the nobles without hesitation, alleging as
a pretext for his change of allegiance the words and acts of a certain of their
number, asserting that some had called him a boy, while others had openly said
that he ought to be honoured and gotten rid of, to escape the necessity of
making suitable recompense to him or his veterans.

Suetonius, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Augustus 12 (beg.) [10]

And it turns out that faction wasn't kidding! Even in the late 4th Century CE Valerus Paterculus was able to get the dirt on them and in fact it was Cicero who said that Octavian should be tollendum "lifted up," whereby he said it in one sense and meant it in another! Vicious!!

It was at the time that Cicero with his deep-seated attachment to the
Pompeian party, expressed the opinion, which said one thing and meant another,
to the effect that Caesar "should be commended and then -- elevated." [ix]

Velleius Paterculus Roman History 2.62.6 [11]

And indeed, decimus Brutus says this in his own letter to Cicero about the 25th of May (9th before the Calends of June) 42 BCE (Cicero, Ad familiares 11.20.1) in which he wrote :

"Octavian himself has no reasonable complaint about you, except a speech in
which it was said you were to have called him an adolescent about to be
extolled, decorated, and "lifted up," to be allying with him so that it may not
be possible for him to be "lifted up."

Cicero, Ad Familiares 11.20.1 [12]

Vicious and a right hypocrite! To be "lifted up" means both to be "extolled" and also to be "lifted up [to be crucified or impaled]." Because about 30 years or so before, he wrote a long winded speech in five volumes against the Proconsul of Sicily, Gaius Verres whose atrocities and shameful acts included, among other things, a full-blown crucifixion of a Roman Citizen upon what I take to be a unitary cruciform gallows and impaling stake structure mentioned as such twice: cruciatus et crux - (In Verres 2.5.14), and illum cruciatum et crucem (In Verres 2.5.170).

F. Gaius "Caligula" Caesar's Assassination.

Suetonius (69/75 to after 130 CE) reports Caligula was assasinated just after he was conversing with some young actors of noble birth rehearsing their lines backstage, just before the performance of a play.

[1] On the ninth day before the Kalends of February at about the seventh hour he hesitated whether or not to get up for luncheon, since his stomach was still disordered from excess of food on the day before, but at length he came out at the persuasion of his friends. In the covered passage through which he had to pass, some boys of good birth, who had been summoned from Asia to appear on the stage, were rehearsing their parts, and he stopped to watch and to encourage them; and had not the leader of the troop complained that he had a chill, he would have returned and had the performance given at once. [2] From this point there are two versions of the story: some say that as he was talking with the boys, Chaerea [Cassius] came up behind, and gave him a deep cut in the neck, having first cried, "Take that," and that then the tribune Cornelius Sabinus, who was the other conspirator and faced Gaius, stabbed him in the breast. Others say that Sabinus, after getting rid of the crowd through centurions who were in the plot, asked for the watchword, as soldiers do, and that when Gaius gave him "Jupiter," he cried "So be it," and as Gaius looked around, he split his jawbone with a blow of his sword. [3] As he lay upon the ground and with
writhing limbs called out that he still lived, the others dispatched him with thirty wounds; for the general signal was "Strike again." Some even thrust their swords through his privates. At the beginning of the disturbance his bearers ran to his aid with their poles, and presently the Germans of his body-guard, and they slew several of his assassins, as well as some inoffensive senators.

Suetonius, The Lives of The Twelve Caesars, Caligula 58.1-3 [13]

Josephus (37-101 CE) reports in his Antiquities that Caligula was assasinated during a performance of Laureolus, which he calls Cinyras, that was a play named after a nortorious highwayman, written by the First-Century CE playwright, Catullus, namesake of the First-Century BCE poet and sworn enemy of Julius Caesar, Catullus. This was one of several plays that dealt with the death of tyrants.

And here he perceived two prodigies that happened there; for an actor was introduced, by whom a leader of robbers was crucified, and the pantomine
brought in a play called Cinyras, wherein he himself was to be slain, as well as his daughter Myrrha, and wherein a great deal of fictitious blood was shed, both around him who was crucified and also about Cinyras.

Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 19.1.13 [94] [14]

Now herein Josephus tels us that (1) a leader of robbers was crucified, (σταυροῦται) 3rd sg pres ind middle-passive of σταυρόω, which means "fence with pales, impalisade, drive piles" The LSJ reports that it is in the New Testament does it mean "crucify;" the Middle Liddell adds as a reference Polybius (Histories 1.86) wherein the historian records that Spendius was crucified by Hamilcar. Which brings us back to one of the original definitions of this Greek verb, "to drive piles," meaning, "to impale," which leads us to (2) there was a great deal of blood shed around the one crucified (τόν σταυρωθέντα), meaning poured out (ἐκκεχυμένον) around the main pole of whatever he was hanging on. In this case, a fake version of a simple impaling stake would be the better candidate, assuming that the crucified/impaled was supposed to shed his blood. But perhaps it wasn't a simple stake, epigraphy from Pompeii and Pozzuoli indicates it could have been a cruciform gallows equipped with a fake sedile instead.

Continuing with the subject of the assasination, Caligula had realised that this was the day that Pausanius had slain Philip, King of Macedonia. [x] Josephus describes the assasination in a different place, and Caligula coming out of the theatre for the last time at the ninth hour, but in the end he is assasinated and with immense bloodshed. And Cherea cassius was the guilty party. [xi] [xii]

Suetonius tells us in his work, the previous paragraph filled with bad omens for Caligula, that during an audition or rehearsal for Laureolus, several understudies for the part of the lead actor had demonstrated their ability to regurgitate artificial blood. This was one of the omens.

[T]he pantomimic actor Mnester danced a tragedy which the tragedian Neoptolemus
had acted years before during the games at which Philip king of the Macedonians
was assassinated. In a farce called "Laureolus," in which the chief actor falls
as he is making his escape and vomits blood, several understudies so vied with
one another in giving evidence of their proficiency that the stage swam in blood.

Suetonius, The Lives of The Twelve Caesars, Caligula 57.4 [15]

Juvenal attended a performance of this play and wished the actor was indeed crucifed or impaled.

And Lentulus acts hanging with such art,
Were I a judge, he should not feign the part.

Juvenal, Satires 8.187-188 [16]

A more accurate but less poetic translation would be: "Now, too, the fleet Lentulus agreeably played the part of Laureolus; as a judge I deem him worthy of a true crux." [xiii]

At a later performance in the new Flavian Ampitheatre (Roman Colosseum), Martial (38/41 to 102/109 CE) witnessed an actual criminal being put to death, playing the part of Laureolus:

Laureolus, suspended on no feigned crux, offered up his defenceless entrails to
a Caledonian bear. His mangled limbs quivered, every part dripping with gore and
in his whole body no shape to be [f]ound.

Martial, Liber Spectaculorum 7 [17]

Indeed, a bear would most certainly be lethal to a naked and defenceless human being! For a single bear paw is close to the size of a human head. Presently, the Eurasian Brown Bear has a mass of 680 lbs. (mean avg) / 583 lbs (avg min) / 780 lbs (avg max) / 1058 lbs (Guiness Book World Record) for males and 330-550 lbs for females. It would exert a lot of downward and outward force on a crucified person! If on a cruciform gallows sans acuta crux (sedile), the nails probably would let go and the condemned would fall flat on his face; on a regular impaling stake the condemned would quickly be killed. In all likelihood, the criminal was crucified on a gallows with an acuta crux attached and outrigged to it.

G. Original Greek / Latin Sources.

[1] Plutarch, Caesar 2.1-4 (note: different verse numbering system)

[1] πρῶτον μὲν οὖν αἰτηθεὶς ὑπ᾽ αὐτῶν λύτρα εἴκοσι τάλαντα κατεγέλασεν ὡς οὐκ εἰδότων ὃν ᾑρήκοιεν, αὐτὸς δὲ ὡμολόγησε πεντήκοντα δώσειν ἔπειτα τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν ἄλλον εἰς ἄλλην διαπέμψας πόλιν ἐπὶ τὸν τῶν χρημάτων πορισμόν, ἐν ἀνθρώποις φονικωτάτοις Κίλιξι μεθ᾽ ἑνὸς φίλου καὶ δυοῖν ἀκολούθοιν ἀπολελειμμένος οὕτω καταφρονητικῶς εἶχεν ὥστε πέμπων ὁσάκις ἀναπαύοιτο προσέταττεν αὐτοῖς σιωπᾶν. [2] ἡμέραις δὲ τεσσαράκοντα δυεῖν δεούσαις, ὥσπερ οὐ φρουρούμενος, ἀλλὰ δορυφορούμενος ὑπ᾽ αὐτῶν, ἐπὶ πολλῆς ἀδείας συνέπαιζε καὶ συνεγυμνάζετο. καὶ ποιήματα γράφων καὶ λόγους τινὰς ἀκροαταῖς ἐκείνοις ἐχρῆτο, καὶ τοὺς μὴ θαυμάζοντας ἄντικρυς ἀπαιδεύτους καὶ βαρβάρους ἀπεκάλει, καὶ σὺν γέλωτι πολλάκις ἠπείλησε κρεμᾶν αὐτούς: [3] οἱ δὲ ἔχαιρον, ἀφελείᾳ τινὶ καὶ παιδιᾷ τὴν παρρησίαν ταύτην νέμοντες. ὡς δὲ ἧκον ἐκ Μιλήτου τὰ λύτρα καὶ δοὺς ἀφείθη, πλοῖα πληρώσας εὐθὺς ἐκ τοῦ Μιλησίων λιμένος ἐπὶ τοὺς λῃστὰς ἀνήγετο καὶ καταλαβὼν ἔτι πρὸς τῇ νήσῳ ναυλοχοῦντας ἐκράτησε τῶν πλείστων, καὶ τὰ μὲν χρήματα λείαν ἐποιήσατο, τοὺς δὲ ἄνδρας ἐν Περγάμῳ καταθέμενος εἰς τὸ δεσμωτήριον αὐτὸς ἐπορεύθη πρὸς τὸν διέποντα τὴν Ἀσίαν Ἰούνιον, 1 ὡς ἐκείνῳ προσῆκον ὄντι στρατηγῷ κολάσαι τοὺς ἑαλωκότας. [4] ἐκείνου δὲ καὶ τοῖς χρήμασιν ἐποφθαλμιῶντος ῾ἦν γὰρ οὐκ ὀλίγα καὶ περὶ τῶν αἰχμαλώτων σκέψεσθαι φάσκοντος ἐπὶ σχολῆς, χαίρειν ἐάσας αὐτὸν ὁ Καῖσαρ εἰς Πέργαμον ᾤχετο, καὶ προαγαγὼν τοὺς λῃστὰς ἅπαντας ἀνεσταύρωσεν, ὥσπερ αὐτοῖς δοκῶν παίζειν ἐν τῇ νήσῳ προειρήκει πολλάκις.

[2] Suetonius, De Vita XII Caesarum, Divus Iulius 4.2

nam comites seruosque ceteras inition statim ad expediendas pecunias, quibus
redimeretur, dimiserat. numeratis deinde quinquaginta talentis expositus in
litore non distulit quin e uestigo classe deducta persequeretur abeuntis ac
redactos in potestatem supplicio, quod saepe illis miratus inter iocum fuerat,
adficerat.

[3] Suetonius, De Vita XII Caesarum, Divus Julius 74.1

Sed et in ulciscendo natura lenissimus piratas, a quibus captus est, cum in dicionem redegisset, quoniam suffixurum se cruci ante iuraverat, iugulari prius iussit, deinde suffigi.

[4] Valerius Maximus, Factorum et Dictorum Memorabilium 6.9.15

C. autem Caesar, cuius uirtutes aditum sibi in caelum struxerunt, inter primae iuuentae initia priuatus Asiam petens, a maritimis praedonibus circa insulam Pharmacusam exceptus L se talentis redemit. parua igitur summa clarissimum mundi sidus in piratico myoparone rependi fortuna uoluit. quid est ergo quod amplius de ea queramur, si ne consortibus quidem diuinitatis suae parcit? sed caeleste numen se ab iniuria uindicauit: continuo enim captos praedones crucibus adfixit.

[5] Julius Caesar, de Bello Africo 66

Caesar interim de insidiis Labieni ex perfugis certior factus paucos dies ibi commoratus, dum hostes cotidiano instituto saepe idem faciendo in neglegentiam adducerentur, subito mane imperat porta decumana legiones se + VIII + veteranas cum parte equitatus sequi atque equitibus praemissis neque opinantes insidiatores subito in convallibus latentes [ex] levi armatura concidit circiter D, reliquos in fugam turpissimam coniecit. Interim Labienus cum universo equitatu fugientibus suis suppetias occurrit. Cuius vim multitudinis cum equites pauci Caesariani iam sustinere non possent, Caesar instructas legiones hostium copiis ostendit. Quo facto perterrito Labieno ac retardato suos equites recepit incolumes. Postero die Iuba Numidas eos qui loco amisso fuga se receperant in castra, in cruce omnes suffixit.

[6] Julius Caesar, de Bello Hispaniensi 20

Quod Pompeius ex perfugis cum deditionem oppidi factam esse scisset, castra movit Ucubim versus et circum ea loca castella disposuit et munitionibus se continere coepit. Caesar movit et propius castra castris contulit. Eodem tempore mane loricatus unus ex legione vernacula ad nos transfugit et nuntiavit Pompeium oppidanos Ucubenses convocasse eisque ita imperavisse ut diligentia adhibita perquirerent qui essent suarum partium itemque adversariorum victoriae fautores. Hoc praeterito tempore in oppido quod fuit captum, servus est prensus in cuniculo quem supra demonstravimus dominum iugulasse; is vivus est conbustus. Idemque temporis centuriones loricati VIII ad Caesarem transfugerunt ex legione vernacula, et equites nostri cum adversariorum equitibus congressi sunt, et saucii aliquot occiderunt levi armatura. Ea nocte speculatores prensi servi III et unus ex legione vernacula. Servi sunt in crucem sublati, militi cervices abscisae.

[7] Lucan, De Bello Civili (Pharsalia) 7.303-5

Aut merces hodie bellorum aut poena parata.
Caesareas spectate cruces, spectate catenas
Et caput hoc positum rostris effusaque membra.

[8] Appian, De Bello Civilae 2.20.146

οὐκ ἔφερεν ἔτι ὁ δῆμος, ἐν παραλόγῳ ποιούμενος τὸ πάντας αὐτοῦ τοὺς σφαγέας
χωρὶς μόνου Δέκμου, αἰχμαλώτους ἐκ τῆς Πομπηίου στάσεως γενομένους, ἀντὶ
κολάσεων ἐπὶ ἀρχὰς καὶ ἡγεμονίας ἐθνῶν καὶ στρατοπέδων προαχθέντας
ἐπιβουλεῦσαι....

[9] Dion Cassius, Histoire Romaine 49.22.6-7

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

[10] Suetonius, De Vita XII Caesarum, Divus Augustus 12

Sed ut cognovit Antonium post fugam a M. Lepido receptum ceterosque duces et
exercitus consentire pro partibus, causam optimatium sine cunctatione
deseruit, ad praetextum mutatae voluntatis dicta factaque quorundam
calumniatus, quasi alii se puerum, alii ornandum tollendumque iactassent, ne
aut sibi aut veteranis par gratia referretur.

[11] Velleius Paterculus, Historiae Romanae 2.62.6

Hoc est illud tempus, quo Cicero insito amore Pompeianarum partium Caesarem
laudandum et tollendum censebat, cum aliud diceret, aliud intellegi vellet.

[12] Cicero, Ad Familiares, 11.20.1

ipsum caesarem nihil sane de te questum, nisi dictum quod diceret to dixisse,
laudandum adolescentem, ornandum, tollendum, se non esse commissurum, ut tolli
possent.

[13] Suetonius, De Vita XII Caesarum, Caligula 58.1-3

[1] VIIII. Kal. Febr. hora fere septima cunctatus an ad prandium surgeret marcente adhuc stomacho pridiani cibi onere, tandem suadentibus amicis egressus est. Cum in crypta, per quam transeundum erat, pueri nobiles ex Asia ad edendas in scaena operas evocati praepararentur, ut eos inspiceret hortareturque restitit, ac nisi princeps gregis algere se diceret, redire ac repraesentare spectaculum voluit. [2] Duplex dehinc fama est: alii tradunt adloquenti pueros a tergo Chaeream cervicem gladio caesim graviter percussisse praemissa voce: "Hoc age!" dehinc Cornelium Sabinum, alterum e coniuratis, tribunum ex adverso traiecisse pectus; alii Sabinum summota per conscios centuriones turba signum more militiae petisse et Gaio "Iovem" dante Chaeream exclamasse: "Accipe ratum!" respicientique maxillam ictu discidisse. [3] Iacentem contractisque membris clamitantem se vivere ceteri vulneribus triginta confecerunt; nam signum erat omnium: "Repete!" Quidam etiam per obscaena ferrum adegerunt. Ad primum tumultum lecticarii cum asseribus in auxilium accucurrerunt, mox Germani corporis custodes, ac nonnullos ex percussoribus, quosdam etiam senatores innoxios interemerunt.

[14] Josephus, Antiquitatae Judaicae 19.1.13 [94]

[94] ἔνθα δὲ καὶ σημεῖα μανθάνει δύο γενέσθαι: καὶ γὰρ μῖμος εἰσάγεται, καθ᾽ ὃν σταυροῦται ληφθεὶς ἡγεμών, ὅ τε ὀρχηστὴς δρᾶμα εἰσάγει Κινύραν, ἐν ᾧ αὐτός τε ἐκτείνετο καὶ ἡ θυγάτηρ Μύρρα, αἷμά τε ἦν τεχνητὸν πολὺ καὶ περὶ τὸν σταυρωθέντα ἐκκεχυμένον καὶ τῶν περὶ τὸν Κινύραν

[15] Suetonius, De Vita XII Caesarum, Caligula 57.4

...et pantomimus Mnester tragoediam saltavit, quam olim Neoptolemus tragoedus
ludis, quibus rex Macedonum Philippus occisus est, egerat; et cum in Laureolo
mimo, in quo actor48 proripiens se ruina sanguinem vomit, plures secundarum
certatim experimentum artis darent, cruore scaena abundavit. Parabatur et in
noctem spectaculum, quo argumenta inferorum per Aegyptios et Aethiopas
explicarentur.

[16] Juvenal, Satirae 8.187-8

Laureolum uelox etiam bene Lentulus egit,
iudice me dignus vera cruce.

[17] Martial, Liber Spectaculorum 7

nuda Caledonio sic viscera praebuit urso
non falsa pendens in cruce Laureolus
vivebant laceri membris stillantibus artus
inque omni nusquam corpore corpus erat.

H. Footnotes.

[i] Wünsch, Sethianische Verfluchungstafeln aus Rom, p. 222, Leipsic, 1898 (ap. K. Kohler & S. Krauss, "Ass-Worship," Jewish Encyclopaedia, 1906, sub-heading "Origin in the Egyptian typhon-Worship).

[ii] A. Alföldi, “Der iranische Weltriese auf archäologischen Denkmälern”, in: Jahrbuch der schweizerischen Gesellschaft für Urgeschichte 40, Zurich 1949/50, 28 (ap. F. Carotta & A. Eickenberg, Orpheos Bakkikos - the Missing Cross (pdf), p.7).

[iii] M. Hengel, (tr. J. Bowden), Crucifixion, Philadelphia 1977, Fortress Press, pp.51-63.

[iv] Cf. Herodotus, Histories 3.125.3,4; Cicero de Finibus 5.30.92; Lucian, Charon 13 (fin), 14; Philo, de Providentia, frg. 2.24f (ap. Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica 8.14.386-399).

[v] Even Martin Hengel recognized this as an impalement (Crucifixion, p. 47). The context forces the patibulum to be interpreted as a pole. Interesting, because the Greeks starting with Chariton ~ or the Four Evangelists ~ would also call the patibulum a pole: a σταυρός!

[vi] Francesco Carotta, Jesus Was Caesar, "III Crux" (footnote [183])

[vii] Josephus, Jewish War 1.4.6 [96-98], Antiquities of the Jews 13.14.2 [379-383]

[viii] Carotta, ibid.

[ix] The equivocation is on the verb tollere which, on the one hand, means "to lift up" or "extol," but on the other hand, "to lift up [into a cross / onto a stake]" or "remove."

[x] Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 19.1.13 [95]

[xi] Ibid, 19.1.13 [96-98] & 19.1.14 [99-113]

[xii] Wikipedia, Caligula, "Asassination and Aftermath"

[xiii] Hengel, p. 35: "Juvenal wished that the actor Lentulus were on a real cross in this fearsome piece; it was an abomination to the satirist that the actor, as a member of the upper class, should debase himself by such a performance." Of course, I left the word crux untranslated, above because it doesn't necessarily mean a cross, even as an instrument of torture-execution.

I. Previous Series.

Crucifixion – The Bodily Support - Part 1.

Crucifixion – The Bodily Support - Part 2 - Archaeological Evidence.

Crucifixion – The Bodily Support - Part 3 - Manuscript Evidence and its Similarity to the Imagery of the Caesar Cult.

Crucifixion – The Bodily Support - Part 4 - Physics of Crucifixion.

The Romans NEVER CRUCIFIED the Way We Think They Did 5

2011-10-07T16:44:00.000-07:00

Early Medieval Greek Orthodox Crucifixion Icon.

Part 5 - The First Crucifix.

A. Introduction.

As we have seen in Part 4, various Ante-Nicene Church Fathers noted that certain deceased emperors were deified at their funerals with their wax images suspended on cruciform tropaea. Just a little rehash here:

And with this form you consecrate the images of your emperors when they die, and you name them gods by inscriptions.

Justin Martyr, First Apology 55

Your victorious trophies not only imitate the appearance of a simple cross, but also that of a man affixed to it.

Minucius Felix, Octavius 29

He had them hanged 'on the very trees of their temple, in the shadow of which they had committed their crimes, as though on consecrated crosses.'

Tertullian, Apoligeticus 9.2

Consecrated crosses here would have been called tropaea by the Nonchristians.

You put Christians on crosses and stakes: what image is not formed from the clay in the first instance, set on cross and stake? The body of your god is first consecrated on the gibbet.

Tertullian, Apoligeticus 12.3

Nota bene: "clay" here is the Latin argilla which means white clay, which could have been Tertullian's mistaken identification of wax -- as we shall later see below. And as we have seen before in Part 4, "gibbet" is patibulum, meaning an execution pole's crossarm, a door-bar or a Y-shaped forked gibbet.

We have shown before that your deities are derived from shapes modelled from the cross. But you also worship victories, for in your trophies the cross is the heart of the trophy.

Tertullian, Apologeticus 16.7

Obviously, from these three ancient apologists alone, we can see that certain Emperors were deified at their funerals with their images - simulacra - modelled in argilla (white clay) or probably wax instead and mounted with nails on cruciform tropaea. And they were proclaimed gods with inscriptions.

So when did this Emperor-deification all get started? It must have been with Gaius Julius Caesar. After all, he is the first one to be deified as "Divus Iulius."

B. Intermission (and a Little Levity).

"Set the Wayback Machine, Sherman: March 17th, 44 BCE."

"Ah, here we are, Sherman. March 17th, 44 BCE, Central Square, Rome."

"Central Square, Mister Peabody..?"

"Known to all as The Forum. And look! Over there is Mark Anthony is giving a speech before a crowd gathered under a crucifix at the foot of Capitoline Hill. Of course, the locals call this crucifix a tropaeum. That is, a trophy. And do you know whose waxen image is on it, Sherman?"

"Uh, I don't know Mr. Peabody."

"Julius Caesar's."

"But Julius Caesar never had been crucified."

"I know, Sherman. That's why this is a cruci... fiction."

(Sound the trombone.)

Intermission's over, back to reality.

C. The Funerary Tropaeum of Julius Caesar.

From Francesco Carotta, Jesus Was Caesar, Chapter III "Crux."

We have an immense debt to Francesco Carotta who has rediscovered the origins of the Roman Imperial Cult and quite possibly the origin or one of the origins of Christianity.

But the exposition of the wax simulacrum of Julius Caesar's body, complete with its twenty-three stab wounds on a cross, that is, a frame of a tropaeum, was no fiction and its veracity has been easily proven by Francesco Carotta and others looking into recorded historic chronicles preserved against all odds through the mists of time.

Of the original Greek and Latin quotes of the historians I shall cite, you may view in Part D below.

The first historian I shall quote is Cassius Dio, who lived about 155 or 163/164 to 229+ CE.

And Antony aroused them [the people] still more by bringing the body most inconsiderately into the Forum, exposing it all covered with blood as it was and with gaping wounds, and then delivering over it a speech, which was very ornate and brilliant, to be sure, but out of place on that occasion.

Cassius Dio Roman History 44.35.4

Cassius Dio thought Mark Anthony, when he solemnized Julius Caesar's funeral, has actually exposed the body to public view. This is probably mistaken, for Caesar was cremated and bodies are typically lain flat for the purpose. It would be difficult for people to see an exposed body if it was laying flat. Exposing it to public view in front of a crowd would probably entail making a simulacrum of it and raising the effigy on high.

To verify this we must refer to earlier historians who described Julius Caesar's funeral and how his image appeared before the public.

The earliest to report on Caesar's death is Nicolaus Damascenus, who lived from 64 BCE to 14/15 CE.

A little later, three slaves, who were nearby, placed the body on a litter and carried it home through the Forum, showing where the covering was drawn back on each side, the hands hanging limp and the wounds on the face. Then no-one refrained from tears, seeing him who had lately been honoured as a god. Much weeping and lamentation accompanied them from either side, from mourners on the roofs, in the streets, and in the vestibules. When they approached his house, a far greater wailing met their ears, for his wife rushed out with a number of women and servants, calling on her husband and bewailing her lot that she had in vain counseled him not to go out that day. But he had met with a fate far worse than she had ever expected.

Nicolaus Damascenus, Bios Kaisaros = Life of Augustus, tr. C. M. Hall, FGrH F 130 (26) [fin]

What we learn from here is that when Caesar was assasinated, he fell right where he was murdered, possibly with (1) both his arms unfurled to his side and laying on the floor, because when his slaves were porting the body home, (2) both hands were hanging out the sides.

Next to report is the historian Appian, Bellae Civile (95 - 165 CE), 2.146-147 Julius Caesar's Funeral 17 March 44 BCE

[146] Having spoken thus, he [Mark Anthony] gathered up his garments like one inspired, girded himself so he might have the free use of his hands, took his position in front of his bier...

...Carried away by extreme passion he uncovered the body of Caesar, lifted his robe on the point of a spear and shook it aloft, pierced with dagger-thrusts and red with the dictator's blood.

Whereupon the people, like a chorus, mourned with him in the most lugubrious manner, and from sorrow become again filled with anger.

Somewhere from the midst of those lamentations Caesar himself was supposed to speak, recounting the benefits he had conferred upon his enemies by name, and speaking of the murderers themselves, exclaiming, as it were, "Oh that I should have spared these men to slay me!" The people could endure it no more.

Appian, The Civil Wars ed. H. White, 2.146

[147] While they were in this temper and were already near to violence, somebody raised above the bier an image of Caesar himself made of wax. The body itself, as it lay on its back on the couch, could not be seen. The image was turned round and round by a mechanical device, showing the twenty-three stab wounds in all parts of the body and on the face, which gave him a shocking appearance. The people could no longer bear the pitiful sight presented to them. They groaned, and, girding themselves, they burned the senate-chamber where Cæsar was slain, and ran hither and thither searching for the murderers, who had fled some time previously.

Appian, The Civil Wars ed. H. White, 2.147

What Appian is telling us here is that (3) Mark Anthony removed the blood-stained toga of Julius Caesar from his body and (4) raised the blood-stained and dagger-torn garment aloft. When the masses attending the funeral saw it, (5) they all moaned with grief and became very, very, angry. (6) An actor playing Caesar and wearing his wax death mask exclaims, "Oh that I should have spared these men to slay me!" Then (7) someone raises [ἀνέσχε = exalts (LSJ & Middle Liddell A.4.)] a wax image of his body on a mechanical device which could be spun 'round and 'round so everybody can see it. In the meantime, (8) the real body was lying on its couch and nobody could see that. To compensate, (9) the wax image was given a shocking appearance so the twenty-three stab wounds all over his body and on his face could be plainly seen -- this mannekin was probably painted realistically and given a minimal covering (a loincloth and quite possibly a crown of acanthus leaves). (10) And the masses found this intolerable.

The next historian to report on this is Suetonius (69/75 - 130+ CE).

All the conspirators made off, and he lay there lifeless for some time, and finally three common slaves put him on a litter and carried him home, with one arm hanging down.

Suetonius, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Julius Caesar, 82.3

When the funeral was announced, a pyre was erected in the Campus Martius near the tomb of Julia, and on the rostra a gilded shrine was placed, made after the model of the temple of Venus Genetrix; within was a couch of ivory with coverlets of purple and gold, and at its head a pillar [tropaeum = votive cross] hung with the robe in which he was slain. Since it was clear that the day would not be long enough for those who offered gifts, they were directed to bring them to the Campus by whatsoever streets of the city they wished, regardless of any order of precedence.

Suetonius, Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Julius Caesar, 84.1

What Suetonius reports here is that when Julius Caesar's corpse was being ferried home to his wife, (2) one arm was hanging out. Then on the day of the funeral (8) a simulacrum of the Temple of Venus was parked on the Rostra. The funeral couch with the body on it was inside, surrounded or fenced in by columns made from logs: i.e., poles [being fenced in with poles = σταυρούμενος], and (7) there was a cruciform tropaeum already erected (3) with Caesar's robe on it.

So, to sum up, we have:

After he was killed, Julius Caesar was found laying on the ground, possibly with both arms out to the side.
Both hands were hanging out the sides (Nicolaus Damascenus); one arm was hanging out (Suetonius).
Mark Anthony removed the blood-stained toga of Julius Caesar from his body at his funeral (Appian). Caesar's robe was on the tropaeum (Suetonius).
He raises the blood-stained and dagger-torn garment aloft.
The masses attending the funeral saw it all and moaned with grief and became very, very, angry.
An actor playing Caesar and wearing his wax mask exclaims, "Oh that I should have spared these men to slay me!"
Someone exalts a wax image of the body of Julius Caesar on a mechanical device so everybody can see it (Appian). A cruciform tropaeum was already erected (Suetonius).
The real body was lying on its couch and nobody could see the body (Appian). A simulacrum of the Temple of Venus was parked on the Rostra, and the funeral couch with the body on it was inside (Suetonius).
The wax image was given a shocking appearance so the twenty-three stab wounds all over his body and on his face could be plainly seen.
The masses found this intolerable.

We have some contradictions here, but they are minor and quibbling. They concern the number of hands hanging out of Caesar's sedan when his body was being borne home, where the robe was, when the display device was lifted.

The hands -- unless rigor mortis had set in or the body cast was made while the body was no longer in rigor mortis, it doesn't matter. Otherwise both hands would be hanging out.

Where the robe was probably depended on when the wax image was raised. It is probable that the wax image was already aloft on the cross (tropaeum) with the toga on it because there could very well not have been enough room to keep the image on the ground away from the crowds.

So there you have it. For at least part of the funeral or its whole duration, there was a mannekin of Julius Caesar displayed on a cruciform tropaeum or a cross and when Mark Anthony removed the toga from where it was, the people could see an intolerable display of the likeness of Caesar's wounded body.

So there you have it, the first crucifix.

D. Original Greek and Latin Sources.

Cassius Dio, Histoire Romaine 44.35.4 (site in bilingual French and Greek)

Καὶ αὐτοὺς ὁ Ἀντώνιος ἐπιπαρώξυνε, τόν τε νεκρὸν ἐς τὴν ἀγορὰν ἀνοητότατα κομίσας, καὶ προθέμενος ᾑματωμένον τε, ὥσπερ εἶχε, καὶ τραύματα ἐκφαίνοντα, καί τινα καὶ λόγον ἐπ´ αὐτῷ, ἄλλως μὲν περικαλλῆ καὶ λαμπρόν, οὐ μέντοι καὶ συμφέροντα τοῖς τότε παροῦσιν, εἰπών.

Nicolaus Damascenus, Bios Kaisaros, FGrH, ed. F. Jacoby, 26.97 [scroll 9/10ths of the way down at the link]

οἰκέται δὲ δὴ τρεῖς, οἵπερ ἦσαν πλησίον, ὀλίγον ὕστερον ἐνθέμενοι τὸν νεκρὸν εἰς φορεῖον οἴκαδε ἐκόμιζον διὰ τῆς ἀγορᾶς ὁρώμενον, ἔνθεν καὶ ἔνθεν ἀνεσταλμένων τῶν παρακαλυμμάτων, αἰωρουμένας τὰς χεῖρας καὶ τὰς ἐπὶ τοῦ προσώπου πληγάς. ἔνθα οὐδεὶς ἄδακρυς ἦν ὁρῶν τὸν πάλαι ἴσα καὶ θεὸν τιμώμενον· οἰμωγῇ τε πολλῇ καὶ στόνῳ συμπαρεπέμπετο ἔνθεν καὶ ἔνθεν ὀλοφυρομένων ἀπό τε τῶν τεγῶν καθ' οὓς ἂν γένοιτο καὶ ἐν ταῖς ὁδοῖς καὶ προθύροις. καὶ ἐπειδὴ πλησίον τῆς οἰκίας ἐγένετο, πολὺ δὴ μείζων ὑπήντα κωκυτός· ἐξεπεπηδήκει γὰρ ἡ γυνὴ μετὰ πολλοῦ ὄχλου γυναικῶν τε καὶ οἰκετῶν, ἀνακαλουμένη τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ ἑαυτὴν ὀδυρομένη, ὅτι μάτην προύλεγε μὴ ἐξιέναι τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην. τῷ δ' ἤδη μοῖρα ἐφειστήκει πολὺ κρείττων ἢ κατὰ τὴν αὐτῆς ἐλπίδα.

Appian, Bellae Civilae, 2.146

[146] τοιάδε εἰπὼν τὴν ἐσθῆτα οἷά τις ἔνθους ἀνεσύρατο, καὶ περιζωσάμενος ἐς τὸ τῶν χειρῶν εὔκολον, τὸ λέχος ὡς ἐπὶ σκηνῆς περιέστη κατακύπτων τε ἐς αὐτὸ καὶ ἀνίσχων,…

εὐφορώτατα δὲ ἐς τὸ πάθος ἐκφερόμενος τὸ σῶμα τοῦ Καίσαρος ἐγύμνου καὶ τὴν ἐσθῆτα ἐπὶ κοντοῦ φερομένην ἀνέσειε, λελακισμένην ὑπὸ τῶν πληγῶν καὶ πεφυρμένην αἵματι αὐτοκράτορος.

ἐφ᾽ οἷς ὁ δῆμος οἷα χορὸς αὐτῷ πενθιμώτατα συνωδύρετο καὶ ἐκ τοῦ πάθους αὖθις ὀργῆς ἐνεπίμπλατο.

ὡς δ᾽ ἐπὶ τοῖς λόγοις ἕτεροι θρῆνοι μετὰ ᾠδῆς κατὰ πάτριον ἔθος ὑπὸ χορῶν ἐς αὐτὸν ᾔδοντο καὶ τὰ ἔργα αὖθις αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸ πάθος κατέλεγον καί που τῶν θρήνων αὐτὸς ὁ Καῖσαρ ἐδόκει λέγειν, ὅσους εὖ ποιήσειε τῶν ἐχθρῶν ἐξ ὀνόματος, καὶ περὶ τῶν σφαγέων αὐτῶν ἐπέλεγεν ὥσπερ ἐν θαύματι: ‘ἐμὲ δὲ καὶ τούσδε περισῶσαι τοὺς κτενοῦντάς με,’ οὐκ ἔφερεν ἔτι ὁ δῆμος,

Appian, Bellae Civilae, 2.147

[147] ὧδε δὲ αὐτοῖς ἔχουσιν ἤδη καὶ χειρῶν ἐγγὺς οὖσιν ἀνέσχε τις ὑπὲρ τὸ λέχος ἀνδρείκελον αὐτοῦ Καίσαρος ἐκ κηροῦ πεποιημένον: τὸ μὲν γὰρ σῶμα, ὡς ὕπτιον ἐπὶ λέχους, οὐχ ἑωρᾶτο. τὸ δὲ ἀνδρείκελον ἐκ μηχανῆς ἐπεστρέφετο πάντῃ, καὶ σφαγαὶ τρεῖς καὶ εἴκοσιν ὤφθησαν ἀνά τε τὸ σῶμα πᾶν καὶ ἀνὰ τὸ πρόσωπον θηριωδῶς ἐς αὐτὸν γενόμεναι. τήνδε οὖν τὴν ὄψιν ὁ δῆμος οἰκτίστην σφίσι φανεῖσαν οὐκέτι ἐνεγκὼν ἀνῴμωξάν τε καὶ διαζωσάμενοι τὸ βουλευτήριον, ἔνθα ὁ Καῖσαρ ἀνῄρητο, κατέφλεξαν καὶ τοὺς ἀνδροφόνους ἐκφυγόντας πρὸ πολλοῦ περιθέοντες ἐζήτουν,

Suetonius, Vita XII Caesarum, Divus Iulius, 82.3

Exanimis diffugientibus cunctis aliquamdiu iacuit, donec lecticae impositum, dependente brachio, tres servoli domum rettulerunt.

Suetonius, Vita XII Caesarum, Divus Iulius, 84.1

Funere indicto rogus extructus est in Martio campo iuxta Iuliae tumulum et pro rostris aurata aedes ad simulacrum templi Veneris Genetricis collocata; intraque lectus eburneus auro ac purpura stratus et ad caput tropaeum cum veste, in qua fuerat occisus. Praeferentibus munera, quia suffecturus dies non videbatur, praeceptum, ut omisso ordine, quibus quisque vellet itineribus urbis, portaret in Campum.

Part 6: From Wax Image to Exposed Body.

PREVIOUS CRUCIFIXION ARTICLES

Crucifixion – The Bodily Support - Part 1.

Crucifixion – The Bodily Support - Part 2 - Archaeological Evidence.

Crucifixion - The Bodily Support - Part 3 - Manuscript Evidence and its Similarities to the Imagery of the Caesar Cult.

Crucifixion – The Bodily Support - Part 4 - Physics of Crucifixion.

The Romans NEVER CRUCIFIED the Way We Think They Did 4

2011-04-02T20:56:00.000-07:00

Part 3
Part 2
Part 1

Part 4 - The Tropaeum and the Furca.

A. Introduction.

First it is very important to take a look at what other kinds of crosses were in the ancient Roman Empire. The Antenicene Church Fathers made mention of tropaea, votivis crucibus (votive crosses, i.e., tropaea), and the iugum (military yoke - actually a furca). In fact, one Church Father - Minucius Felix in his Octavian 29 referred to the support frame of the tropaeum as a simplicis crucis - the genitive of crux simplex, meaning simple cross. It is extremely important to see what the tropaeum and the iugum were and how they were related to the crux.

B. Testimony of the Ante-Nicene Fathers on the Cross and the Tropaeum.

Select words phrases are color-coded so you can compare the English with the Greek and the Latin immediately below the block quotes. The quotes in the original languages are shown under Heading "D" below. The Greek Word Study Tool and the Latin Word Study Tool are excellent places to obtain the meaning of the words in their original tongues.

B.1. Justin Martyr (103-165 CE)

Presentation of the wax image of Julius Caesar at his funeral, March 17, 44 BCE.
Source: Francesco Carotta, Jesus Was Caesar

But in no instance, not even in any of those called sons of Jupiter, did they imitate the being crucified; for it was not understood by them, all the things said of it having been put symbolically. And this, as the prophet foretold, is the greatest symbol of His power and role; as is also proved by the things which fall under our observation. For consider all the things in the world, whether without this form they could be administered or have any community. For the sea is not traversed except that trophy which is called a sail abide safe in the ship; and the earth is not ploughed without it: diggers and mechanics do not their work, except with tools which have this shape. And the human form differs from that of the irrational animals in nothing else than in its being erect and having the hands extended, and having on the face extending from the forehead what is called the nose, through which there is respiration for the living creature; and this shows no other form than that of the cross. And so it was said by the prophet, “The breath before our face is the Lord Christ.” And the power of this form is shown by your own symbols on what are called “vexilla” [banners] and trophies, with which all your state possessions are made, using these as the insignia of your power and government, even though you do so unwittingly. And with this form you consecrate the images of your emperors when they die, and you name them gods by inscriptions. Since, therefore, we have urged you both by reason and by an evident form, and to the utmost of our ability, we know that now we are blameless even though you disbelieve; for our part is done and finished.

trophy = τροπαίων
that (form) of the cross = το σχήμα του σταυρού
trophies = τροπαιων
with this form = επί τούτω τω σχημάτι

Justin Martyr, First Apology55

B.2 Minucius Felix (flourished between 150 and 270 CE)

Roman Tropaeum, Charlottenberg Museum, Berlin.
Note that what Minucius Felix called a crux simplex is of the crux immissa type.
Source: Francesco Carotta, Jesus Was Caesar

Roman Coin commemorating Julius Caesar's Triumph over Gaul.
Venus Genetrix on Obverse, Cruciform Tropaeum on Reverse.
Again, Minucius Felix's crux simplex is a crux immissa.
Source: Francesco Carotta, Jesus Was Caesar

Roman Legionnary's Satchel. Its frame is a cruciform furca.
Source: Matthias Kabel, Wikipedia

Update 03 October 2011: Add other examples of Yokes.

A civilian waggon with a raised tow-pole (crux pendula) with a yoke (furca or iugum) attached. (See Part 3) Military waggons and two-horse chariots would be similarly equipped. Note the crux pendula and the iugum form the sign of a cross!

The Romans Passing Under the Yoke (1858) by Charles Gleyre (1808-1874). Source: radioislam.org. This is the only type of military yoke that, when raised, does not form the sign of a cross. But in Plautus' day, the raising of this type of yoke could very well be to condemned slaves a sign of the crux!

(End of update)

These, and such as these infamous things, we are not at liberty even to hear; it is even disgraceful with any more words to defend ourselves from such charges. For you pretend that those things are done by chaste and modest persons, which we should not believe to be done at all, unless you proved that they were true concerning yourselves.

For in that you attribute to our religion the worship of a criminal and his cross, you wander far from the neighbourhood of the truth, in thinking either that a criminal deserved, or that an earthly being was able, to be believed God. Miserable indeed is that man whose whole hope is dependent on mortal man, for all his help is put an end to with the extinction of the man. The Egyptians certainly choose out a man for themselves whom they may worship; him alone they propitiate; him they consult about all things; to him they slaughter victims; and he who to others is a god, to himself is certainly a man whether he will or no, for he does not deceive his own consciousness, if he deceives that of others. Moreover, a false flattery disgracefully caresses princes and kings, not as great and chosen men, as is just, but as gods; whereas honour is more truly rendered to an illustrious man, and love is more pleasantly given to a very good man. Thus they invoke their deity, they supplicate their images, they implore their Genius, that is, their demon; and it is safer to swear falsely by the genius of Jupiter than by that of a king.

Crosses, moreover, we neither worship nor wish for. You, indeed, who consecrate gods of wood, adore wooden crosses perhaps as parts of your gods. For your very standards, as well as your banners; and flags of your camp, what else are they but crosses glided and adorned? Your victorious trophies not only imitate the appearance of a simple cross, but also that of a man affixed to it. We assuredly see the sign of a cross, naturally, in the ship when it is carried along with swelling sails, when it glides forward with expanded oars; and when the military yoke is lifted up, it is the sign of a cross; and when a man adores God with a pure mind, with hands outstretched. Thus the sign of the cross either is sustained by a natural reason, or your own religion is formed with respect to it.

You, indeed... adore wooden crosses perhaps as parts of your gods = Vos plane... cruces ligneas ut deorum vestrorum partes forsitan adoratis. This is precisely so with the funerals of the Caesars as Justin Martyr had testified to and Francesco Carotta has so recently uncovered.
criminal and his cross = hominem noxium et crucem eius
trophies = tropaea
of a simple cross = crucis simplicis
of a man affixed to it = adfixi hominis
when the military yoke is lifted up = cum erigitur iugum
sign of a cross = crucis signum

New Advent.org, Minucius Felix, Octavian 29

Minucius Felix obviously thought it was an infamous thing for anyone to worship a criminal and his cross, discussion here. Needless to say, if an historical Jesus was declared King in a triumphal procession by the masses and the next day led a direct action at the Temple, a complex up to 35 acres in area and the recognised seat of a licit (legally established) religion, he most certainly would have been arrested by the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate for crimen maiestatis populi Romani imminutae (a charge of having diminished the majesty of the people of Rome: i.e., a capital crime against the State), tried, found guilty, sentenced to death and suspended to die on a stake or gallows known to all Latin speakers as a crux.

B.3. Tertullian (160-220 CE)

An aged prophet brings the holy child Dionysius a large votive cross or tropaeum as an omen of his ultimate fate. Such a votive cross was borne around in Athens during a three-day festival celebrating the death and resurrection of the pagan demigod.
Source: Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, The Jesus Mysteries, plate 3

The demigod Dionysius hangs on a votive cross or tropaeum. This crucifiction is just like the crucifiction of Jesus Christ for his legs are depicted together as they are bent.
Source: Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, The Jesus Mysteries, cover.

Children were openly sacrificed in Africa to Saturn as lately as the proconsulship of Tiberius, who exposed to public gaze the priests suspended on the sacred trees overshadowing their temple--so many crosses on which the punishment which justice craved overtook their crimes, as the soldiers of our country still can testify who did that very work for that proconsul.

who exposed to public gaze the priests suspended on the sacred trees overshadowing their temple--so many crosses on which the punishment which justice craved overtook their crimes = qui sacerdotes in eisdem arboribus templi sui obumbratricibus scelerum votivis crucibus exposuit

Early Christian Writings.com, Tertullian, Apoligeticus 9.2

Martin Hengel describes it this way:

A proconsul of Africa, otherwise unknown, punished with utmost severity the priests of 'Saturn', i.e., the Carthaginian god Baal-Hammon, who kept up this ancient practice of child sacrifice. He had them hanged 'on the very trees of their temple, in the shadow of which they had committed their crimes, as though on consecrated crosses.'

as though on consecrated crosses = votivis crucibus. The original Latin indicates Hengel is 100% correct.

Martin Hengel, Crucifixion,61

You put Christians on crosses and stakes: what image is not formed from the clay in the first instance, set on cross and stake? The body of your god is first consecrated on the gibbet.

The body of your god is first consecrated on the gibbet [crossarm] = in patibulo primum corpus dei vestri dedicatur. Tertullian is in agreement here with Justin Martyr and Minucius Felix. The deification of deceased Caesars in imago on a cruciform tropaeum was completely forgotten until rediscovered by Francesco Carotta.

Early Christian Writings.com, Tertullian, Apoligeticus 12.3

[6] Then, if any of you think we render superstitious adoration to the cross, in that adoration he is sharer with us. If you offer homage to a piece of wood at all, it matters little what it is like when the substance is the same: it is of no consequence the form, if you have the very body of the god. And yet how far does the Athenian Pallas differ from the stock of the cross, or the Pharian Ceres as she is put up uncarved to sale, a mere rough stake and piece of shapeless wood? [7] Every stake fixed in an upright position is a portion of the cross; we render our adoration, if you will have it so, to a god entire and complete. We have shown before that your deities are derived from shapes modelled from the cross. But you also worship victories, for in your trophies the cross is the heart of the trophy. [8] The camp religion of the Romans is all through a worship of the standards, a setting the standards above all gods. Well, as those images decking out the standards are ornaments of crosses. All those hangings of your standards and banners are robes of crosses. I praise your zeal: you would not consecrate crosses unclothed and unadorned.

any of you think we render superstitious adoration to the cross = qui crucis nos religiosos putat
in that adoration he is sharer with us = consecraneus erit noster
we render our adoration, if you will have it so, to a god entire and complete = Nos, si forte, integrum et totum deum colimus. Although Tertullian states that Christians don't worship cruces, he is not as emphatic as Minucius Felix who said flat out the Christians absolutely did NOT worship a criminal or his cross.
in your trophies the cross is the heart [internal structure] of the trophy = in tropaeis, cum cruces intestina sint tropaeorum. Again, this is what has been known since Julius Lisius' De Cruce as a crux immissa, but was called a crux simplex by Minucius Felix.
are ornaments of crosses = monilia crucum sunt
are robes of crosses = stolae crucum sunt

Early Christian Writings.com, Tertullian, Apoligeticus 16.6-8

As was affirmed by Justin Martyr, and proven again by Francesco Carotta, the above applies very well to the display of the wax image of a deified Roman Emperor on a cruciform tropaeum at his funeral, and other solemn occasions where a cruciform tropaeum was erected.

B.4. Conclusion.

It is quite obvious that the early Christians were confusing the crux which was sometimes some kind of cruciform [cross-like] gallows with a "seat" and other times a simple impaling stake, with the tropaeum and the military furca, also known as an iugum. This is an early portent of how the Christian churches would be portraying the Crucifiction after Emperor Constantine abolished the penalty (or at least the parts of the execution known as the bearing of the crossbeam and the breaking of legs). And does this confusion show up in early Christian iconography? Indeed it does!

Domatilla Sarcophagus, Bearing of the Cross (above top) and Resurrection (?????) (above bottom), ca. 350 CE.

Not twenty years after Constantine allegedly got rid of the practice and already people were forgetting how criminals were crucified: with an outrigged impaling stake used as a seat to support the weight of the body and further torture and humiliate the criminal. After all, who would want to remember it? This strongly indicates to almost absolute certainty that Christians copied the crucifictions of other gods like Dionysius and the displays of deified Emperors in imago. Here the cross is clearly shown as a tropaeum or what Minucius Felix called a crux simplex, and also carried about like a portable furca.

Ivory Sarcophagus ca. 430 CE, British Museum, London.
Note Jesus is "hanging" on an ankh-like cross made of fancy boards like a cardboard cutout or a mannekin on a stick, the same as the artists' conception of the wax image of Julius Caesar (above). To the left, Judas Iscariot is hanging from a tree exactly as one would expect a man who hanged himself would.

Relief, Sta Sabina Basilica, Ravenna, Italy, ca. approx. 450 CE.
Note Jesus and the two thieves are standing with their hands nailed to hidden boards. None are crucified the way Romans crucified (impaled) their criminals.

C. Where Christians Got Their Cross and Crucifix.

It appears that the Christians got their present-day cross and crucifix not from the Roman execution crux, but from a different cross altogether: the tropaeum. Below are two videos posted by a Youtuber by the name of Calpurnpiso, who shows that the cross was a sign of victory back in ancient Rome. He claims ~ correctly, I might add ~ that Christians got their cross from the tropaeum, meaning trophy, a symbol of victory. Christians always sing of victory in Jesus (through The Cross, naturally) and that Mark's Gospel shows that The Crucifiction of Jesus Christ is actually his triumphal procession!

D. Greek and Latin Sources.

D.1. Justin Martyr First Apology 55

D.1.a - Greek

'Αλλ' ουδαμού ουδ' επί τίνος των λεγομένων υιών του διός το σταυρωθηναι εμιμησαντο. Ου γαρ ενοείτο αυτοίς, συμβολικώς, ως προδεδηλωται, των εις τούτο ειρημένων πάντων λελεγμένων όπερ, ως προείπεν ο προφήτης,το μέγιστων συμβόλων της ισχύος και αρχής αυτού υπάρχει, ως και εκ των υπ' όψιν πιπτοντων δείκνυται. Κατανοήσατε γαρ πάντα τα εν τω κόσμω, ει άνευ του σχήματος τούτου διοικείται, η κοινωνίαν έχειν δύναται. Θάλασσα μεν γαρ ου τέμνεται, ην μη τούτο το τροπαίων, ο καλείται ιστίων, εν τη νχη σώον μείνη γη δε ουκ αρουται ενευ αυτού σκαπανείς δε την εργασίαν ου ποιούνται, ουδέ βαλαυσουργοί ομοίως, ει μη δια των το σχήμα τούτο σχοντων εργαλείων. Το δε ανθρωπείων σχήμα ουδενί άλλω των αλόγων ζώων διαφέρει, η τω ορθών τη είναι, και έκτασιν χειρών έχειν, και εν τω προσώπω από του μετωπίου τεταγμένων τον λεγόμενων μυξωθρα φέρειν, δι ου η τη αναπνοή εστί τω ζώω, και ουδέν άλλο δείκνυσιν η το σχήμα του σταυρού. Και δια του προφήτου δε ελέχθη ούτως "Πνεύμα προ προσώπου ημών, Χρήστος Κύριος." Και τα παρ' υμιν δε συμβολα την του σχηματος τουτου δυναμιν δηλοι 'λλωμεν και των τροπαιων δι' ων αι τε προσδοι υμων πανταχου γινονται' της αρχης και δυναμεως τα σημεια εν τουτοις δεικνυντες, ει και μη νοσυντες τουτο πραττετε. Kαι των παρ' υμίν αποθνησκόντων αυτοκρατόρων τας εικόνας επί τούτω τω σχημάτι ανατιθετε, και θεούς δια γραμμάτων επονουαζετε. Και δια λόγου συν και σχήματος του φαινομένου, όση δύναμης, προτρεψαμένοι υμάς ανεύθυνοι οίδαμεν λοιπόν όντες, καν υμείς απιστείτε το γαρ ημέτερον γέγονε και πεπεπενται.

Documenta Catholica Omnia, Justin Martyr, Apologia Prima

D.1.b. - Latin

Nusquam autem nec in ullo eorum, qui dieuntur, Jovis filiorum crucis supplicium imitati sunt. Neque enim illis in mentem venerat, eo quod non sine symbolis, ut demonstravimus, dicta fuerint, quaecunque dieta ea de re fuerant; quae quidem, ut supra dixit propheta, maximum est ejus potestatis et principatus signum, quemadmodum ex his etiam, quae sub aspectum cadunt, ostenditur. Intuemini enim animo quaecunque in mundo versantur, an sine hac figura administrari, et commercio inter se conjungi possint. Mare non scinditur, nisi tropaeum illud, quod dicitur velum, integrum in navi maneat. Terra vero absque eo non aratur; fossores opus non faciunt, nec manuarii pariter artifices nisi adhibitis hanc figuram praeferentibus instrumentis. Humana autem forma non alia re ab animantibus rationis expertibus differt, nisi quod erecta est, et extensionem manuum habet, et in vultu nasum a fronte prominentem gerit, qui et animali ad respirationem usui est, nec aliud quam crucis formam ostendit. Propheta quoque sic locutus est: 'Spiritus ante faciem nostram Christus Dominus'. Hujus etiam figurae vim declarant vexillorum apud vos et tropaeorum signa, quibuscum semper in publicum proceditis, ac in eis vestri imperii et potestatis insignia faciatis. Quin et morientium apud vos imperatorum imagines in hanc formam consecratis, eosque litteris inscriptis appellatis deos. Cum vos igitur et verbis et figurae omnibus conspicuae consideratione cohoriati pro viribus simus, nos deinceps extra culpam futuros novimus, etiamsi increduli maneatis. Quod enim in nobis situm erat, id perfectum et absolutum est.

Documenta Catholica Omnia, Justin Martyr, Apologia Prima

D.2. Minucius Felix Octavius 29 - Latin

Haec et huiusmodi propudia nobis non licet nec audire, etiam pluribus turpe defendere est: ea enim de castis fingitis et pudicis, quae fieri non crederemus, nisi de vobis probaretis.

Nam quod religioni nostrae hominem noxium et crucem eius adscribitis, longe de vicinia veritatis erratis, qui putatis deum credi aut meruisse noxium aut potuisse terrenum. Ne ille miserabilis, cuius in homine mortali spes omnis innititur: totum enim eius auxilium cum extincto homine finitur! Aegyptii sane hominem sibi quem colant eligunt: illum unum propitiant, illum de omnibus consulunt, illi victimas caedunt. At ille, qui ceteris deus, sibi certe homo est, velit nolit: nec enim conscientiam suam decipit, si fallit alienam. Etiam principibus et regibus, non ut magnis et electis viris, sicut fas est, sed ut deis turpiter adulatio falsa blanditur, cum et praeclaro viro honor verius et optimo amor dulcius praebeatur. Sic eorum numen vocant, ad imagines supplicant, Genium, id est daemonem, implorant, et est eis tutius per Iovis Genium peierare quam regis.

Cruces etiam nec colimus nec optamus. Vos plane, qui ligneos deos consecratis, cruces ligneas ut deorum vestrorum partes forsitan adoratis. Nam et signa ipsa et cantabra et vexilla castrorum quid aliud quam inauratae cruces sunt et ornatae? Tropaea vestra victricia non tantum simplicis crucis faciem, verum et adfixi hominis imitantur. Signum sane crucis naturaliter visimus in navi, cum velis tumentibus vehitur, cum expansis palmulis labitur: et cum erigitur iugum, crucis signum est, et cum homo porrectis manibus deum pura mente veneratur. Ita signo crucis aut ratio naturalis innititur aut vestra religio formatur.

Intratext.com, Minucius Felix, Octavius 29

D.3. Tertullian

D.3.a. Apoligeticum 9.2 - Latin

Infantes penes Africam Saturno immolabantur palam usque ad proconsulatum Tiberii, qui eosdem sacerdotes in eisdem arboribus templi sui obumbratricibus scelerum votivis crucibus exposuit, teste militia patriae nostrae, quae id ipsum munus illi proconsuli functa est.

The Latin Library, Tertullian Apoligeticum

D.3.b. Apoligeticum 12.3 - Latin

Crucibus et stipitibus imponitis Christianos: Quod simulacrum non prius argilla deformat cruci et stipiti superstructa? in patibulo primum corpus dei vestri dedicatur.

The Latin Library, Tertullian Apoligeticum

D.3.c. Apoligeticum 16.6-8 - Latin

[6] Sed et qui crucis nos religiosos putat consecraneus erit noster. Cum lignum aliquod propitiatur, viderit habitus, cum materiae qualitas eadem sit; viderit forma, dum id ipsum dei corpus sit. Et tamen quanto distinguitur a crucis stipite Pallas Attica, et Ceres Pharia[m], quae sine effigie rudi palo et informi ligno prostat? [7] Pars crucis est omne robur, quod erecta statione defigitur. Nos, si forte, integrum et totum deum colimus. Diximus originem deorum vestrorum a plastis de cruce induci. Sed et Victorias adoratis in tropaeis, cum cruces intestina sint tropaeorum. [8] Religio Romanorum tota castrensis signa veneratur, signa iurat, signa omnibus deis praeponit. Omnes illi imaginum suggestus in signis monilia crucum sunt; siphara illa vexillorum et cantabrorum stolae crucum sunt. Laudo diligentiam: Noluistis incultas et nudas cruces consecrare.

The Latin Library, Tertullian Apoligeticum

Part 5 - The First Crucifix

PREVIOUS CRUCIFIXION ARTICLES:

Crucifixion – The Bodily Support - Part 1.

Crucifixion – The Bodily Support - Part 2 - Archaeological Evidence.

Crucifixion - The Bodily Support - Part 3 - Manuscript Evidence and its Similarities to the Imagery of the Caesar Cult.

Crucifixion – The Bodily Support - Part 4 - Physics of Crucifixion.

The Romans NEVER CRUCIFIED the Way We Think They Did 3

2011-01-21T17:18:00.000-08:00

Ancient bas-relief of a Roman sleeping carriage.

Note no patibulum!

Part 3 - Crux - Modern English Use and Ancient Quotidian Meanings

Part 2

Part 1

In this part I will talk about the modern English use and the ancient Greco-Roman uses of the word crux that have nothing to do with the actual punishment of crucifixion. Because the Romans NEVER CRUCIFIED the way we think they did!

A. Modern English Use

From The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language:

crux (kruks, krooks) n., pl. crux - es or cru - ces (kroo-cez) 1. The basic, central, or critical point or feature: the crux of the matter; the crux of an argument. 2. A puzzling or apparently insoluble problem. [Probably short for Mediaeval Latin crux (interpretum), torment (of interpreters), from the Latin crux, cross.

The Language Log quotes a rock climbers' dictionary thus:

Crux - The most crucial, difficult part of the climb.

Now the idea of crux meaning a central point or feature of a matter seems to derive right out of the crux interpretum, which means a cross (ways) of the interpreters, a passage in a text where interpreters do not agree. [1] Another modern sense of crux is in the modern use of the word crucify, which now typically means 'to torture, torment'. [2] (See also Part 1) Another sense of the word crucify, not noted in the dictionaries, is to smear someone or make him dead to rights figuratively, as in, "they crucified the whistleblower in the mainstream media, starting with Fox News." And the Urban Dictionary has noted that a new slang term for crucifying someone is to beat up on him. [3]

B. Ancient Quotidian Meanings

There are actually different ancient quotidian meanings of the word crux, such as: - the tow-pole of a carriage, wagon or chariot; - a term of reproach; - torture, trouble, misery, destruction, etc.; - a tormentor; - an agent or indirect object of a curse; and still another! - the ever-erect phallus of Priapus.

B.1. The Tow-pole of a Carriage, Wagon or Chariot

Here is a mosaic showing a tow-pole secured to a team of seahorses by means of a cross beam! This cross beam would have been called a jugum or a furca despite its obvious resemblance to a patibulum.

And here is a mosaic where no cross beam is present.

These appear to be dated from the First or Second Centuries CE. The above examples show how the Romans harnessed their animal-drawn vehicles. These vehicles were extremely sophisticated, especially when compared to what people had to deal with in the Middle Ages. Not only did the tow-pole swing up and down, it also pivoted transversely and the front axles pivoted with them. A more thorough discussion can be found at the Roman Traction Systems article by Dr. Judith A. Weller.[4] Only with one or more pairs of animals for heavy loads does one see yokes used in conjunction with tow-poles or tow-chains. [5][6] And no, neither does the Lewis & Short Latin-English Lexicon nor the Elementary Lewis indicate that these yokes were called patibula! [7] As you can see in the above examples, a crux pendula, a.k.a. statera, was long and straight, rectangular or circular in cross section depending on the vehicle, and swung so that it could stick out horizontally or project up at an angle. Ancient Frescoes and Mosaics Do Not Lie.

Here is where the term crux pendula comes from:

Hic quondam piger axe vectus uno nutabant cruce pendula viator sorbebatque rotas maligna tellus, et plebs in mediis latina campis horrebat mala navigationis; nec cursus agile, sed impeditum tardabant iter orbitae tacentes, dum pondus nimium querens sub alta repit languida quadrupes statera.

My rough translation:

This slow traveller at one time used having ridden alone by chariot used to sway with a swinging, swaying crux and used to endure the disagreeable wheels [and] the ground, and a commoner in the middle of the Latium fields used to avoid the evils of driving; not even quick runs, but hindrances delay the silenced journey of a wheel-track, whilst complaining under a heavy burden being supported, creeps the sluggish, four-footed chariot pole-bar.

This was written by Publius Papinus Statius (45-96 CE) in Silvae 4. 3. 27-35 during the time of Emperor Domitian. [8] So in the 1st Century CE, a crux could still refer to something long and round!

And here in New York City is a reproduction Roman chariot with its crux pendula in between the two horses adapted for modern technology!

B.2. A Term of Reproach

Amongst the lower classes and the slaves, the terms crux and the like were used as a term of reproach, like "gallows bird" or "hempen rascal." Here's an example: T. Macchius Plautus (254-184 BCE), Persa Act 5, Scene 2, Line 17. [9]

Note: PAEGNIUM has just threatened DORDALUS with hitting him in the with a tankard (a single-handled drinking vessel, usually made of metal).

Dordalvs: Quid ais, crux, stimulorum tritor? quo modo me hodie versavisti, ut me in tricas coniecisti, quo modo de Persa manus mi aditast?

DORDALUS: What do you say, gallows*, you wearer away of the whip? How have you imposed upon me** to-day? Into what embarrassments have you thrown me? How have I been baulked about the Persian?

* Gallows: "Crux." literally, "cross;" in allusion to it as peculiarly the instrument of the punishment of the slaves.

**Imposed upon me: "Manus adita est." Literally, "your hand was gone to." This is probably an allusion to the practice of kissing the hand in irony to a person when he is loudly complaining of having been imposed upon.

Now Plautus lived before Statius, in the 3rd and 2nd Centuries BCE. So it is quite possible or even probable here that crux does not refer to "cross," but rather "pale," or "impaling stake." A good slang term could be "lethal ****er!"

B.3. Torture, Trouble, Misery, Destruction, Etc.

In the ancient plays, Plautus and P. Terentius Afer (Terence) (190-158 BCE) used the word 'crux' to denote a figurative torture, torment, misery, or destruction. Here are some examples:

Plautus, Aulularia, Act 3, Scene 5, Lines 46-48. [10]

Megadorus: ducuntur, datur aes. iam absolutas censas, cum incedunt infectores corcotarii, aut aliqua mala crux semper est, quae aliquid petat.

MEGADORUS: You would think them got rid of by this; when dyers in saffron colours come sneaking along; or else there's always some horrid plague or other which is demanding something.

Plautus Bacchides, Act 4, Scene 2, Lines 1-2. [11]

(In scene 1, PARASITE has the BOY knock on the door of PISTOCLERUS. The BOY knocks on the door while PARASITE shouts loud enough to wake the dead.)

(Scene 2 begins. Enter PISTOCLERUS from the house.)

Pistoclervs: Quid istuc? quae istaec est pulsatio? * quae te mala crux agitat, quí ad istunc modum alieno viris tuas extentes ostio? fores paene exfregisti. quid nunc vis tibi?

PISTOCLERUS: What's the matter? What's this knocking? Why, what the confounded torment possesses you, to be exerting your strength in this fashion on another person's door? You've almost broken the door down. What do you want now?

Plautus Bacchides, Prologue, Lines 65-66. [12]

(The ravisher of the child, i.e., the plunderer of his estate, was by chance travelling in the countryside after a heavy rain and not far from the city, he crosses a rapid stream)

rapidus raptori pueri subduxit pedes abstraxitque hominem in maximam malam crucem.

in its rapidity it threw the ravisher of the child off his legs; and hurried the man away to great and grievous destruction.

Terence, Phormio, Act 3, Scene 3, Lines 9-11. [13]

Geta: Sane hercle pulchre suades: etiam tu hinc abis? Non triumpho ex nuptiis tuis si nihil nanciscor mali, Ni etiam nunc me huius causa quaerere in malo iubeas crucem?

GETA: Upon my faith, you really do give me fine advice; out upon you! Ought I not to be heartily glad, if I meet with no mishap through your marriage, but what, in addition to that, you must now bid me, for his sake, to be seeking risk upon risk?

Columella (4-70 CE), De re Rustica 1.7.2 [14] reflects the Roman understanding the crux as the summum supplicium, that is, the utter extreme of legal punishments, showing just how far the law was capable regarding the destruction of a criminal, once he's caught:

summum ius antiqui summam putabant crucem.

The utmost of the law of old would be reckoned to be the topmost of the crux.

Catullus (84-54 BCE), Poem 99, lines 1-4 [15], compared the torment of grief after having a stolen kiss rejected by his beloved, Juventius, to being stuck on top of a crux.

SVRRUPI tibi, dum ludis, melitte Iuenti, suauiolum dulci dulcius ambrosia uerum id non impune tuli namque amplius horam suffixum in summa cruce me memini esse cruce,

I STOLE a kiss from you, honey-sweet Juventius, while you were playing a kiss sweeter than sweet ambrosia But not unpunished; for I remember how for more than an hour I hung impaled on top of a crux.

B.4. Tormentor

Likewise, the two also used the term to denote people who are aggravating nusicances, i.e., torments. It could be argued that in B.2. Term of Reproach above, in Plautis' Persa, Dordalus was calling Paegnium a tormentor. Here is another fine example:

Terence, Eunuchus, Act 2, Scene 3, Lines 91-94. [16]

Chaerea: An id flagitium est, si in domum meretriciam Deducar; et illis crucibus quae nos nostramque adolescentiam Habent despicatam, et quae nos semper omnibus cruciant* modis, Nunc referam gratiam; atque eas itidem fallam ut ab illis fallimur?

CHAEREA: What, is it disgraceful to be taken to the house of a Courtesan, and to return the compliment upon those tormentors who treat us and our youthful age so scornfully, and who are always tormenting us in every way;--to dupe them just as we are duped by them? Or is it right and proper that in preference my father should be wheedled out of his money by deceitful pretexts? Those who knew of this would blame me; while all would think the other a meritorious act.

* cruciant = (verb 3rd person plural present indicative active) of crucio, to put to the rack, to torture, to torment.

B.5. An Agent or Indirect Object of a Curse

The term crux was, before Christianity, used as an indirect object or an agent of a curse, usually obscene! It's kind of like the curse that former Vice president Dick Cheney said to US Senator Pat Leahy from Vermont way back in 2005: "Go **** yourself!" But it was actually even worse when the crux was a pole of impalement, because then when someone told someone else to go to a crux ("I in crucem!"), he not only told him to go "ride the point" (figuratively) but he also him to just go off and die! It's like the Mr. Garrison character of South Park, screaming at Kyle in his third grade class, "You die! You go to hell and you die!"

Plautus, Casina Act 3, Scene 5, Line 17 [17]

(Lysidamus is translated as STALINO by Henry Thomas Riley.)

Lysidamvs: I ín malam a mé crucem, péctus, aurís, caput téque di pérduint,

STALINO: Away to utter perdition; breast, ears, head, and yourself, may the Gods confound!

Plautus, Pseudolus Act 3, Scene 2, Line 54-58 [18]

Cocvs: Dimissis pedibus volui dicere. eum odorem cenat Iuppiter cottidie.

Ballio: Si nusquam is coctum, quidnam cenat Iuppiter?

Cocvs: It incenatus cubitum.

Ballio: I in malam crucem. istacine causa tibi hodie nummum dabo?

A COOK.: With its feet hanging down, I meant to say. Jupiter dines on that odour every day.

BALLIO: If you happen not to go out to cook, pray what does Jupiter dine upon?

A COOK.: He goes to sleep without his dinner.

BALLIO: Go to very perdition! Is it for this reason that I'm to give you a didrachm to-day?

Terence, Phormio Act 2, Scene 3, Line 14-24 [19]

Phormio: Nam iam adolescenti nihil est quod succenseam, Si ilium minus norat: quippe homo iam grandior, Pauper, cui opera vita erat, ruri fere Se continebat: ibi agrum de nostro patre Colendum habebat. Saepe interea mihi senex Narrabat se hunc negligere cognatum suum: At quem virum! quem ego viderim in vita optimum.

Geta: Videas te atque ilium ut narras.

Phormio: I in malam crucem. Nam nisi ita eum existimassem, nunquam tam graves Ob hanc inimicitias caperem in vestram familiam, Quam is aspernatur nunc tam illiberaliter.

PHORMIO: For really, I have no reason why I should be offended at the young man, if he did not know him; since that person, when growing aged and poor, and supporting himself by his labor, generally confined himself to the country; there hehad a piece of land from my father to cultivate; full oft, in the mean time, did the old. man tell me that this kinsman of his neglected him: but what a man? The very best I ever saw in all my life.

GETA: (in a loud voice.) Look to yourself as well as to him, how you speak.

PHORMIO: (with affected indignation.) Away, to utter perdition, with you. For if I had not formed such an opinion of him, I should never have incurred such enmity with your family on her account, whom he now slights in such an ungenerous manner.

Plautus, Menaechmi Act 2 Scene 2, Lines 53-56 [20]

Menaechmus: Non edepol tú homo sanus es, certo scio.

Cylindrus: Iam ergo haec madebunt faxo, nil morabitur. proin tu ne quo abeas longius ab aedibus. numquid vis?

Menaechmus: Vt eas maximam malam crucem.

MENAECHMUS SOSICLES: By my troth, you are not a person in his right senses, that I know for sure.

CYLINDRUS: I'll have these things cooked directly; there shall be no delay. Don't you be going after this anywhere at a distance from the house. Do you want anything?

MENAECHMUS SOSICLES: You to go to utter and extreme perdition!

Plautus, Captivi Act 3 Scene 1, Line 9 [21]

Ergasilvs: ilicet parasiticae arti maximam malam crucem,

ERGASILUS: Away with the profession of a Parasite to very utter and extreme perdition!

Plautus, Asinaria Act 5 Scene 2 Line 91 [22]

Artemona: I domum.

Philenium: Da savium etiam prius quam abis.

Demaentius: I in crucem.

ARTEMONA: (to DEMÆNETUS.) Be off home.

PHILENIUM: (to DEMÆNETUS.) Do give me a kiss, at least, before you go.

DEMAENETUS: (to PHILENIUM.) Go hang yourself. (Exeunt.)

Plautus, Casina Act 5 Scene 4 Lines 15, 16 [23]

(A trick has been played on Lysidamus (STALINO) and his slave bailiff Olympio: Lysidamus' wife Cleostrata has placed their son's slave armour-bearer Chalinus in place of her maidservant, Casina for her marriage to Olympio, because Chalinus learns of and reports to Cleostrata that Olympio agrees to let Lysidamus, who is madly in love with Casina just like Olympio is, have a sexual relationship with Casina starting on the wedding night! Needless to say, it is Chalinus who is on the receiving end of Olympio and Lysidamus' passions; and yes, he does get ploughed and not nicely, either. And so he beats up Olympio, punching him in the jaw, and takes Lysidamus' cloak and cane. Serves them both right!)

(In this scene, Chalinus chases after Lysidamus, keeping up the ruse.)

Chalinus: Etiamne imus cubitum? Casina sum.

Lysidamvs: I in malam crucem.

Chalinus: Non amas me?

CHALINUS: (coming up to STALINO) Shall we go to bed again? I am Casina.

STALINO: Away with you to utter perdition!

CHALINUS: Don't you love me?

Plautus, Pseudolus Act 5 Scene 2 Lines 9,10 [24]

Pseudolus: Vír malus viro óptumo obviam it.

Simo: Dí te ament, Pseúdole. fú i in malám crucem.

PSEUDOLUS: (staggering [drunk] up to SIMO.) A worthless fellow is coming to meet the best of men.

SIMO May the Gods bless you, Pseudolus. (PSEUDOLUS eructates.) Foh! go to utter perdition. (Pushes him away.)

Plautus, Poenulus Act 1, Scene 2, Line 138-139 [25]

Adelphasium: Deferto ad me, faxo actutum constiterit lymphaticum.

Milphio: Bellula hercle.

Agorastocles: I díerecte in maxumam malam crucem.

ADELPHASIUM: Bring them to me; I'll make their madness pretty soon come to an end.

MILPHIO: (With indignation.) A nice one, upon my word!

AGORASTOCLES: Away to utter and extreme perdition with you, and go and be hanged!

Plautus, Mostellaria 3.2.162-165 [26]

(THEOPROPRIDES SENEX, SIMO and TRANIO SERVUS are looking into a house to see if they can go in and investigate. Presently they are looking for dogs.)

Tranio Servus: Mane sis videam, ne canis—

Theoproprides Senex: Agedum vide.

Tranio Servus: Est! abi, canis. est! abin diérecta? abin hinc in malam crucem? at etiam restas? est! ábi istinc.

Simo: Nil pericli est, age . tam placidast, quam feta. quam vis ire intro audacter licet. eo ego hinc ad forum.—

TRANIO: There is one.

THEUROPIDES: (looking in.) Where is it?

TRANIO: (to the dog.) Be off and be hanged! 'St, won't you be off to utter perdition with you? What, do you still linger? 'St, away with you from here!

SIMO: (coming nearer to the door.) There's no danger. You only move on. It's as gentle as a woman in childbed. You may boldly step in-doors wherever you like. I'm going hence to the Forum.

Plautus, Persa Act 5, Scene 2, Lines 75-79 [27]

Toxilus: Satis súmpsimus súpplici iam.

Dordalus: Fateór, manus vobís do.

Toxilus: Et póst dabis sub fúrcis.

Sagaristo: Abi íntro—in crucem.

Dordalus: Án me hic parum éxercitum hísce habént?

Toxilus: Convenísse te Tóxilum me * spéctatores, bene valete. leno periit. plaudite.

TOXILUS: Have we now had satisfaction enough?

DORDALUS: I confess it; I hold up my hands to you.

TOXILUS: And, ere long, you shall be holding them beneath the bilboes.

SAGARISTIO: Be off in-doors. To perdition!

DORDALUS: (to the AUDIENCE.) Have these fellows here worked me in too slight a degree? (Goes into his house.)

TOXILUS: (calling after him.) Keep in mind that you met with a Toxilus. (To the AUDIENCE.) Spectators, kindly fare you well. The Procurer is demolished. Grant us your applause.

B.6. The Ever-erect Phallus of Priapus

Ooooh, we are going to have fun here!!!

Catullus, The Priapea, Priapus 87, Lines 17-21 [28]

manumque sursum habebis. Hoc tibi expedit,

parata namque crux stat ecce mentula*

'Velim pol' inquis? At pol ecce vilicus venit,

valente cui revulsa bracchio fit

ista mentula apta clava dexterae.

Best it befits thee to keep thy hands

Thy crux is ready, shaped as an artless yard*

'I'm willing 'Faith' (thou say'st) but 'Faith here comes

The boor and plucking forth with bended arm

Makes of this tool a club for doughty hand.

*Lit.: Your impaler is ready, beware! the phallus is erect.

The source translation has crux as "cross." It's definitely NOT a cross... it's an enormous phallus! And it's ready for penetration.

Q Horatius Flaccus (Horace) (65-8 BCE) Satyrarum libri 1.8.1-7 [29]

Conqueritur Priapus Esquilinum montem veneficarum incantationibus infestari.

Olim truncus eram ficulnus, inutile lignum, cum faber, incertus scamnum faceretne Priapum, maluit esse Deum. Deus inde ego, furum aviumque maxima formido; nam fures dextra coercet obscaenoque ruber porrectus ab inguine palus, ast importunas volucres in vertice harundo terret fixa vetatque novis considere in hortis.

Priapus is complaining that Mount Esquiline is being infested with the incantations of witches.

When the artificer, in doubt whether he should make a stool or a Priapus of me, determined that I should be a God. Henceforward I became a God, the greatest terror of thieves and birds: for my right hand restrains thieves, and a bloody looking pole on my frightful middle*: but a reed fixed upon the crown of my head** terrifies the mischievious birds, and hinders them from settling in these new gardens.***

* Lit.: A red and obscene pale stretching out from the groin. This is where the lexica get palus obscoeno from. What does this have to do with crucifixion? Palus is one of the vernacular names (at least amongst the Christians) that a certain attachment on the Roman crucifixion frame is given and it is taken in some translations for the upright central post of the cross but that is not necessarily so, as we shall see in Tertullian.

** in vertice harundo, lit. a reed, or a crown or wreath of reeds, upon the crown of the head. The similarity to the crown of thorns on the head of Jesus in the gospels is uncanny!

***Octavian, willing to correct the infection (miasma) of the hill, which was a common burial ground (also a yard for executions - Tacitus Annales 2.32.2, 15.60.1 - including crucifixions) for all the poor of Rome, got the consent of the Senate and the people to give part of it to Macaenas, who built a magnificent house there with extensive gardens. Seneca the Younger has choice words for Maceneas, as we shall see.

Clearly, since Catullus referred to Priapus' membrum virile as a crux that Horace referred to as a palus obsceno, then it is obvious that crux does not always mean "cross." And maybe before Christianity, it never did.

And here's what Priapus and his palus obsceno, his crux, so to speak, looked like.

Ancient Statues Do Not Lie.

Ancient Frescoes Do Not Lie.

Ancient Coins Do Not Lie.

Update 07 October 2011

B.7. A Grapevine Support.

Since the original posting of this part I have found yet another quotidian use for a crux: a grapevine support.

Pliny The Elder, The Natural History, Book XIV, Chapter 3. [30]

ulmos quidem ubique exuperant, miratumque altitudinem earum ariciae ferunt legatum regis pyrrhi cineam facete lusisse in austeriorem gustum vini, merito matrem eius pendere in tam alta cruce.

Everywhere we find the vine overtopping the elm even, and we read that Cineas,4 the ambassador of King Pyrrhus, when admiring the great height of the vines at Aricia, wittily making allusion to the peculiar rough taste of wine, remarked that it was with very good reason that they had hung the parent of it on so lofty a gibbet.

Here are some examples.

Recreated Roman vineyards with Roman statues, Torcello, Italy.

Roman Vineyard in Wroxeter, England, UK.

Replanted Vineyards in Pompeii.

All three examples have vines on horizontal poles, supported by vertical ones! As you can see, cruces could either have been vertical, or horizontal, or most likely, both. The obvious thing is, the cruces are long and cylindrical! They are NOT crosses!

(End of Update)

Notes:

[1] Verbosum Blogspot.com - Crux

[2] Random House.com - Crux

[3] Urban Dictionary.com - Crucify

[4] Humanist.de - Roman Traction Systems - Wagon

[5] Ibid.

[6] Sketchup Google.com - Warehouse Details - Roman Ox-drawn Wagon

[7] Perseus Tufts.edu - Patibulum

[8] Statius, Silvae IV, ch. III "Via Domitiana" at The Latin Library

[9] Perseus Tufts.edu - T. Maccius Plautus, Persa 5.2

[10] Perseus Tufts.edu - T. Maccius Plautus, Aulularia 3.5.46-48

[11] T. Maccius Plautus, Bacchides 4.2.1-2

[12] Perseus Tufts.edu - T. Macchius Plautus Bacchides, Prologue, Lines 65-66 English translation here.

[13] Perseus Tufts.edu - P. Terentius Afer (Terence), Phormio 3.3.9-12

[14] Columella De re Rustica 1.7.2, quoted in Martin Hengel, Crucifixion in the ancient world and the folly of the message of the cross, translated by John Bowden, Philadelphia, PA, Fortress Press, 1977 p.66. Also Perseus Tufts.edu - Crux (select 'Lewis & Short')

[15] VRoma.org - Catullus, Poem 99

[16] Perseus Tufts.edu - P. Terentius Afer (Terence), Eunuchus 2.3.91-94

[17] Perseus Tufts.edu - T. Macchius Plautus, Casina 3.5.17

[18] Perseus Tufts.edu - T. Macchius Plautus, Pseudolus 3.2.54-58

[19] Perseus Tufts.edu - P. Terentius Afer (Terence), Phormio 2.3.14-24

[20] Perseus Tufts.edu - T. Macchius Plautus, Menaechmi 2.2.53-56

[21] Perseus Tufts.edu - T. Macchius Plautus, Captivi 3.1.9

[22] Perseus Tufts.edu - T. Macchius Plautus, Asinaria 5.2.91

[23] Perseus Tufts.edu - T. Macchius Plautus, Casina 5.4.15, 16

[24] Perseus Tufts.edu - T. Macchius Plautus, Pseudolus 5.2.9,10

[25] Perseus Tufts.edu - T. Macchius Plautus, Poenulus Act 1, Scene 2, Line 138-139

[26] Perseus Tufts.edu - T. Macchius Plautus, Mostellaria 3.2.162-165

[27] Perseus Tufts.edu - T. Macchius Plautus, Persa 5.2.75-79

[28] Dankalia.com - The Priapea

[29] Perseus Tufts.edu - O. Horatius Flaccus (Horace), Satyrarum libri 1.8.1-7

[30] Perseus Tufts.edu - Pliny The Elder, The Natural History BOOK XIV CHAP. 3

Part 4 - The Tropaeum and the Furca

PREVIOUS CRUCIFIXION ARTICLES:

Crucifixion – The Bodily Support - Part 1.

Crucifixion – The Bodily Support - Part 2 - Archaeological Evidence.

Crucifixion - The Bodily Support - Part 3 - Manuscript Evidence and its Similarities to the Imagery of the Caesar Cult.

Crucifixion – The Bodily Support - Part 4 - Physics of Crucifixion.

The Romans NEVER CRUCIFIED the Way We Think They Did 2

2011-01-19T19:39:00.000-08:00

Reproduction of a Roman carriage.

Part 2 - Crux

Part 1

What does a Roman carriage have anything to do with crucifixion? To tell you the truth, it has something to do with the central point of the matter - and of the structure upon which Romans crucified their worst criminals. And it is the central point of the structure that makes the physics of crucifixion work, and enables the prisoner to suffer for days, maybe a week, instead of just a few hours.

But like I said in Part 1, I think the first thing we should look at is how the lexicons define CRUX, which is the Latin word for CROSS.

And so I present to you the Lewis and Short Lexicon entry for Crux.

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. —
II. Transf.
A. As a term of reproach, a gallows bird, a hempen rascal, Plaut. Pers. 5, 2, 17.—
B. Transf., torture, trouble, misery, destruction, etc. (so most freq. in Plaut. and Ter., and in the former esp. freq. in connection with mala): aliqua mala crux, tormentor (of a prostitute), Plaut. Aul. 3, 5, 48; cf.: “illae cruces,” Ter. Eun. 2, 3, 92: “quae te mala crux agitat?” what tormentor troubles you? Plaut. Bacch. 4, 2, 2: “abstraxit hominem in maximam malam crucem,” id. Men. prol. 66: “quaerere in malo crucem,” Ter. Phorm. 3, 3, 11.—Prov.: “summum jus antiqui summam putabant crucem,” Col. 1, 7, 2.—Hence, in colloq. lang.: “I (abi, etc.) in malam crucem!” go to the devil! go and be hanged! Plaut. Cas. 3, 5, 17; id. Ps. 3, 2, 57; 4, 7, 86 al.; Ter. Phorm. 2, 3, 21; cf.: Cy. Num quid vis? Me. Ut eas maximam in malam crucem, Plaut. Men. 2, 2, 53; id. Capt. 3, 1, 9.—Without mala: “I in crucem,” Plaut. As. 5, 2, 91.—And ellipt.: “in malam crucem!” Plaut. Cas. 5, 4, 8; id. Ps. 5, 2, 5. —Hence, Ital. croce; Fr. croix.

Also the Elementary Lewis Lexicon entry for the same word.

crux ucis, f
CVR-, a gallows, frame, tree (on which criminals were impaled or hanged), C.—A cross: (mereri) crucem, T.: cruci suffixi: in crucem acti, S.: Non pasces in cruce corvos, H.: pretium sceleris, Iu.—Torture, trouble, misery, destruction: quaerere in malo crucem, T.—Colloq.: i in malam crucem! go and be hanged, T.

From these two entries we get the following for crux:

1. A tree, frame, or other wooden instruments of execution upon which criminals were hanged or impaled;
2. A cross;
3. The pole of a carriage (or wagon or chariot) - see the photo above - ;
4. A term of reproach, a gallows bird, an 'empen rascal;
5. A torture, trouble, misery, destruction;
6. A tormenter;
7. In the colliquilar, an indirect object or an agent in an obscene curse where the recipient is urged to go to utter perdition.

And where does the word come from? According to Lewis and Short, the word appears to be kindred with the Latin word circus! And where does this word circus come from? According to Lewis and Short, it comes from the Greek word κίρκος [kindred with κρίκος; Dor. κίρκος, and κορώνη.

Here are the definitions of these words according to Liddell, Scott and Jones Greek-English Lexicon:

κίρκος: A hawk or falcon, a kind of wolf, a circle, a ring, later the Lat. circus, an unknown stone, a rower or the stroke of an oar, a budding of a black poplar.

κρίκος: A ring, on a horse's breastband, to fasten it to the peg (ἕστωρ) at the end of the carriage-pole, also an eyelet hole in sails, a curtain-ring, a finger ring, a nose ring, an armlet, a link in a chain, a hoop and a ring of a spanner (wrench).

κορώνη: a sea-bird (possibly), a crow, anything hooked or curved, a door-handle, the tip of a bow, the curved stern of a ship, the top of a bow or in gereral an end or a tip, the curved stern of a ship, a coronoid process of the ulna, the crown of a festival; curved, crooked, of the coronoid process of the jawbone, with crumpled horns.

And where do the above three words come from? They appear to come from the Proto-Indo-European root *sker- that means to turn, bend.

Judging by the above, there appears to be a strong correlation with the word crux and somethnig circular, perhaps cylindrical. Particularly when the instrument of execution that impaled people and the tow-pole of a horse-drawn vehicle are both named by that word. In fact, there is an intimate association with the Latin word crux when used in this second sense and the Greek word κρίκος! How crux got to mean cross is a long story and requires an immense amount of investigation. It will be difficult to do it justice on my humble blog but I will make the case with what I have.

There is another theory about the source of the Latin word crux. It was first proposed by the 19th Century German scholar A. Zestermann who was cited by another German scholar, Hermann Fulda in Das Kreuz und der Kreuzigung (1878 CE). He quotes Zestermann as stating the word crux was derived from a Sanskrit word meaning "torturing cram." Unfortunately, Fulda had found out, that all the people who lived between Rome and India, including the Persians, Babylonians, Syrians, Hebrews and the Phoenicians (from whom the Carthaginians were descended) only knew of the plain word meaning "tree or pole/pale/stake." [1]

In Part 3 I will talk about the modern English use and the ancient Greco-Roman uses of the word crux that have nothing to do with the actual punishment of crucifixion. Because the Romans NEVER CRUCIFIED the way we think they did!

[1] Fulda, Hermann. Das Kreuz und der Kreuzigung, Breslau, Verlag von Wilhelm Koebner, 1878, p. 112.

Part 3 - Modern English Use and Ancient Quotidian Meanings.

PREVIOUS CRUCIFIXION ARTICLES:

Crucifixion – The Bodily Support - Part 1.

Crucifixion – The Bodily Support - Part 2 - Archaeological Evidence.

Crucifixion - The Bodily Support - Part 3 - Manuscript Evidence and its Similarities to the Imagery of the Caesar Cult.

Crucifixion – The Bodily Support - Part 4 - Physics of Crucifixion.

The Romans NEVER CRUCIFIED the Way We Think They Did.

2011-01-17T21:02:00.000-08:00

Part 1

My previous crucifixion articles, written back in June, are going in for a major rewrite. Since then, I have come to the realization that what the overwhelming majority of people think of as crucifixion was never done by the Romans: nail to a flat plane cross and lift up as a god. First of all, the physics are impossible. Second of all, the Romans were very religious and they saw the cross as a sign of victory, representing the Rays of the Sun. In fact, they had victory crosses and votive crosses all over the Roman Empire.

Here is how we define crucifixion:

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

crucifixion n. 1.a. The act of crucifying, execution on a cross. b. Crucifixion. The crucifying of Jesus on Calvary. Used with the. c. A representation of Jesus on the cross. 2. An extremely difficult and painful trial; tortuous suffering.

crucify v. -fied, fying, fies. 1. To put a person to death by nailing or binding to a [Ed-M: flat plane] cross. 2. To mortify or subdue (the flesh). 3. To subject to cruel treatment; torment: a candidate who was crucified by the press. [Middle English crucified, from Old French crucifier, alteration of Latin crucifigere : crux, cruc-, cross + figere, to attach.

To see how the Romans put their most noxious criminals to death, we have to figure out what exactly they did. I think the first thing we should look at is how the lexicons define CRUX, which is the Latin word for CROSS. And we need to find out what other word stood for CROSS, based not on Lexicons or Dictionaries, but on ancient epigraphic evidence.

And then we can go from there.

Part 2 - Crux

PREVIOUS CRUCIFIXION ARTICLES:

Crucifixion – The Bodily Support - Part 1.

Crucifixion – The Bodily Support - Part 2 - Archaeological Evidence.

Crucifixion - The Bodily Support - Part 3 - Manuscript Evidence and its Similarities to the Imagery of the Caesar Cult.

Crucifixion – The Bodily Support - Part 4 - Physics of Crucifixion.

HAPPY NEW YEARS Y'ALL!!!

2010-12-31T22:05:00.000-08:00

2010 was a disaster. The mainstream media was responsible for the right-winged takeover of the Lower House of Congress, for Pfc Bradley Manning to be figuratively CRUCIFIED in the public square, for Obama (THAT One) caving time and time again again, undermining Nancy Pelosi and pruning Harry Reid's ability for enabling better legislation. For passing a bogus DADT Repeal which is anything BUT - and with the fake Bradley Manning scandle, they'll take years, if not decades, to get a round tuit and lift DADT. And yes, the Bradley Manning scandle is utterly FAKE, because all the evidence that's been produced so far are a bunch of BOGUS or at least apparently so chat logs produced by one disreputable character, Adrian Lamo, quisling!

And why am I so pissed off at the Bradley Manning scandle? Because if the guy is sent to 52 years in prison, or executed for Treason MERELY FOR SPEAKING THE TRUTH, then the US Government gets to be as opaque as it wants to be, but the citizenry, not just in the US but all over the world, will have to be utterly transparent to the US government! This is nothing short of utter insanity and pure fascism and is reminiscent of the sort of human liberty abuses that were predicted in Revelations Chapter 13. Even tho' I'm a Bible disbeliever!

And I am going to make a Hitler Downfall (Untergang) parody where Der Fuehrer complains that Obama (THAT One!) is horning in on HIS territiry and is liable for civil and criminal penalties under Godwin's Law!!!

Happy New Year!

Merged Chat Logs Timeline Discrepancies!

2010-12-30T18:58:00.000-08:00

Many thanks to Fire Dog Lake for merging the alleged Manning-Lamo chat log bits and pieces from wired, BoingBoing.net and The Washington Post. They have also included unsubstantiated statements from Adrian Lamo, the quisling who fingered Bradley Manning. If Manning's guilty, he's a hero. If innocent, he's been set up, framed and railroaded.

Glenn Greenwald became furious over the past two weeks as he found out that as Bradley Manning is suffering under conditions that any rational being would call torture, Adrian Lamo was free to make many, many unsubstantiated claims about how Manning uploaded the docs up to WikiLeaks (remember, folks, there's 3/4 Million in all, not the 260K Manning's charged with) so he wrote a demand that Poulsen either substantiate Lamo's claims or deny them here, calling the utter fiasco of journalism at Wired a worsening disgrace!

In response, Evan Hansen and Kevin Poulsen of Wired sought to put the record straight here, except they don't, really. They did more of a self-defense through rationalisation and justification, which Glenn Greenwald clearly saw through and reported here and here. Glenn noticed that Poulsen and Hansen did not address Lamo's claims that (1) Manning contacted him out of the blue, either through the AOL(?) IM service or through sending encoded emails that Lamo didn't decode because he lost or discarded the key he had to do so, and (2) Assange gave Manning special software other than the FTP software that can be used by anybody to upload sensitive documents up to WikiLeaks. Assange has said several times that his technology is set up to upload completely anonymously so that the WikiLeaks people would not ever know who uploaded the data. Assange also said that he never knew of Manning until his name was made public by the Mainstream Media!

Well today, BoingBoing.net reported that Poulsen and Hansen basically threw Lamo under the bus! And even then they were being coy about it: Evan Hansen tweet: "@ggreenwald I just reviewed the full text and all descriptions of Manning's relationship w/ Assange and Wikileaks are already public."

I for one think that the chat logs are very fishy. They appear to have Manning and Lamo chatting at peculiar hours, especially for a soldier who's expected to keep normal - early to bed, early to rise - hours after being removed from the intelligence unit (the logs allege that) and probably when he was in it, too! BoingBoing noticed that Adriam Lamo was outing him as a pre-transitioned transgendered person (really Adrian? where's the proof?). So without further adieu, I shall sort out the blocs of chats and the hours covered. The times in FDL as in every other media hour, I presume to be Pacific Daylight Time (PDT), which is = GMT - 7. Iraq Military Time (IMT) is GMT + 3. So to get IMT, one adds 10 hours to PDT.

FireDogLake's Merged Chat Logs Divided into Blocs

IMT: 0000:00 HRS to 1200:00 HRS is AM; 12:00:00 HRS to 2400:00 HRS is PM.

Bloc A

Begin 5/21 01:41:12 PM PDT = 5/21 2341:12 HRS IMT
End 5/21 02:17:29 PM PDT = 5/22 0017:29 HRS IMT

Bloc B - Question by Lamo - Manning should be asleep.

Lamo 5/21 06:07:29 PM PDT = 5/22 0407:29 HRS IMT

Bloc C - Answer by Manning. Assume before dawn 5/22 PDT. Lamo's probably up!

Manning 5/22 03:16:24 AM PDT = 5/22 1316:24 HRS IMT

Bloc D

Begin 5/22 12:15:11 PM PDT = 5/22 2215:11 HRS IMT
End 5/22 02:19:37 PM PDT = 5/23 0019:37 HRS IMT

Bloc E

Begin 5/23 07:19:12 AM PDT = 5/23 1719:12 HRS IMT
End 5/23 07:34:48 AM PDT = 5/23 1734:48 HRS IMT

Bloc F

Begin 5/23 08:01:30 AM PDT = 5/23 1601:30 HRS IMT
End 5/23 10:37:28 AM PDT = 5/23 2037:28 HRS IMT

Bloc G

Begin 5/25 02:03:10 AM PDT = 5/25 1203:10 HRS IMT
End 5/25 02:32:53 AM PDT = 5/25 1232:53 HRS IMT

Bloc H

Begin 5/25 02:26:01 PM PDT = 5/26 0026:01 HRS IMT*
End 5/25 03:02:03 PM PDT = 5/26 0102:03 HRS IMT

Bloc J

Begin 5/25 03:07:26 PM PDT = 5/26 0107:26 HRS IMT
End 5/25 03:12:16 PM PDT = 5/26 0112:16 HRS IMT

Okay, what the hell is a soldier doing up at 1 in the morning if he has to awake at 5 or 6 AM??? And even later, cause the chat logs if fully released, could show the alleged conversation going even further into the morning!

Time Lapse Blocs. The time recorded between end of Bloc J and beginning of Time Lapse Bloc K goes BACK in time by more than one hour. Recorded by Wired as having occurred on the 25th PDT. I will leave it like that here, but plot it on the attached chart (at the bottom) as having occurred the next day. To avoid obvious conflicts.

Time Lapse Bloc K

Begin 5/25 01:52:30 PM PDT = 5/25 2352:30 HRS IMT
End 5/25 02:03:53 PM PDT = 5/26 0003:53 HRS IMT

Time Lapse Bloc L

Begin 5/25 02:12:23 PM PDT = 5/26 0012:23 HRS IMT
End 5/25 02:29:18 PM PDT = 5/26 0029:18 HRS IMT*

* There are 3 minutes' overlap between the beginning of Bloc H and the end of Time Lapse Bloc L, but the subject matter does not match one with the other! They are mutually exclusive and it appears there are texts sent simultaneously by Manning! This is absolutely impossible. This is an immense credibility problem for these chat logs, given Lamo's disreputable character.

Time Lapse Bloc M

Begin 5/25 03:38:07 PM PDT = 5/26 0138:07 HRS IMT
End 5/25 03:45:13 PM PDT = 5/26 0145:13 HRS IMT

Time Lapse Bloc N

Begin 5/25 04:32:05 PM PDT = 5/26 0232:05 HRS IMT
End 5/25 04:46:29 PM PDT = 5/26 0246:29 HRS IMT

What on Earth is a soldier doing up at 3 AM unless he's on night duty? And if he's on duty, and already people have eyes on him, what would he be doing chatting with this slacker hacker? Or is he "talking" with the hacker only in the hacker's BRAIN? Enquiring minds want to know!

Now the Time Lapse blocs. Since Wired has these blocs on the 25th PDT, they could have been in Lamo's 'puter as reading that they were made on the 25th! Immediately I would assume, if I were on the jury, that these chat logs, being *.txt files, are utterly suspect. I mean, they could have been corrupted or even invented by Lamo. Who basically snitched on Manning or set him up and framed him without even contacting him. Which means Lamo and others whom he pals around with, like Poulsen, could be working for the US central government. Which in itself is utterly corrupt.

So instead of Manning being Courtmartialed, the whole government/military-industrial nomenklatura should should all be arrested. For war crimes and crimes against humanity as well as treason.

Yemeni Nationals Get to Call Home From Guantanamo.

2010-12-29T03:28:00.000-08:00

Xinhuanet: ICRC facilitates video calls for Guantanamo detainees, their families in Yemen

SANAA, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced on Tuesday that it has facilitated video-teleconference calls between detainees at the U.S.-run military jail in Guantanamo Bay and their families in Yemen.

"The first calls were made ten days ago at the headquarters of the ICRC's delegation in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. The latest round of calls was made from Yemen's southern city port of Aden," the ICRC said in a press release.

"So far, four Yemeni families have used the video calls," Nourane Houas of the ICRC's Sanaa delegation said.

The video calls can last up to one hour, in which detainees for the first time in almost a decade can speak and also see their families in Yemen.

No information on whether Pfc Bradley Manning can call his family or receive phone calls from them, even from his aunt who lives in Potomac, MD., only 50 miles away by Expressway, his father in Oklahoma, or his mum and other aunt in Wales. I suspect he cannot. And I bet that compared to Manning's solitary confinement, the ~~detainees~~ prisoners of war at Guantanamo Bay live in the lap of luxury. For one thing, they don't have to sleep in only boxer shorts under a heavy, itchy and scratchy blanket that is exactly like rough commercial carpet superglued onto an x-ray technician's protective shroud, which is pure torture. Which is why he takes sleeping pills.

A Lawless State Tortures Its Own.

2010-12-28T11:53:00.000-08:00

Bradley Manning, whether he leaked the video and the documents or not, was only doing his job!

From Paul Craig Roberts:

Bradley Manning, who allegedly provided the media with the video made by US troops of their wanton, fun-filled slaughter of newsmen and civilians, has been abused in solitary confinement for six months. Murdering civilians is a war crime, and as General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the National Press Club on February 17, 2006, “It is the absolute responsibility of everybody in uniform to disobey an order that is either illegal or immoral” and to make such orders known. If Manning is the source of the leak, he has been wrongfully imprisoned for meeting his military responsibility. The media have yet to make the point that the person who reported the crime, not the persons who committed it, is the one who has been imprisoned, and without a trial.

Read the whole article here.

Actually the solitary confinement has been going on for seven months and counting. It is an intensive 23-hour-a-day solitary, made all the more inhumane by a now unneccesary for six-and-a-half months Prevention of Injury watch, ostensibly for the soldier's own protection! This is no less than torture, even when done with the best of intentions, and reeks of pure fascism.

Everything is Oppositeland at Fox News

2010-12-28T09:55:00.000-08:00

Do they have anything useful that can be used? The former Defence Undersecretary says Manning's attorney should contact the Inspector General. I assume he's done that already.

This Fox News piecs is no less than a smear on Bradley Manning and us, his supporters. Worse, they're justifying and advocating torture! And the one speaking up for our side and for Bradley is beyond pathetic. The whole exercise is disgusting!

This US Soldier's Torture Is Worse than Crucifixion, Totally Insane and Beyond Disgusting.

2010-12-27T23:37:00.000-08:00

The US central government is slowly grinding down an heroic soldier, who either with the aid of others, leaked swarms of documents and other files that document war crimes and other US misdeeds to WikiLeaks and was entrapped by a hacker, or made a nuisance of himself insisting his superiors address the international felonies and was conveniently gotten rid of. The soldier's name is Pfc Bradley Manning. They are grinding down through the slow psychological torture of intensive, 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement, made all the more wearying with restrictions invoked through a "Prevention Of Injury" order. How Orwellian is that??

First is the infamous video of a US War Crime in North Baghdad that Bradley is alleged to have leaked. It'll turn your stomach!

And following is an excellent article by Chris Floyd of the Empire Burlesque blog.

Written on the Body: The Progressive Torture of Bradley Manning
Written by Chris Floyd

Monday, 27 December 2010 23:17

Tonight, in the tenth year of the 21st century, the government of the United States is torturing a young man -- one of its own soldiers -- whom it has incarcerated but not indicted. He has been held in solitary confinement for months on end, subjected to techniques of sleep deprivation taken from the Soviet gulag, denied almost all human contact except from interrogators, constantly harassed by guards to whom he must answer every few minutes -- all in an attempt to break his mind, destroy his will, degrade his humanity and force him to "confess" to a broader "conspiracy" against state power.

His name is Bradley Manning. He is 23 years old. The "crime" he is accused of committing is releasing video evidence of an American atrocity committed years ago in Iraq: the murder of Iraqi civilians by helicopter gunships. Under the American system of jurisprudence, of course, he is considered innocent until proven guilty of this heinous 'crime' of truth-telling. He has not been tried or convicted of this charge, or any other crime.

Yet tonight, in the tenth year of the 21st century, in the United States of America, under the leadership of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Barack Obama, 23-year-old Bradley Manning is being subjected to same tortures routinely inflicted on other unindicted, untried captives of the militarist state.

Journalist Andy Worthington, who has been one of the most thorough and assiduous chroniclers of the modern American gulag, has noted the parallels between the treatment imposed on Manning and that doled out to earlier prisoners of the bizarre, lawless limbo concocted by the American war machine for those who threaten -- or are perceived to threaten -- its ever-expanding, ever-more corrupt operations around the world. Worthington states that the conditions of Manning's imprisonment

bear a marked and chilling resemblance to the conditions in which a handful of US citizens and residents were held as “enemy combatants” under the Bush administration. The key elements here are the elements of profound isolation and suffering ... not just the solitary confinement, with no other human being for company, but also the refusal to allow Manning to have a pillow, sheets, or any access to the outside world through the reporting of current affairs.

It is these factors that mark out his conditions of detention as sharing some key elements with the conditions endured by the three “enemy combatants” held on the US mainland under the Bush administration — the US citizens Yasser Hamdi and Jose Padilla, and the US legal resident Ali al-Marri.

...  al-Marri, along with two American citizens also held as “enemy combatants” — Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla — was subjected to the same “Standard Operating Procedure” that was applied to prisoners at Guantánamo during its most brutal phase, from mid-2002 to mid-2004. This involved the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” including prolonged isolation, painful stress positions, exposure to extreme temperature, sleep deprivation, extreme sensory deprivation, and threats of violence and death.  ...

There is, at present, no suggestion that Bradley Manning has been subjected to a wide range of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” but prolonged isolation is confirmed, and depriving him of a pillow, sheets, or any access to the outside world through the reporting of current affairs are all elements of discomfort and further isolation that were key to the program of belittling and punishing “enemy combatants,” and, crucially, “softening them up” or “breaking” them for interrogation. It is, sadly, all too easy to imagine that other techniques designed to disorientate Manning and to further erode his will — involving elements of sleep deprivation, threats and sensory deprivation — could also be applied, or are, perhaps, already being applied, especially if, as has been suggested by the Independent, the authorities are hoping to cut a plea deal with him, reducing a 52-year sentence in exchange for a confession that Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, whom the US is seeking to extradite to the US, was not just a passive recipient of the information leaked by Manning, but was instead a conspirator.

As Glenn Greenwald and others have documented, the known treatment being meted out to Bradley Manning is itself a profound form of torture. Indeed, isolation, sleep deprivation, incessant harassment and constant interrogation were primary methods of the torturers in the Soviet gulag, who in many cases did not resort to more "enhanced" techniques unless the pressure was on from above to produce large numbers of "convictions" and "evidence" of conspiracies in a hurry. These techniques -- the same techniques now used under the command of the Peace Laureate -- were considered highly effective and severely punishing tortures in their own right. They are now at the center of the American gulag's treatment of its captives.And, as Worthington ominously notes, we have no way of knowing at this moment whether "enhanced" techniques are being used on Manning as well.

I am running out of words to describe the depths we are sinking into. I am running out of ways to try to shake people from their stupor and shock them into an awareness of the monstrous evil that is rising all around them. Even those who proclaim themselves the progressive friends of all humankind spend most of their time and energy wringing their hands over the political tea leaves, parsing the strategy and tactics of the partisan squabbles between the two scarcely-distinguishable factions of the militarist establishment. And while they are sometimes bold enough to criticize this or that element of the Peace Laureate's administration, they still fret and fight and pray to keep that administration in power.

But tonight that very administration is torturing a young man -- torturing him -- for telling the truth about the crimes being committed by the machinery of evil that their standard-bearer, the Peace Laureate, now proudly directs. If you support this administration, then you support the torture of Bradley Manning. You are working to guarantee that such tortures, and worse, are inflicted on more and more truth-tellers, more and more people whose consciences have been jolted to the core by the abominations they have witnessed or learned about from others.

The militarist, corporatist, liberty-stripping evil that our earnest lovers of humanity fear will come to pass if those evil Republicans come to power is already here, it is happening before their very eyes. "Oh, that Glenn Beck, how terrible he is!" Yes, he is terrible, but I tell you this: Glenn Beck hasn't tortured anyone. Glenn Beck hasn't killed hundreds of defenseless innocent civilians, men, women and children murdered without any warning by robot drones in an undeclared war on an allied nation. Glenn Beck hasn't "surged" an endless, pointless, murderous, money-making war of domination against a broken land and its terrorized people. Glenn Beck is not going to court to defend torturers. Glenn Beck is not proclaiming he has the arbitrary, unchallengeable power to assassinate anyone on earth whenever he feels like it.

But the Peace Laureate has done all these things. He is doing all these things, and more. No doubt Glenn Beck -- and all the other greasy-pole climbers seeking wealth and domination in our degraded society -- would like to do these things too. But those with their eyes fixed on the potential or fantasized future evil of their partisan opponents are blind to the fact that their own faction is committing gross evils right here and now. Barack Obama is entrenching the machinery of evil deeper and deeper into the structures of government and society; he is strengthening the foundations of evil that others will build upon, just as he is building upon the wars and gulags and corporate whoredom of his predecessor. Progressives who support Obama -- who support this entrenching process -- are in fact guaranteeing that their dystopian nightmares of the future will come true. They are helping Obama clear the path for an even rougher, more merciless beast now slouching toward Washington to be born.

As I said, words are beginning to fail me. And in any case, almost no one is reading the words on this site. [Most of the traffic is drawn by the magnificent -- and shattering -- collection of Iraq War photos compiled by the webmaster, Rich Kastelein.] So let me end with the words of someone else: the incomparable Arthur Silber, whose mighty heart and incisive mind have blazed with light through many dark years:

I repeat once more: these horrors are now what the United States stands for. Thus, for every adult American, the question is not, "Why do you obey?" but:

Why do you support?

Or will you refuse to give your support? Will you say, "No"? These are the paramount questions at this moment in history, and in the life of the United States. We all must answer them. Our honor, our humanity, and our souls lie in the balance.

UPDATE: After putting this post together, I ran across the latest essay by Chris Hedges at Truthdig. Hedges, like Silber, is one of the very few who have the courage to walk the full walk and live fully by their convictions, despite the cost. Hedges was recently arrested outside the White House of the Peace Laureate, one of many protestors hauled off for speaking the truth about the Laureate's wars in a manner deemed unseemly in our great democracy.

His new piece is an eloquent description of how the nightmare dystopia noted above is already coming into being, a horrible mash-up of Huxley's "Brave New World" and Orwell's "1984." You should read the whole thing, but here are a few excerpts, beginning with his mention of the Bradley Manning case:

...The psychological torture of Pvt. Bradley Manning—who has now been imprisoned for seven months without being convicted of any crime—mirrors the breaking of the dissident Winston Smith at the end of “1984.” Manning is being held as a “maximum custody detainee” in the brig at Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Virginia. He spends 23 of every 24 hours alone. He is denied exercise. He cannot have a pillow or sheets for his bed. Army doctors have been plying him with antidepressants. The cruder forms of torture of the Gestapo have been replaced with refined Orwellian techniques, largely developed by government psychologists, to turn dissidents like Manning into vegetables. We break souls as well as bodies. It is more effective. Now we can all be taken to Orwell’s dreaded Room 101 to become compliant and harmless. These “special administrative measures” are regularly imposed on our dissidents, including Syed Fahad Hashmi, who was imprisoned under similar conditions for three years before going to trial. The techniques have psychologically maimed thousands of detainees in our black sites around the globe. They are the staple form of control in our maximum security prisons where the corporate state makes war on our most politically astute underclass—African-Americans.

...The public, at some point, will have to face some very unpleasant truths. The good-paying jobs are not coming back. The largest deficits in human history mean that we are trapped in a debt peonage system that will be used by the corporate state to eradicate the last vestiges of social protection for citizens, including Social Security. The state has devolved from a capitalist democracy to neo-feudalism. And when these truths become apparent, anger will replace the corporate-imposed cheerful conformity. The bleakness of our post-industrial pockets, where some 40 million Americans live in a state of poverty and tens of millions in a category called “near poverty,” coupled with the lack of credit to save families from foreclosures, bank repossessions and bankruptcy from medical bills, means that inverted totalitarianism will no longer work.

...  The noose is tightening. The era of amusement is being replaced by the era of repression. Tens of millions of citizens have had their e-mails and phone records turned over to the government. We are the most monitored and spied-on citizenry in human history. Many of us have our daily routine caught on dozens of security cameras. Our proclivities and habits are recorded on the Internet. Our profiles are electronically generated. Our bodies are patted down at airports and filmed by scanners. And public service announcements, car inspection stickers, and public transportation posters constantly urge us to report suspicious activity. The enemy is everywhere.

Hedges also provides a telling passage from Orwell's novel, where the facts of life are explained to Winston Smith:

"We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. ... The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”

These bedrock truths of our time are now being played out on the body and mind of Bradley Manning. The object of Bradley Manning's torture is not bolstering "national security" or upholding the "rule of law"; the object of his torture is the torture itself: the demonstration of power, the enactment of power, the physical embodiment of power. Power is not a reality until you exercise it -- inflict it -- upon someone else. And that is the essential, the ultimate concern of the militarist empire that rules us today.

So this is how we support our troops! By treating the ones who are accused of being whistle-blowers as if they are enemy combatants (who should be treated better than they are)! By subjecting them to torture and cruel and unusual punishments! We do it without conviction, without trial, without an indictment, even! Where is the soldier's right to humane treatment whilst awaiting only a short time for a speedy trial? Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? I guess like the Constitution and the Rule of Law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice has been gitmoised!

This is not what one would expect from Limited Government!

This is not what one would expect from Liberal Politicians!

This is NOT right, it is totally beyond the pale, and cannot be tolerated in any civilised society!

Obama, Biden, Hilary, Gates, et al, must all be impeached and removed from office; then arrested. For war crimes as well as treason.

And the Teabaggers scream about Birth Certificates!

Please click here and here to join me in support of Bradley Manning.

Actual Teabagger Photo Found on the Web!

2010-11-09T10:46:00.000-08:00

Find the manip.

ChristPsychotic Navy Chaplin Goes Anti-Gay in Speech on Abortion

2010-10-21T11:37:00.001-07:00

And these types are trying to take over! All the more reason to end Don't Ask - Don't Tell. So these nuts will jump ship like rats!

Huntsville Rapist Bed Intruder Song -- Inspired!!

2010-10-13T12:29:00.000-07:00

This is great!! A guy sounds off after his sister was almost raped in her bed.

And it makes for excellent dance music, too!

Crucifixion – The Bodily Support - Part 4 - Physics of Crucifixion.

2010-06-19T16:15:00.000-07:00

Part 3

UPDATE JANUARY 17, 2010: What I have found out since posting these four parts will require a major rewrite. Parts 2, 3 and 4 will be broken up. Videos showing where Christianity got The Crucifixion FROM will be presented. The series will rerun under a new title, "The Romans NEVER CRUCIFIED the Way We Think They Did."

Sources.

Was Jesus Crucified in the Manner Shown in Art and on Film?
Crucifixion in Antiquity
Dr. Zugibe's Findings
IO9.com "The Last Temptation of Jean-Claude Van Damme"
Amazon.com "Cobra"
Media Fax Photo via the Google Group "Male Cross Research."
http://encyclopediaurantia.org
glbtq.com
Son of Man.org

Preface.

In modern-day reenactments, how do movie directors keep the actor's midsection from flaring out like an archery bow when he is portrayed crucified? That has actually happened in the production of films and in safe, sane crucifixion experiments.

Experiments by Others.

Photo Credit: Crucifixion Shroud.com

The above photo demonstrates the problems with crucifying someone in the traditional manner on a conventional Christian Cross.

Frederick T. Zugibe, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Medical Examiner in Rockland County, N.Y. and Adjunct Associate Professor of Pathology Columbia University College of Physician’s and Surgeons, N.Y. crucified both fresh cadavers or body parts and live students (safely and sanely, of course) to test and study the practice of crucifixion. He proved with cadavers that if a man was nailed to the front of a cross in his palms and the top of his feet, the nail ripped through the skin with only about 45 pounds of pressure. One crucified in this manner could pull free of the cross solely from his own body weight, because a nail driven through the palm or the fleshy part of the foot is in unsupported flesh that can be torn. But remember a living man would use gravity plus his own strength to pull loose. People who are physically fit can easily pull themselves free. On the other hand, if one nails a person in one of two places in the wrist or a place in the forearm just behind the wrist instead of the palm, and in the ankles instead of the tops of the feet, however, he is better secured. Plus, use of wooden washers as was the case with Jehohanan, would even more firmly secure the condemned criminal to his cross. This, however, still leaves two problems. 1) How do you stop a person nailed to the front of a cross from swaying dramatically forward, and 2), what happens if the nails let go or the executioners had no washers?

Based on archaeological and experimental evidence alone, the traditionalists, artists, movie producers and directors who show Jesus nailed to the front of the cross couldn’t be more completely wrong. The traditional crucifixion pose is just impossible. A man nailed to the front of a cross in that manner can easily use his body weight and his muscle strength to pull himself free. And there is more evidence discovered in the laboratory that show any person nailed to a cross couldn’t have been nailed to its front (or maybe even its sides), at least without securing him to the stipes at his midsection. Dr. Zugibe (pictured above in his lab) found that his students who were safely and sanely crucified with straps in the traditional manner began having serious difficulties almost immediately. When they flexed forward, their chests, shoulders, and arms began to cramp in ten to twenty minutes. Only his strongest student was able to being suspended in this manner for forty-five minutes. Death would arrive rapidly to those crucified like this, unless they managed to free themselves first.

Summation of the laboratory experiments:

1. The angle of the arms with the upright varied between individuals at a broad angle ranging between 60 and 70 degrees from vertical.

2. The volunteers were suspended for periods ranging from 5 to 45 minutes determined by when they wished to come down. The main reason was almost always the pain or cramping in the shoulders, arms and hands.

3. A common complaint from the volunteers was a feeling of chest rigidity and leg cramps between 10 and 20 minutes into suspension. When this occurred, they were allowed to straighten their legs or come down.

4. There was no visual evidence of breathing difficulties throughout the suspension. Every volunteer affirmed that they had absolutely no trouble breathing either during inspiration or expiration. This was true even if the volunteers’ feet were not secured to the cross.

5. The oxygen content of the blood either increased or remained constant. Both visual observations and Douglas bag studies determined this was the result of hyperventilation with abdominal breathing beginning after 4 minutes at a rate about 4-5 times normal.

6. Sweating occurred at about 6 minutes in most volunteers, varying in amount from mild to easily noticeable.

7. Each volunteer’s heart rate increased up to 120 bpm at the end of his suspensions without arrhythmias. There were occasional rapid rates as high as 175 bpm but this rate decreased after each volunteer who experienced this got over his initial anxiety. The blood pressure increased to varying degrees but never above 160 mm systolic blood pressure in each person depending on his state of conditioning. The electrocardiogram showed muscle tremors only; it did not show any cardiac abnormalities.

8. The volunteers who were suspended without securing their feet suffered a marked increase in pain in their shoulders, arms and hands, requiring the team to support the feet or take down the volunteers.

9. The backs of the volunteers never touched the cross except for slight contact in the shoulder region of some volunteers. Pain in the shoulders caused many of them to arch their bodies back in order to relieve some of the pain.

My Own Small-scale Experiments.

To figure if horizontal restraint was still necessary even when vertical support was provided, I decided to conduct some small scale experiments of my own, using common items around the house or available at the lumber yard and sporting goods store.

What I used to mimic traditional crucifixion:

- 4” x 4” lumber, 32” in length.
- A Victorian claw-foot bathtub (this won’t work with a standard built-in tub).
- A dry towel, washcloth or bathmat.
- Pieces of plywood or planks to level.
- Carpenter’s level to check levelness.
- A twenty-pound weight.

I placed 4” x 4” lumber on top of the tub with the towel/cloth/mat and a piece of wood beneath the front end to level the lumber. Checked with the carpenter’s level, of course. Then I sat bare-ass naked on top of the 4” x 4” lumber, both dry and moistened, tucked my feet against the lower surface of the bathtub beneath, and planted my fists against the opposing walls at either end of the tub (upper fingers against each wall). I did this to see if I could stay in place on the lumber. To my total lack of surprise, in each instance I slid right off within minutes!

What I used to mimic Jehohanan’s crucifixion (see above):

- 4” x 4” lumber, 32” in length.
- Kitchen base cabinet at the kitchen sink.
- A 1-gallon paint can.
- A 1-gallon spackling compound bucket.
- Surveyor’s stakes and pieces of plywood or planks to level.
- Carpenter’s level to check levelness.

I placed the spackling compound bucket in the back of the cabinet and the paint can in front of the cabinet on the kitchen floor. I stacked surveyor’s stakes, laid on their sides, and the necessary plywood or planks to level the 4” x 4” lumber and checked with the level. Once again, I sat bare-ass naked on top of the 4” x 4” lumber, tucked my feet against the face of the cabinet and my forearms against the inside front of the sink (this mimics being hooked over a patibulum). I leaned forward mimicking exhaustion and I slid right off in minutes, even as I kept my forearms flush with the inside of the sink. Gee, what a surprise! (Not.)

So I have reached a conclusion that the crucified person will need positive horizontal restraint at midsection as well as vertical support, in order to keep alive for more than an hour on the cross – regardless of how he was nailed there – because mere friction between the beam and the crotch I consider to be insufficient to keep the person in place, initially as well as after sweat and blood collect in that area. So long as you have the restraint and support at midsection and the arms aren’t raised too high, the executioners could nail the condemned in any upright position on the cross and have him suffer there for days! Without the support and restraint, in my opinion the crucified will flex forward and death will arrive quickly.

Reenactments in Film and Art.

The film, The Gospel of John. The producer and director, cast and crew, discovered accidentally in the making of the movie that without support and restraint at midsection, the actors who were “crucified” flexed way out like an archery bow, away from the cross. They must have been shocked when the Jesus character bowed outward. They filmed the Jesus character like that in the first shot, and retained it in the film.

It is possible to maintain the position of one’s back and buttocks touching the face of the cross by having your crucified one stand with all of his weight on a foot support. Otherwise, it will be necessary to install a harness hidden beneath his loin cloth and strap his buttocks to the post, which they did in this film. So in subsequent shots, the actor playing Jesus was strapped to his cross to correct the problem. The crew very likely may have secured the two actors playing the role of the malefactors in this manner as well.

Mel Gibson’s pornographically violent film, The Passion of the Christ shows a totally unrealistic portrayal of the Crucifixion. Note when they flip the cross over to turn the nails into “hooks” – note Jesus (Jim Caviezel) is hanging by the nails yet his buttocks and shoulders, before the Romans bent the nails onto the back of the patibulum, are in intimate contact with the downward facing front of the cross! This was not done by magical thinking!! Obviously, Jim had to have been secured with some kind of harness or harnesses, of which the visible parts were edited out using Photoshop or the like.

At 9:40 into this video through the end, note the impossible.

Photo Credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer / United Artists

In the photo above, Jean Claude Van Damme was restrained to a cross in the movie Cyborg. Watch a clip here. The movie’s available for 15 bucks at Amazon if you care to buy it.

Photo Credit: MediaFax Photo

The 2008 Passion Play in Sydney, Australia, restraints were clearly visibly used to support Jesus and the two thieves on their crosses. Even though each man was tied around his wrists, it is apparent from the angle of his suppedaneum (foot support) that he was just barely able to stand. Without the hidden restraints, they might have slipped off – and those crosses appear to be quite tall!

Illustration Credit: http://encyclopediaurantia.org.

In Max Klinger’s Der Kreuzigung Christi (Crucifixion of Christ), ca. 1890, it is obvious to me that the work was produced using completely nude live models with no harm done. Despite the presence of horizontal planks for the men to sit on and rest themselves, the crosses are leaning backwards, yet the planks for the models to sit on are perpendicular to the posts! This leads me to believe that the artist found that without some kind of horizontal restraint, the models would slide off the beams. My conclusion is, by leaning the posts backwards, he used gravity to negate the need for a restraint.

Photo Credit: glbtq.com.

The artist Fred Holland Day was tied at his midsection to a cross, as shown in his photographic portrayal of Christ's Crucifixion, ca. 1898, to keep him from flaring out once he exhausted himself. Initially, he was not tied as such.

The Japanese Solution.

The Japanese installed a yardarm and seated the crucified astride it to support the body weight at the crotch, clearly visible with the crucified male in the foreground. The female was treated with considerably more dignity. Both are tied at their torsos to the stipes as well as at their hands and feet to the crosspieces. Need I say anything more?

Part 5

Crucifixion - The Bodily Support - Part 3 - Manuscript Evidence and its Similarities to the Imagery of the Caesar Cult.

2010-06-18T20:52:00.000-07:00

Part 2

UPDATE JANUARY 17, 2010: What I have found out since posting these four parts will require a major rewrite. Parts 2, 3 and 4 will be broken up. Videos showing where Christianity got The Crucifixion FROM will be presented. The series will rerun under a new title, "The Romans NEVER CRUCIFIED the Way We Think They Did."

Sources:

Jesus was Jehovah - Papyrus Bodmer II (P66)
Wikipedia - Papyrus 66
Earlham.edu - Papyrus 66
Jesus Was Caesar - Part III: Crux
Definition of Chiasma
Ancient Crucifixion Nails
Raving Athiests.com - Domus Aureus Reopens in the New Year

Photo Credit: Earlham.edu

The Papyrus Bodmer II (Papyrus 66)

The Papyrus Bodmer II (Papyrus 66) is an interesting document. Dating to about 200 CE, it has some curious abbreviations for the various forms of the Greek noun stauros, cross or crux, and the various conjugations of the verb staurow, to crucify. Following are a few examples from page 137 of the manuscript:

Line 3 – John 19:16 – verb “to be crucified” - staurothe - abbreviated as s tau-rho the

Line 6 – John 19:18 – verb “crucified” - staurosan - abbreviated as s tau-rho san

Line 10 – John 19:19 – noun “cross” - staurou - abbreviated as s tau-rho ou

What is going on here is that copyists, as early as 200CE, have been inserting staurograms and Christograms for the letters “t,a,u” and “r” in the Greek noun stauros, the verb staurow, and all their variants. A staurogram is a pictorial representation of a human body being affixed to a Crux Immissa (Tropaeum) – Latin Cross – or a Crux Commissa – St Anthony’s Cross. Below is a diagram of the three monograms (the staurogram and two Christograms) combining the Greek letters, from left to right, Tau and Rho, Chi and Rho (the first two letters of Xristos, “Christ”), and Iota and Chi (initials for Iesous Xristos, “Jesus Christ”). I shall note here that the Greek letter Chi is also the first letter of the word xiasma, meaning a cross-piece of wood.

Diagram Credit: WCAC - Online Horizon

Now what is interesting about the staurougram on the left, is that the letters “tau” and “rho” are drawn as a UNIT. In other words, the Crucified One and his Cross once were two but by crucifixion had become one. And as we shall see in the next installment, Physics of Crucifixion, it’s not just the nails that will make the two one! It probably took the seat of the cross called the “sedile” a.k.a. “cornu,” as I have noted in the previous installments, to enable the two to unite into one.

Similarity to the Imagery of the Cult of Divus Iulius (Julius Caesar)

What’s also curious about these monograms is that the first resembles the nailing of the wax effigy of Julius Caesar on a Crux Immissa (Tropaeum) and the other two look awfully similar to the Comet Pictogram of Divus Iulius, aka the deified Julius Caesar. I presume it helped the Christians operate under the radar of the pre-Constantine Roman Empire.

Wax Effigy of Julius Caesar nailed to a Tropaeum. Note it is similar or identical to a Crux Immissa. The nails used could have been brass ones like the ones shown here.
Photo Credit: Francesco Carotta

Comparison of the Christusmonogram and the Sidus Iulium
Photo Credit: “Nero's Domus Aureus Reopens in the New Year” (Calpurnpiso)

This seems like a diversion but I believed it necessary to discuss the similarities of the Staurogram and the Christograms to see how very similar icons can develop independently one from another. I’m sure Justin Martyr would agree… it was he who said that the Pagan savior-gods and the cult of emperor worship were invented by the Devil! And there are critics who say Christianity itself is built on nothing but plagiarism!

Part 4

Crucifixion – The Bodily Support - Part 2 - Archaeological Evidence.

2010-06-16T20:26:00.000-07:00

Part 1

UPDATE JANUARY 17, 2010: What I have found out since posting these four parts will require a major rewrite. Parts 2, 3 and 4 will be broken up. Videos showing where Christianity got The Crucifixion FROM will be presented. The series will rerun under a new title, "The Romans NEVER CRUCIFIED the Way We Think They Did."

Sources:

Crucifixion in Antiquity
Was Jesus Crucified in the Manner Shown?
Mishnah - Shabbat 6:10 - Crucifixion Nails
Crucifixion Bone Fragment - Jehohanan (article revised and reposted with New Analysis)
New Analysis of Crucifixion Bone fragment - Jehohanan (article deleted)
Crucifixion Graffito Found in Pompeii
Puzzuoli Article in Italian (Translation with help of “Google Translator.”)
Medical Theories on the Cause of Death in Crucifixion
"A Forensic Way of the Cross" Frederick T. Zugibe, M.D., Ph.D.
Regio I - Insula XIII - Domus delle Gorgoni
University of Texas - Roman Civic Images - Graffito
Flicker Photo Album - Graffito Blasphemo - excellent photos!
Jehovah's Witnesses.net - Facts on Crucifixion
The Crucifixion Graffito of the Palatine
1st Century Crucifixion Nail Found in Archaeological Dig
Crucifixion Nails and Spikes for Sale
Crucifixion Gem with Kneeling Supplicants
Magical Amulet from Gaza Representing Jesus Christ on Cross
Jesus Was Nailed to the Cross - Jasper Gem dated 200 CE shows crucified hanging

Jehohanan's Crucifixion.

Despite all the people the Romans crucified, no crucified remains were found before 1968. An obviously reason is that the bodies usually were torn apart by scavengers instead of buried – but they were buried in Judea! Another reason is that the nails and whips were taken home by the superstitious locals for use as magic talismans with healing properties of some sort. The Jewish Rabbis permitted Jews to do this, even on the weekly Sabbath (The Mishnah, Shabbath 6.10). In 1968, Jewish tomb containing an ossuary (a stone box containing bones) was discovered at a construction site in Jerusalem and dated to about 21 CE. In the ossuary, archaeologists found the remains of a young Jewish man who was crucified in the 1st Century CE. As was the custom of the day, the victim’s name – Jehohanan son of Hagaqol - was scratched on the back side of the box. He was determined to be in his twenties when he was killed. His executioners apparently had some difficulty pulling out the nails that transfixed Jehohanan to his cross or stake (let's assume cross). The nail was still piercing his Calcaneum (heel bone) when his remains were found and analysed. The model of the nailed foot pictured (left photo) demonstrates the actual heel bone of Jehohanan (right photo).

The man’s feet were not nailed to the front of the cross with a single nail, because it turns out the nail was too short for that purpose. It appears his heels were nailed to the outsides of the stipes (main upright) with one nail each. He was straddling the stipes, legs spread about a foot wide, with his heels nailed to either side (see drawing above). This would likely make the genitals appear prominent. And despite the loincloth shown, it was likely Jehohanan was crucified completely naked.

As shown in the remnant and the model, the nail passed first through a square or rectangular washer, made of wood. A bit of the original washer was still present between Jehohanan’s heel and the nail head. Tests showed it was from either an acacia or pistacia tree. The wooden washer broadened the head of the nail, making it very difficult for Jehohanan to pull himself free. The heel was tightly secured between the washer and the stipes. After hammering the nail through the plaque of wood the soldier responsible hammered it through the heel bone into the stipes. Combined with the washer, the nail placement made it virtually impossible for Jehohanan to free himself. The heel bone is also a logical place in the foot to secure the nail for it can support half the full weight of the body.

When the nail penetrated the stipes, it hit a knot and turned back on itself, hooking itself into the wood. Vassilios Tsaferis, Zias, and others tested the wood that still clung to the hooked point, but found that the amount was insufficient to determine the species.

Jehohanan’s lower leg bones (tibia and fibula) were shown to be broken at a 60 to 65 degree angle. Originally Tsaferis postulated that the crucified had his legs broken the same day he was crucified to hasten death so that he could be buried before sundown per Jewish Torah Code (Deuteronomy 21:22-23). But tests have determined that they had been broken post-mortem (Hershel Shanks); that means Jehohanan died on his cross and could have been suffering on that cross for days! This means once the Romans replaced the Hasmonean Kings with their own Prefects, Roman laws probably applied to crucifixion: no burial of the crucified allowed. Even so, they still could have deferred to local custom, allowed burial after the crucified passed on, or made exceptions to the Roman laws for days like Caesar’s birthday, local high holy days and the like (John 19:31).

After Jehohanan died, the soldiers began removing the nails to take him off of the cross so his family could bury him. He may have been still crucified on the eve of a holy day, since the authorities, per request, had him taken down and permitted his relatives to bury him. But the soldiers who tried to extract the nail from his right foot, they found out it was impossible because the nail was hooked into the knot. So they yanked his foot loose, pulling the washer, nail and knot with it. Nineteen hundred years later, when the archaeologists analysed his bones, they found the whole assembly intact. They had unearthed a very important clue as to how Romans crucifiied people.

The Pompeii Graffito.

As we all know, Mount Vesuvius blew up and buried Pompeii and Herculaneum in ash in 79 CE. A short phrase about crucifixion was found on a wall in Pompeii and perhaps other graffiti as well:

…[The] word crux has been found in Pompeii, as for example, one published in Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, Vol. IV., at No. 2082, ‘In cruce figarus.’ Professor Zangermeister says figarus stands for figaris.

Source: Edward Walford, John Charles cox and George Latimer Apperson, editors. The Antiquary, Volume 34, “The Antiquary’s Note-Book, [heading] The Crucifixion Graffito of the Palatine,” pp. 148-149

The Puzzuoli Graffito.

This Graffito was found in Puzzuoli, Italy. I am not sure of what time period it is dated to; the graffito was discovered in the old ampitheatre at Puzzuoli, Italy and presented by Fr. Umberto Fasola before a conference of the International Congress of Sindonology in Turin, Italy in 1978. Following is an interpretation by Gino Zaniotto:

The element of crucifixion is a crux commissa. (Tau Cross) The crucified man is attached to the patibulum, hanging by his wrists. Each foot, in opposition, is fixed with one nail. He is riding a “cornu” and is presenting a divergence of the knees. His body seems covered with animal skin likely to attract the beasts to the conclusion of the torture to make havoc of the corpse and devour what they can tear off of it.

He appears to be depicted from behind as in the “graffito blasphemo” of Palatine Hill in Rome with arms extended and hands attached to the end of the patibulum. There do not appear to be any ropes or rings. His feet are secured, probably nailed, to the stipes in opposition to each other. At a third of the way up the stipes projects a little pale, on which ‘rides’ the crucified. Its function is to support the weight of his body. It is clearly seen that the arms are outstretched; also there appears to be a circular motion of his right hand around the wound in his wrist: this is probably not random if one considers the crudeness of the design. Surrounding graffiti are in the Greek alphabet, presumably inscribed in a period after this graffito was created. The first four letters show a hand different from that which affected the subsequent letters. Because of its location along the highway to Cuma, it is considered that the taberna (backstage? canteen? tavern?) remained in operation mainly in the 1st Century CE. It is also possible that it was in the time following the opening of the Via Domitiana. The dating to the 1st Century CE is corroborated by examinations of the wall that was built in "opus reticulatum" (network of works). The simple lines of this engraving shows the dramatic description of the “servile supplicium” lacks any figurative information. We could say that the most humble of Fine Arts was responsible for sending a crucifixion, which, like pantomime, was then the latest in performing arts.

There may be references to a cult or mocking of Christian graffiti at this site as well….

Fr. Fasola believes that the graffiti depicts an individual male crucified in the Puteoli amphitheater…. [According to Fr. Fasola, it] is… of a crucified man in complete nudity. The trunk lines are strongly stretched to emphasize the ribs for the expansion of the chest. The signs of asphyxiation were given by mouth wide open as to the person who, feeling choked, is trying to breathe air. And the person who likely drew the graffiti "was to bring a strong impression in the memory of the show"

Source: Gino Zaninotto, “La Crocifissione Negli Spettacoli Latini Il Graffito Della Taberna Di Pozzuoli,” Collegamento Pro Sindone, 1987 September/October, p. 18-26 (link below).

My interpretation: There is no evidence of ropes or rings anywhere. The crucifixion execution is presented from the back. The crux appears to be kind of a crux immissa: the stipes sticks up a short distance above the patibulum. The condemned man appears to be astride and slightly above a mockery of a seat called the “cornu.” It is crudely drawn in: it appears to resemble an uncircumcised penis, pointing out and at a slight down angle –- but on the other hand, it could be projecting out and then up with an undisclosed length penetrating the crucified through his anus. The ancient writers, both Christian and non-Christian, would shed more light on how the “cornu” was oriented. The crucified at the very least, undoubtedly was screaming in pain from the nails and the racking effect of being suspended by his wrists with outstretched arms. His feet are shown to be nailed to the stipes and his legs appear to be very obscenely spread. His back is covered with stripes; possibly from being scourged prior to being lifted up and nailed in place.

ANOTHER weird thing about this graffito is that the crucified is apparently depicted to be SMILING!!! AS IF he is “enjoying” the ride. If that is the depiction, this graffito is a mockery of the someone the artist knew, and was crucified. And the spectators in an ampitheatre would most certainly get a kick out of one crucified “enjoying” it. That’s Rome for you!

Concerning Fr. Fasola’s determination that the crucified was suffering asphyxiation, Dr. Frederick T. Zugibe had found through controlled experiments that crucified people with their hands secured so that their arms formed the presumably typical suspension angle of 60 to 70 degrees from vertical, the people had no trouble breathing and their blood oxygen remained steady or increased. At least in his lab this was true, where he used straps and special gloves in lieu of ropes and nails, so the crucified people can come down from the cross and walk away unharmed. And under the Roman Empire, those nailed to the cross reportedly survived for several hours or more typically, days. So it appears the asphyxiation hypothesis for death from Roman crucifixion, with the arms raised no more than 60 degrees from vertical, has been debunked.

Another possibility this graffito is showing is that the cornu was pointed down and the crucified was unable to either ride it, probably leading to a quick death within an hour or two through exhaustion, severe cramping and finally asphyxiation, depending upon the final position of the arms. Executions carried out and experiments conducted (including by the Nazis) have indicated that when people were suspended by their arms with their wrists at 40” apart or less, asphyxiation would rapidly occur.

The Funeral / Execution Contractor’s Posted Regulations.

The House of the Gorgons in Ostia was discovered just prior to or during the beginning of the Second World War. There have been several interpretations as to what it was, like a wealthy residence or a brothel. Further investigation revealed it to be a funeral, execution and executed body disposal contractor. One the site was posted an inscription (since lost) of the regulations that governed this type of contractor.

Other inscriptions were found in Puteoli and Cumae. They are postings of the regulations, called the “leges libitinariae,” that are applicable to this sort of enterprise. Lines 8 through 14 describes the requirement for the executing contractor for carrying out a crucifixion in the original Latin:

8. Qui supplicium de servo servave privatim sumere volet, uti is sumi volet ita supplicium sumet, si in crucem

9. patibulatum agere volet, redemptor asseres vincula restes verberatoribus et verberatores praebere debeto, et

10. quisquis supplicium sumet pro operis singulis quae patibulum ferunt
verberatoribusque item carnifici HS IIII dare debeto

11. Quotiens
supplicium magistratus publice sumet, ita imperato; quotienscumque imperatum erit, praestu esse su-

12. pplicium sumere cruces statuere clavos pecem ceram candelas quaeque ad eas res opus erunt redemptor

13. gratis praestare debeto; item si unco extrahere iussus erit, operis russatis id cadaver ubi plura

14. cadavera erunt cum tintinnabulo extrahere debebit.

The English translation below was provided by (Mr. or Dr.) Jan Theo Bakker at the webpage titled “Regio I – Insula XIII – Domus delle Gorgoni” (link at top). After using online translators, I made a few slight changes shown in italics where I thought they were more true to the Latin.

8. If someone, privately, wants to inflict punishment on a male or female slave, then the punishment must be inflicted in the way that has been asked for, so that if he has asked for the crux,

9. the contractor must provide the beams, the fetters, the whips for the floggers, and the floggers, and

10. each person asking for inflicting punishment must pay 4 sesterces for each worker carrying the crossbeam, and for each flogger, and likewise for the executioner.

11. For each public punishment the magistrate must give the appropriate orders. Each time the orders have been given the contractor must guarantee

12. that the punishment will be inflicted, that the cruxes will be erected, that there will be nails, pitch, wax, candles or wax-lights, and everything that is needed,

13. free of charge. Furthermore, if the order has been given to drag the body away with a hook, the contractor must guarantee that the corpse will be dragged

14. to the place where many corpses will be by workers clothed in red, using a signal-bell.

In verse 12 there is mention of using pitch, wax, and candles or wax-lights. I am of the opinion they were used for nighttime illumination and for insect control, especially at dusk, to benefit the guards. This means the guards often had to watch the crucified overnight, lest somehow he managed to extricate himself from his cross or someone removed him from it. Which means he was still alive; this strongly hints at a bodily support for the crucified.

The Graffito Blasphemo: "Alexemenos, Worship God."

This crude (and rude!) graffito was found in Rome proper on Palatine Hill. Dr. Tim Moore of the University of Texas interpreted it thusly:

Graffito depicting a crucifixion, from the Palatine Hill, Rome, first half of 3rd cent. AD. The crude graffito shows a crucifix with a donkey's head, seen from behind and dressed in a short tunic. To the left stands a man with the same clothes and his arm raised. Between the two figures is a Greek graffito: “Alexemenos sebete theon” (Alexamenos worships his god). Apparently, the author of the drawing is making fun of a Christian, Alexamenos, who is praying to a god with a donkey's head. The Y visible on the plaster, to the right, at the top, has been interpreted as a symbol of a gallows, or a transcription of a scream of pain. This is one of the oldest representations of the crucifixion.

Now I disagree with the object of worship described as “dressed in a short tunic.” First, he is obviously shown naked from the buttocks down – although men are shown in a similar state of dress/undress on Trajan’s Column, Second, Romans crucified the condemned completely naked. Third, he does not have the neckline of the tunic represented. Fourth, the strong horizontal line that Dr Moore may have interpreted as the bottom of the tunic is suspiciously at the level of the perianal region (crotch and anus). The graffito artist drew lines to represent the lines of the buttocks and shoulders, plus the knee and elbow joints! No, my opinion of the thick black line at the crucified’s crotch and anus level is a simple representation of the seat of the cross.

Here are my other observations. A suppedaneum is represented here for support of the feet. The legs are drawn spread apart. The crucified’s genitals may be portrayed, but that could be just a blemish in the rock. There are lines that may appear to indicate rope bindings on the arms of the crucified person.

It has been noted back at the end of the 19th Century that there was at least one other cross on Palatine Hill that had been utterly obliterated by an offended Christian, who left only traces of the cross itself remaining,.

Tertullian (wrote 190 – 220 CE) saw a graffito with a similar portrayal of the crucified one worshipped by Alexamenos! He notes:

"A new representation of our god has quite recently been publicized in this city, started by a certain criminal hired to dodge wild beasts in the arena. He displayed a picture with this inscription: 'Onokoites, the god of the Christians'. The figure had the ears of an ass, one foot was cloven, and it was dressed in a toga and carrying a book. We laughed at both the caption and the cartoon" (Apologeticus, 16.12-14).

Nails.

A nail from the time of Christ's crucifixion which was hidden by the same knights who featured in The Da Vinci Code has been found in an archaeological dig. According to Archaeologist Bryn Walters, the iron nail is of the type used in thousands of crucifixions and dates from the 1st to 2nd Century CE. Other crucifixion nails have been the objects of collectors. A pair have recently been sold over the internet.

Crucifixion Gems.

These are two ancient Crucifixion gems showing upright posture and legs spread wide. Whoever made these gems could very well have had first-hand eyewitness knowledge of someone being crucified.

This first one was made sometime between 200 CE and 600 CE (although some claim it’s from the Middle Byzantine period). But Jesus appears to have short hair! That prejudices me toward an early date. Note the angle of the two kneeling supplicants (one looks like an Orthodox priest!) on either side of the crucified Jesus. This posture determines the vertical line of the stipes of the cross. So, I have provided a “T” to indicate the cross because the gem was produced without one yet shows him in his apparent crucified position – no loincloth, arms stretched out, erect posture, buttocks slightly forward of the cross, legs spread and feet apparently nailed to the sides of the stipes, like Jehohanan’s feet were. It may have been that the creator of this gem thought the cross itself was too obscene to show.

This second one is dated from the late 2nd Century to 3rd Century CE. Like the Alexamenos graffito, the crucified person is affixed to a “T” with his feet about 2 feet above the ground. This means the patibulum is about 7 feet above the ground. Notice the legs are spread obscenely wide in this one: kind of like an equestrian rider. Also, the hands do not appear to be nailed to the patibulum but merely bound with ropes and the feet seem to lack a suppedaneum (although that is unclear). Also, the head of the victim appears to be a death’s head – it resembles a skull, maybe with a “beard.” So the possibility is strong that this is a Gnostic Christian or pagan gem. Again, notice the arms outstretched and the erect posture. Note the bindings to the crossbeam at the wrists – this crucified one is hanging!

Both gems appear to be consistent with Roman crucifixion practice: don’t set the condemned so low that they exhaust themselves trying to breathe and asphyxiate within minutes once they finally hang in the down position. They also suggest the Romans supplied some sort of item that kept the condemned postures erect and crucified them in a manner (like nailing the feet through the ankles to the sides, although neither gem shows any nailing!) that kept their legs spread and their private parts exposed as their upper bodies hung down. All the more to humiliate them by making them appear “shameless.”

Part 3

Crucifixion – The Bodily Support - Part 1.

2010-06-16T20:00:00.000-07:00

UPDATE JANUARY 17, 2010: What I have found out since posting these four parts will require a major rewrite. Parts 2, 3 and 4 will be broken up. Videos showing where Christianity got The Crucifixion FROM will be presented. The series will rerun under a new title, "The Romans NEVER CRUCIFIED the Way We Think They Did."

Sources:

Perseus Digital Library - Crux
Crucifixion or 'Crucifiction' in Ancient Egypt?
Laucus Curtis - Crux
Crucifixion in Antiquity
BELIEVE Religious Info Source Website - Crucifixion

Introduction.

The Romans figured out early on that the crucified individual needed vertical support and horizontal restraint at his midsection, as made obvious in modern-day experiments and re-enactments. So what did the Romans do? Instead of providing just a short cantilever with an upright in front of the body, which is all that is needed to provide the necessary support and restraint, they designed the "sedile" (seat or support) aka “cornu” (horn) to provide the maximum amount of excruciating pain, degradation, shame and humiliation to the victim. In other words, they designed an impaler, making the cross a kind of erect (aroused) male.

This was the item that gave Seneca cause to in writing rebuke Maecenatis (who said he’d rather live at the expense of suffering, even if he had to sit on "the piercing cross," than die) and to call the standard Roman Imperial method of crucifixion, a secular “ritual of effeminizing turpitude.” Called a rhinocerous horn (unicorn) by Justin Martyr, a hook by Iraeneus, a protuberant seat, a rhinoceros horn, a stake and possibly a pale by Tertullian and a tree trunk by Pope Innocent III (how would he know?), this utterly obscene device, projecting from or offset on a cantilever from the vertical post, could very well have caused the crucified’s anus to be pierced, penetrated and dilated as deep and wide as can be whenever he needed to sit and rest. Furthermore, there is no indication in either the gospels, anyplace else in the New Testament, or on the Shroud of Turin that indicates that Jesus’ reported crucifixion was anything other than the Roman Empire's standard operating procedure.

A Short History.

Crucifixion evolved from three different practices that used to be common all over the Mediterranean and the Middle East. The Romans started out under the old Etruscan Kings with the punishment known as “arbor infelix” by which one was suspended by the neck from a Y-shaped yoke with a bar between the arms of the yoke, or from the fork of a dead tree, then scourged until death. The Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians all practiced some form of impalement where the condemned was impaled by a post or pole, either alive or dead. The Behistun Inscription makes it clear that Persians executed people by impaling them. The ancient Israelites had the practice of hanging someone from a tree after he was legally executed, per the Biblical passage of Deuteronomy 21:22-23. This could have been done by impalement. It was the Persians who were first known to practice crucifixion by means of nailing the condemned to a board and then suspending him, which is noted by the Historian Herodotus in the 5th Century BCE (Herodotus 9.120.4). Herodotus commonly used the verbs anaskolopizw and anastaurow, both of which meant, before the Roman method of crucifixion evolved to its standard form, “to impale.” But he used the term pros sanidas prospassaleusantes anekremasan, which meant “and there nailed him to boards and suspended him alive” (Herodotus 9.120.4). From the Persians the practice spread rapidly through the Mediterranean, with the practice adopted by the Greeks, the Phoenicians, and the Carthaginians. It is noted that Alexander the Great is said to have crucified 2,000 survivors of his siege of Tyre out on the beach close to the city.

It is from the Carthaginians that the Romans picked up the idea of crucifixion by means of nailing people to boards and suspending the boards. The Carthaginians were noted for their cruelty and reportedly utilized crucifixion only too frequently as a form of punishment. There was even a report out of Carthage that a father had his son crucified on the flimsiest of pretexts! After Hannibal had crucified an Italian Guide for unintentionally misleading him in 217 BCE, the Romans picked up on the practice and crucified some 25 slaves. And it was the Romans who then “improved” the practice into a ritual, that is, a standard operating procedure, that involved first, public nudity, scourging and other tortures, bearing the cross-timber through town, nailing to the cross-timber, racking, suspension, nailing to the main upright, exposure to the elements and the public, and provision of a bodily support in a humiliating manner, in order to provide the maximum amount of sustained torture in extreme pain, agony, anguish, degradation and utter public humiliation. Outside the ampitheatre where quick deaths and spectacle were popular, crucified persons typically had to suffer for two days or more; in one extreme case two such people, Christians and husband and wife, reportedly survived for nine days before they perished.

Part 2

This is Utterly Heartbreaking and Horrifying!

2010-03-06T22:19:00.000-08:00

From the Contra Costa Times:

Teen Shoots His Own Testicles.

A Vallejo teenager allegedly shot himself in the testicles Thursday afternoon, police said.

Police said the 17-year-old, whose name is being withheld because he's a minor, walked into Kaiser Permanente Vallejo Medical Center at about 5:45 p.m. with a gunshot wound.

This is just horrible! And given the homophobia in this country, I sincerely doubt if he were straight, he would have taken this desperate measure. Such desparate acts are usually due to homophobia internalised so deeply, one must mutilate or even kill one's self, in order to "overcome" one's homosexuality.

WHEN IS THIS GOING TO END?????

OH, GOD!

WON'T SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING!?!?

More Proof It's Almost ALWAYS Heterosexual Men Who Sexually Corrupt or Endanger Children and Teens.

2010-03-06T19:32:00.000-08:00

Awhile back I noted here of the case of this one gay man who pimped his five-year-old adopted son out to creepy pedophiles. Although this sort of thing absolutely should never, ever happen anywhere, I recalled a case back in the 80s where a South Boston, Mass. mother pimped her own adolescent son out to creepy pedophiles as well. And did an internet search for it. And I found this instead. A lot of heterosexual trafficking going on, and no homosexual trafficking present.

I Took a Quiz to Determine my Political Orientation!

2010-03-03T12:34:00.001-08:00

And this is my political orientation!:

My Liberal Identity:

You are a Reality-Based Intellectualist, also known as the liberal elite. You are a proud member of what’s known as the reality-based community, where science, reason, and non-Jesus-based thought reign supreme.

Take the quiz at www.FightConservatives.com

Prop 8 Trial Re-Enactment, Day 3 Chapter 4

2010-03-02T22:44:00.000-08:00

The Defense-Intervenors' Attorney Nicole Moss, who, according to various livebloggers watching the proceedings, was utterly snotty and condescending, cross-examines Dr. Peplau. Ms. Moss gets Professor Peplau to acknowledge that there are hardly any empirical studies which show that same-sex couples benefit from marriage or benefit more from marriage than from domestic partnerships and later on that we don’t have enough years of experience with marriage in Massachusetts to know empirically whether same-sex couples’ marrying has had an effect on heterosexual marriage. In standing her ground, Professor Peplau replies that researchers know enough about stigma and discrimination against LGBT people and how they affect relationships to predict confidently that same-sex couples would benefit from having our right to marry recognised. Responding to questions about monogamy, Professor Peplau notes that a lower proportion of gay men report valuing it than the proportions among lesbians and married heterosexual couples, although she stresses that some studies were snapshots of gay men in particular places and past times (like L.A. in the 70s / early 80s). Ms. Moss drags Professor Peplau through a drudgery of an "analysis" of complicated numerical hypotheticals about marriages of same-sex couples in Belgium and the Netherlands, though Professor Peplau insists on her lack of foreign jurisdiction expertise and notes that rates of marriage of same-sex couples in Massachusetts are much higher than Moss’s hypotheticals from Belgian data. Echoing arguments from New York State and Washington State cases rejecting same-sex couples’ right to marry, Ms. Moss secures Professor Peplau’s agreement that same-sex couples don’t accidentally get pregnant and have kids the way heterosexuals do. Professor Peplau suggests that the influence of individualism on some decline of marriage has nothing to do with gay and lesbian people -- but of course! Heterosexual couples divorce because the individuals end up having irreconcilable differences with each other, usually over money.

On redirect examination by Plaintiffs' Attorney Christopher Dusseault, Professor. Peplau observes that she knows nothing suggesting gay and lesbian people are more individualistic than heterosexually identified people or less concerned about the welfare of their children. The day then closes with a little discussion about broadcasting the trial or not -- I believe they ended up deciding not to, thanks to certain Justices at SCOTUS.

Credit to MarriageTrial.com.

Let me close with something timely and inspiring from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: "Liberty is too precious to be buried in books."

And just like today, this movie shows that back then, the Senate was utterly corrupt.

Prop 8 Trial Re-Enactment, Day 3 Chapter 3

2010-03-02T20:33:00.000-08:00

San Francisco City and County Attorney Therese Stewart wraps up the re-direct examination of the Plaintiffs' expert witness Professor George Chauncey.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Christopher Dusseault then begins direct examination of Letitia Anne Peplau, a Harvard educated social psychologist on the psychology faculty at UCLA, an expert on close personal relationships, sexual orientation, and gender. Ms. Peplau adds to the plaintiffs’ story by testifying that Proposition 8 hurts gay people who would benefit from marriage. She also testified that Proposition 8 does not harm opposite-sex marriage, which strips the defendants of their only "good" reason for passing Proposition 8, HAHAHA.

She testifies, based on her own research and other experts’ work, that for those adults who choose to marry, marriage is often associated with a wide range of important material, emotional and spiritual benefits, partly due to the revered status of marriage in society; that there are remarkable similarities between same-sex couples and heterosexual couples in respects such as relationship satisfaction, commitment, and stability; that same-sex couples will likely enjoy the same benefits from civil marriage that different-sex couples currently enjoy, consistent with self-reports from same-sex couples who married in Massachusetts (only more so when same-sex marriage is legal nationwide); and that allowing same-sex couples to marry will not harm heterosexual marriage, neither causing fewer different-sex couples to marry nor causing more of them to divorce. She explains that same-sex couples married when it became legal in Massachusetts at higher rates than they had entered civil unions or domestic partnerships. She concludes her direct testimony by noting that the existence of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts for four years has had zero affect on opposite-sex marriages.

Kudos to MarriageTrial.com.

Prop 8 Trial Re-Enactment, Day 3 Chapter 2

2010-03-02T19:28:00.000-08:00

The Defense-Intervenor's Attorney David Thompson completes his cross-examination of the Plaintiffs' expert witness Professor George Chauncey on discrimination against gay men and lesbians in the history in the United States. The SF City and County Attorney Therese Stewart, redirects the witness.

As the day opens, Attorney David Thompson confronts Chauncey with all manner of evidence, including his own work that things have not changed for the better for gays and lesbians in the United States and trying to get him to concede on the stand that gay men and lesbians have amassed significant political power in the US. Chauncey stoutly tries and succeeds to limit the effect of his prior statements by insisting that the improvements are incomplete due to political polarisation. THANK YOU, CLINTON. THANK YOU, ROVE. THANK YOU, BUSH. He also asserts that the process of integrating gays into American social life slowed or stopped in 2004, when a bunch of states passed Proposition-8-like initiatives to utterly ban gay and lesbian marriage, and sometimes civil unions, explicitly in their state constitutions. Chauncey resists and insists that such these ballot question setbacks and other forms of antigay discrimination is based on a view that same-sex relationships are unequal and inferior. Thompson makes the big mistake of not restricting Chauncey to simply saying yes or no.

Chauncey scored a very important point against the D-I Team, disputing their claim that being taught about same-sex marriage is bad for children. As revealed during the trial's first day, the Yes On 8 Campaign included a TV commercial relating how a Massachusetts grade school now includes fairy tales that end with the prince marrying the prince. Cross-examining gay plaintiff Paul Katami on Day One, defense lawyer Raum backed him up into a corner and managed to get him to waffle on whether or not parents could legitimately object to that, cleverly conflating the meaning of “morality,” and implying that any mention of homosexual marriage is tantamount to sex education! Again, Thompson makes the strategic error of trying to back Professor Chauncey into the same corner! Describing the Massachusetts fairy tale ad: “Is it reasonable for parents who morally disapprove of homosexuality to want to wait until the fifth or sixth grade for those sorts of issues to be taught in public school?”

Instead of being derailed by the red herring about sex, Chauncey immediately sees through the question: “Well, would you say that people who morally disapprove of racial equality or racial marriage should be able to insist that no books showing black and white people as equal or black and white people in relationships should be kept out of the schools?”

And then Chauncey drives the point home, skewering the old magical thinking that exposure of children to even the mention of LGBT people will automatically make the little tykes gay: “And in this case the child is simply being exposed to the existence of gay people. And I take note that the parents don't express concern just about marriage, but about homosexuality at all.”

On Therese Stewart's redirect, Chauncey reiterates that the Proposition 8 ballot question itself said nothing about children or what parents can teach them or what they’re taught in school. He clarified that there have long been people whose attractions today might lead them to be identified as gay; that there had been African Americans who questioned integration as a goal; that the progress made by lesbigay people in quarters such as academia has been only partial; that the majority of religious institutions and their congregants still oppose same-sex couples’ marrying and even “homosexuality”; that such religious views can be affected by anti-gay stereotypes, which were dredged up by Yes on 8 and other antigay campaigns before and since. He further stressed that these sorts of campaigns invariably reduce LGBT people to the sex act, essentially turning us into animals and "unnatural" ones at that!: "It focuses entirely -- it suggests the focus on homosexuality entirely as a matter of sexuality, not love, not relationships. This is actually a book about two princes falling in love and it's a fairy tale. It doesn't talk about sex. It's another fairy tale that seems appropriate to that age."

This is critical! Reducing us gay men and lesbians to absolutely nothing but sex and then invoking the sexual innocence of children has been a very effective strategy for the opponents of gay marriage, who prey on the magical thinking of misinformed people! Chauncey reveals what is really going on: libel, slander, and defamation of character in a smear campaign worthy of Goebbels! Would Thompson say that people who disapprove of interracial marriage should be allowed to pull their children out of school when they study the civil rights movement? HAHAHA.

Many thanks to to MarriageTrial.com.

Prop 8 Trial Re-Enactment, Day 3 Chapter 1

2010-03-02T17:48:00.000-08:00

Thompson’s cross-examination of Professor Chauncey continues today. He is trying to get Professor Chauncey to concede that LGBT people have amassed significant political power, but the professor stands his ground that LGBT people are still relatively powerless because of the severe polarization caused by the continuous and ongoing backlash from "Religious Right" groups. At several points the D-I's attorney gets to be pretty damn annoying!

Video from MarriageTrial.com's YouTube page.

LGBT Youth also Sexually Harassed More than Straight Youth. Quelle Surprise.

2010-03-02T17:19:00.000-08:00

From ScienceDaily (Apr. 24, 2008)

James Gruber from the University of Michigan-Dearborn and Susan Fineran from the University of Southern Maine interviewed a sample of 522 middle and high school and found out that just over half the students had been bullied and just over a third were sexually harassed. Almost a third had been subject to both behaviors. Straight girls were bullied or harassed as frequently as straight boys, but lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, intersex, queer and questioning youths were submitted to greater levels of both.

Gruber and Fineran found that sexual harassment causes greater harm than mere bullying in both boys and girls. Straight girls and LGBT(etc) youths appeared to be the most affected by sexual harassment, suffering from lower self-esteem, poorer mental and physical health, and more trauma symptoms (that is, thoughts and feelings arising from stressful experiences) than straight boys.

Springer (2008, April 24). Sexual Harassment At School -- More Harmful Than Bullying. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 2, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2008/04/080423115922.htm

One would think the religious right would be on board with preventing sexual harassment. But once they catch wind that LGBT youth would be protected.....

LGBT Youth Bullied Three Times More than Straight Youth.

2010-03-02T16:24:00.000-08:00

From Science Daily on February 1st:

In a nation wide study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, it is reported that kesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and other sexual minority youths are bullied two to three times as often as heterosexual youths are. LGBT(etc.) youth are also more vulnerable to mental stresses such as suicidal thoughts. It is also interesting to note that older adolescents are also bullied. So the problem is in both Junior and Senior High, all the way up to senior year.

Which shows that work still needs to be done to create school environments that are supportive and accepting of all students regardless of the students' sexual orientation. At the very least, schools need to lay down rules that bullying will not be tolerated, period.

Nationwide Children's Hospital (2010, February 1). Sexual minority youth bullied more than heterosexual youth. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 2, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2010/01/100127182503.htm

Problem is: it is always the religious right propagandists that oppose this. The most shameful being the "ex-gay" cult known as Exodus International.

Gay Men Have Something in Common with Straight Women, Lesbians have Something in Common with Straight Men.

2010-03-02T15:47:00.001-08:00

Here's what they have in common.

I will quote the poster "Geekgirl" of LGBT Latest Science.

Take a look at this photo and compare the brains. HeM means heterosexual man, HeW means heterosexual woman, Hom means Homosexual man and HoW means homosexual woman. If we were using these photos of brains to tell us gender, instead of our genitalia, who would you call a boy or a girl?

See the red and yellow areas? In the left amygdala, the heterosexual male brain looks very similar to the homosexual female brain. The heterosexual female brain looks very similar to the homosexual male brain. The right amygdala does not show this clear cut pattern but it is clear that there is a difference between heterosexual and homosexual men.

So where did this picture come from and what does it show?

Researchers in Sweden studied the symmetry and connectivity of the brains of straight men, straight women, gay men and lesbians. This work was published in April 2008 in the very prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. The original reference is:

PET and MRI show differences in cerebral asymmetry and functional connectivity between homo- and heterosexual subjects.

Authors Ivanka Savic* and Per Lindstrom

Stockholm Brain Institute, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institute, 171 76 Stockholm, Sweden. PNAS April 2008.

The study itself is highly technical and not easy reading for us every day folks without this level of training. However, it can be translated into terms we can all understand. The researchers asked two main questions. Are the two halves of the brain symmetrical or asymmetrical with respect to volume? Are there differences in functional connectivity between the two halves of the brain?

The researchers chose to measure connections in the amygdala because that section of the brain has a high density of estrogen and androgen receptors. Androgens are testosterones and related hormones. A receptor allows the hormone to enter into the cells. They also chose the amygdala because of earlier research that shows this area correlates to sex and sexual orientation.

The study used ninety subjects. 25 heterosexual men, 25 heterosexual women, 20 homosexual men and 20 homosexual women. The difference in the number of subjects is not statistically significant.

The brains were analyzed using PET measurements of blood flow to measure functional connections between the two halves of the brain. In this case, a picture is able to replace a lot of words.

The researchers also looked at the volume of each half of the brain using MRI. The paper shows the variation in the data and the statistics proving the differences. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll just include the result.

Left Half

HeM 25 624 612 These are significantly different.

HeW 25 581 581 These are not significantly different.

HoM 20 608 609 These are not significantly different.

HoW 20 548 543 These are significantly different.

Again, we see the same pattern. Heterosexual men and homosexual women have significantly different brain volumes from one side of the brain to the other. The heterosexual women and the homosexual men have equal brain volumes.

In other words, gay men have brains that are more like straight women than straight men. And lesbians have brains that are more like straight men than straight women.

The authors concluded that “The present study shows sex-atypical cerebral asymmetry and functional connections in homosexual subjects. The results cannot be primarily ascribed to learned effects, and they suggest a linkage to neurobiological entities.”

Now, does this study prove that these differences are the cause of sexual orientation? One study alone doesn’t do that. But it is very clear that the brains of straight people and gay people are different. Not only different, but straight men and lesbians share similarities and straight women and gay men share similarities.

Let’s think about this from a different angle. If people choose to be gay, how could their brains change by making this choice? That doesn’t make any sense – and I don’t think you have to be a scientist to understand that logic.

Of course, the religiously right-winged propagandists will say, "See? God gave them over to a reprobate mind!" Those guys need to hang it up. They are on the wrong side of history!

Prop 8 Trial Re-Enactment - Day 2 Chapter 5

2010-02-26T22:14:00.000-08:00

Therese Stewart, Attorney for the City of San Francisco, conducts the direct examination of Yale professor George Chauncey of Yale University, is the leading expert in the country on the history of gay life in America. Chauncey’s testimony will address factors previously treated as relevant to the level of scrutiny, that is, how deferential or skeptical courts will be toward government, certain kinds of discrimination receive under the 14th Amendment of our Constitution. It took two transcript paragraphs to list the prizes won by his book, “Gay New York,” (I read that, it's at the Boston Public Library) which included a trail-blazing analysis of how discrimination against homosexuals (especially gay men) developed alongside the repeal of Prohibition in the early 1930’s (the Hayes committee is one notorious example -- it eliminated gay visibility in the movies) and with the rise of McCarthyism after World War II (a Lavender Scare grew up and exceeded the Red Scare). So his testimony is about how lesbians and gay men were made a "suspect class" for benefit of the hetero majority only, and have suffered widespread and acute discrimination and fearmongering over the course of the 20th Century. He explains how more than just sodomy laws were used to try to keep gay and lesbian people even from patronizing and gathering in bars, how military anti-gay policy came about, persecution and purging of gay and lesbian government employees and even priivate sector employees and the enabling of hate crimes. The bloody discrimination reinforced enduring patterns of anti-gay prejudice and hostility, forcing lesbians and especially gay men to endure the toll of the closet. The closet made LGBT people utterly invisible and has perpetuated “demonic stereotypes” of gay people, including past and present themes of gay men and lesbians as threats to children starting in the '50s, the latest examples being the images of such threats presented in the media in support of Proposition 8. He explains thoroughly that which the plaintiffs are arguing: these scare tactics were a form of irrational prejudice deployed in the Yes on 8 campaign to secure passage of the proposition.

Chauncey has agreed with most modern historians that homosexuality as a category of humanity was discovered only in the late 19th Century. Before that, law and society focused on the acts themselves (sodomy, etc.) and assumed they would come and go in many peoples’ lives. So Thompson, cross-examining again, presses Chauncey to admit that the category “homosexual” is a fluid one with distinctions between acts and identities, and that it’s not exactly clear what it means. As the day ends, Thompson’s cross-examination of Professor Chauncey has only just begun.

Prop 8 Trial Re-Enactment, Day 2 Chapter 4

2010-02-26T20:44:00.000-08:00

Therese Stewart, Attorney for the City of San Francisco, conducts the direct examination of Yale professor George Chauncey of Yale University, is the leading expert in the country on the history of gay life in America. Chauncey’s testimony will address factors previously treated as relevant to the level of scrutiny, that is, how deferential or skeptical courts will be toward government, certain kinds of discrimination receive under the 14th Amendment of our Constitution. It took two transcript paragraphs to list the prizes won by his book, “Gay New York,” (I read that, it's at the Boston Public Library) which included a trail-blazing analysis of how discrimination against homosexuals (especially gay men) developed alongside the repeal of Prohibition in the early 1930’s (the Hayes committee is one notorious example -- it eliminated gay visibility in the movies) and with the rise of McCarthyism after World War II (a Lavender Scare grew up and exceeded the Red Scare). So his testimony is about how lesbians and gay men were made a "suspect class" for benefit of the hetero majority only, and have suffered widespread and acute discrimination and fearmongering over the course of the 20th Century. He explains how more than just sodomy laws were used to try to keep gay and lesbian people even from patronizing and gathering in bars, how military anti-gay policy came about, persecution and purging of gay and lesbian government employees and even priivate sector employees and the enabling of hate crimes. The bloody discrimination reinforced enduring patterns of anti-gay prejudice and hostility, forcing lesbians and especially gay men to endure the toll of the closet. The closet made LGBT people utterly invisible and has perpetuated “demonic stereotypes” of gay people, including past and present themes of gay men and lesbians as threats to children starting in the '50s, the latest examples being the images of such threats presented in the media in support of Proposition 8. He explains thoroughly that which the plaintiffs are arguing: these scare tactics were a form of irrational prejudice deployed in the Yes on 8 campaign to secure passage of the proposition.

Chauncey has agreed with most modern historians that homosexuality as a category of humanity was discovered only in the late 19th Century. Before that, law and society focused on the acts themselves (sodomy, etc.) and assumed they would come and go in many peoples’ lives. So Thompson, cross-examining again, presses Chauncey to admit that the category “homosexual” is a fluid one with distinctions between acts and identities, and that it’s not exactly clear what it means. As the day ends, Thompson’s cross-examination of Professor Chauncey has only just begun.

What It's Like for a Gay Youth to Live in an Antigay Household.

2010-02-26T19:17:00.000-08:00

I will let Joshua Scarpuzzi tell the story. It's here, beginning at Comment No. 38. He was commenting on the fifth installment of the Courage campaign's liveblog the second day of the Proposition 8 Federal trial in Federal Court in San Francisco, California.

I currently live at home with my family…and the closest description of my mother is Anita. I feel like I'm living in “prayers for Bobby” everyday. It hurts to hear these things, these statements that live off of the fear and ignorance of religious people all over our country. I am good with God, I made my peace years ago and I know where I'm going after this life, and being only 19 and out and in the spotlight of the gay community here in San Diego is rough at times but it makes my stomach churn when I see the young gays who take their rights and freedoms for granted, who haven't been through the hate and shame and isolation many of the older, wiser gays have. And I'm not saying they should go through it. No one should, but I honestly feel that losing Prop 8, and now having this battle in the public eye and discussing all of the shit we've gone through will open the eyes of other kids, families, and the public to see the truth. We have a long way to go and I wish the best for everyone in that court room. Thank you so much for blogging this to us on the outside, it is truly a blessing.

Actualy Joshua experienced a year-long concentrated dose of the hate and shame and isolation many of the older, wiser gays have gone through when his biological family sent him away and had him committed to an abusive, homophobic ex-gay cult.

In October of 2007 I was transported against my will to a behavioral modification camp in western Montana. My parents had me locked in this facility for exactly 365 days of which I spent doing labor, line drills, shock therapy, isolation therapy, among other things. I was starved at times, spit on, molested, called a faggot, and beat up by staff and other kids. These religious hypocritical leaders, and I hate to compare the two (because I would never want to minimize what the Jews went through), are the modern day Nazis of America. They want to govern everyone with their narrow minded bigotry and we have to fight! We have to come out of the closet and say enough is enough!!!!! I survived 365 days of abuse and humiliation because I knew one day I could share my story with the world. I've still not told anyone on this big of a scale but I hope that one person may read this and that one person more will take a stand. I've been out in the real world for a year and 3 months and I still, day to day, get the abuse from my family. We have to keep fighting! For my friends who are still in these camps, for our own future, and for the future of our children. :(

If only Joshua were in the Courtroom telling his story!

There are so many of these “camps”, and so many these that goes on behind the closed doors of Prop 8 supporters, churches, and religious organizations that we never hear about. I've tried a few times to contact gay newspapers, news stations, and magazines as well as police officials to try and bring light to these “camps” but no one has wanted to publish my story. People need to know about the cruelty and hypocrisy that goes on behind the God-following mask they wear!

Yes, the news must be promulgated far and wide that these ex-gay cults are a menace! They've even brought the bogus idea of "reparative therapy" to the shores of the United Kingdom (Great Britain) and much to the UK mainstream media's credit, these dangerous cults are being denounced and discredited over there!

Prop 8 Trial Re-Enactment, Day 2 Chapter 3

2010-02-26T10:53:00.000-08:00

The cross-examination of Dr. Nancy Cott is complete and Theodore Boutros redirects for the plaintiffs.

It's all about Love.

2010-02-22T21:02:00.000-08:00

Prop 8 Trial Re-Enactment, Day 2 Chapter 2

2010-02-22T19:37:00.000-08:00

The Defendant-Intervenor’s lawyer David Thompson cross-examines Dr. Nancy Cott. He introduces us to the snotty, condescending method of cross-examination the defendants will use throughout the whole trial. Starting off the bat, he tries to undermine her qualifications for her testimony and slime her as a "librul." Presenting a pile of Cott’s statements from a decades-long career, he presses her to recognize defendants’ version of marriage – a Christian, monogamous institution, focused on children -- and to admit the changes she described in direct would destroy the univocal vision. She tries to stick to her original story – that marriage was always partly secular and changed in content as the society changed, mostly, she thinks, for the better – integrating the races, emancipating women. Thompson asks Cott if she agrees with a wide variety of quotations taken from law review articles and other publications on marriage written by other people; she does not agree, for example, that allowing same-sex couples to marry is “breathtakingly subversive.” He does get her to agree with him that thinking of humans in binary male/female terms is universal across cultures, which could feed the defense theme that the Plaintiffs’ are asking the court to experiment in novel and risky ways. [Other witnesses in the trial will address such “third-gender” people as Hijras in India, not to mention that Dr. Cott herself has noted that same-sex marriage in Massachusetts has not prevented the condition of opposite-sex marriage to improve there.] Her testimony is crucial, because Defense-Intervenors’ case depends heavily on establishing that heterosexual union is the only core meaning of marriage, so that any change, however harmless by normal standards of harm, will, by definition, destroy the institution.

Attorney Thompson and Cott address possible religious bases of colonial marriage laws; the legal doctrine called “coverture” and old California laws treating men and women differently in marriage; and the social meaning of marriage, where he gets her to agree that the social understanding of marriage has societal effects and that a person’s views about same-sex couples getting married are “quite affected” by various factors including their friends and their religion. Thompson then explores with Cott the motivations of congressional supporters of the “Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA), including concerns for social stability, religious beliefs, and fear of a slippery slope to legalized polygamy. He then tries to treat her as an authority on groups’ political power and secures her agreement in effect that there is less prejudice against gay and lesbian people today -- apparently trying to establish as truth the utterly erroneous idea that the LGBT populace has significant political power.

Again, "the gay activist judge" bends over backwards for the Defense!!!

Is This Good For The Gays? NO!!!!! And This Is Why We Have To SPEAK THE TRUTH TO RIGHT-WINGED LIES!!!!!

2010-02-22T18:12:00.000-08:00

http://www.edgeboston.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=&sc2=news&sc3=&id=93114

There is this shocking case of a gay adoptive father who allegedly offered his five-year-old son as a sex object online.

The case, which culminated in a June 26 arrest in which Duke University Center for Health Policy Associate Director Frank Lombard allegedly offered an undercover officer the sexual services of his young adopted son. Eeeewwwww. And, it's appalling! This is the sort of thing that ought not be done by ANYBODY within the LGBT community! One case of pedophilia or child prostitution by an LGBT person is one too many!

Yet this is just one of how many hundreds or thousands of gay fathers who are the best parents the kids have ever ever had? And how many heterosexual parents have done the same thing this gay adoptive father did? To their own biological kids??? Yet seldom do people intervene on behalf of the kids of heterosexual parents until the parents’ conduct is simply outrageous.

Of course, pundits on the right lost no time in seizing on this shocking case. They pointing to the case as evidence why LGBT people especially gay men ought not to be allowed to adopt.

Of course, nothing coule be further from the truth. In reality, gay men are found by peer-reviewed studies to be LESS likely to be involved in pedophilia than the population at large. One such study was done by Dr. Carole Jenny of Denver Children's Hospital. She found that from a sample of fifty boys, there was one boy who was molested by a man who *could* have been gay and forty-nine boys who were molested by either straight men, straight women, or both. Usually close relatives or family friends.

Now why would heterosexual men molest boys??? Watch the embedded video and find out! What you will find will shock and disgust and appal you.

Ugandan Kill The gays Bills is Worse Than You Could Possibly Imagine.

2010-02-22T17:57:00.001-08:00

Anybody who knows of a sexually active OR romantically involved GLBT Ugandan would get caught up in this bill if it becomes law and if they commit more than one offense related to homosexuality, then they meet the Death Penalty once convicted! This means that for Ugandan gays, lying and hiding in the closet is no option. Their friends, relatives, employers, coworkers and ministers would have to give them up to the state. And the bill if enacted would have extraterritorial reach.

Link here: http://wakingupnow.com/blog/uganda-kill-everyone-video/comment-page-1#comment-1890

And even the antigay pastor Martin Ssemba could get caught up in this and get killed by the State if this bill were eneacted and he continues to show extreme gay porn in Ugandan churches. He's had two such presentations already and I doubt he'll stop! He appears to be a closet case to me. Still, we cannot allow this bill to become law! Kill the bill!

Utterly Disgusting and Insane Hate Video.

2010-02-19T00:09:00.000-08:00

I found this at Joe.My.God. The original is at WorldNutDaily.

WARNING -- COARSE LANGUAGE ALERT.

Pardon my Fench but I am majorly pissed off and very angry.

Just fucking revolting. And twisting MLK's inspirational fight for freedom into killing human beings is beyond abhorrent.

The recent open talk about rounding us up should be seen as a RED ALERT.

The ramp-up of this type of vicious, violent rhetoric is truly disturbing -- it demands that we be more active, confrontational and vocal oursleves. Queer Rising and other groups who've started civil disobedience got it right; this has to be in your face, every day and a demand for no less than full equality -- and these morons publicized and confronted.

I'm sick of gay people who are too chickenshit to push back. You can't make a moral equivalence between hatred of the oppressor and hatred of the oppressed. We have no obligation to treat people like Molotov Mitchell with a shred of respect or even common politeness.

These people are classic bullies, and the only way their evil will be reigned in is if they have something to lose by bullying us.

Prop 8 Trial Re-Enactment, Day 2 Chapter 1

2010-02-18T20:16:00.000-08:00

In this installment, Atty. Ted Boutros finishes his direct examination of Professor Nancy Cott. Her expert opinion is that there has NOT been a tradition in this country of marriage being strictly for purposes of procreation, marriage has historically been restricted upon the basis of race, marriage has increasingly become a domestic partnership of two equals, same-sex marriage would be beneficial for same-sex couples, and in her home state of Massachusetts divorce rates have dropped slightly (by 2/10ths of 1% out of 100% of all opposite-sex (?) marriages) since same-sex marriage became legally recognised there.

Prop 8 Trial Re-Enactment - Day 1 Chapter 4

2010-02-11T19:36:00.000-08:00

Today David Boies completed examining Kristin Perry and examined Sandra Shier. Their testimonies were very poignant. Then, Theodore Boutros examined the plaintiff's expert witness on the history of marriage in the United States, Dr. Nancy Cott, Ph.D. When she tried to testify about marriage outside the US as it pertains to marriage inside the US, she and Mr. Boutros were almost derailed by the defense-intervenor's counsel, saying: "OBJECTION, your honor! It was noted in the deposition that she was only an expert on marriage within the United States and that she is not an expert on marriage outside of the United States," yada yada yada... District Judge Vaughn A. Walker bent over backwards for the D-I counsel and Mr. Boutros had to carefully ask questions about marriage outside the United States as it pertained to marriage inside the United States, including the founders' observation and known history of marriage outside US society.

And this is the judge that ProtectMarriage.com is now denouncing as an impossible-to-be-impartial, gay activist judge. You will find out later why in future installments when the reenactment of the trial proceedings will reveal a serious lack of preparation and a total appearance of ridiculousness, ludicrousness and arrogance on the part of the defense-intervenor's counsel.

A Straight Woman Comes Around on Same Sex Marriage.

2010-02-09T23:19:00.000-08:00

This is the story of her journey.

Prop 8 Trial Re-Enactment, Day 1 Chapter 3

2010-02-04T19:15:00.001-08:00

Today Paul Katami finished his testimony of how he was harmed by the Constitutional change and the worsened atmosphere against gay men generated by the passing of Proposition 8 and the Yes on 8 campaign's lies about the so-called "threat" posed to children by same-sex marriage, as well as his desire to marry his partner, Jeffrey Zarrillo. I was really, really angry when the Defense-Intervenor's attorney did his cross-examination of Mr. Katami. I felt he was hunting Mr. Katami, to back him into a corner and tear him apart. My blood was boiling! I wanted to jump into the computer screen and shake some sense into the attorney's head. then I had to remember: this is only a reenactment. Kristin Perry also testified of the harm done to her and about her desire to marry her partner, Nicole Kirk (do I have that correct?) Kristin's testimony broke my heart when she said she felt that "We weren't good enough to be married" when the State courts ruled in 2004 or 5 invalidating San Francisco's issuing of marriage licenses to same-sex couples and presiding over same-sex weddings.

But remember, Proposition 8 was stolen due to black box voting!

Don't Ask Don't Tell is Exhausting for GLBT Servicepeople.

2010-02-04T18:57:00.000-08:00

Comment 143 from Prop 8 Trial Tracker, today's Prop. 8 and DADT thread:

A poster named Ozymandias said:

I think there’s a big misunderstanding concerning DADT with a lot of people who support it (but are at least reasonable about it). I have heard people say ‘Why overturn it? What happens in the bedroom shouldn’t be anyone’s business!’ Naturally I agree, but DADT is not about preventing us from hurling our ‘lifestyle’ about.

I asked someone once, ‘How many times a day do you mention your wife in casual conversation?’ He said that he didn’t know because he didn’t think about it. Exactly – he didn’t have to think about it because his relationship with his wife was universally accepted. Now, I asked him, imagine being in a place where he COULDN’T mention his marriage because his marriage could get him fired. How many conversations would he suddenly have to edit? What about conversations via e-mail with his wife, if the e-mail server was owned by the company with this policy? Going further, even if he used a 3rd-party e-mail platform, how would he feel if his monitor was facing the door to his office? What if the company had internet-monitoring software? Was there the possibility that the company could somehow ’see’ his e-mails? What about Instant Messaging?

Even more than that, what if you ran into a co-worker away from work with your wife by your side? How would you handle company functions, or even places where you know your co-workers go after work? What if someone ‘found out’ about your marriage and said he was supportive – how would you feel if you received instructions to reprimand that co-worker for something? Or have to give them a project that they might feel is unfair? Would the knowledge that he knew affect your dealings with him?

He looked at me with open horror and said, ‘My God, the amount of paranoia that kind of policy would create… in every part of my dealings with my co-workers – that would exhaust me completely! Gays and Lesbians in the Armed Forces have to deal with that?’

Every day, was my response.

And it is exhausting. Having to look over your shoulder every day -- which is absolutely necessary in a hostile environment in which you are being hunted by other human beings. This is exactly the environamt that Former Senator Sam Nunn and Former President Bill Clinton's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" promulgates. Superiors in the military, if they suspect any servicemember is gay / lesbian / etc., can ask other people including civilians how that servicemember exercised his / her liberties whilst off duty. Oftentimes the result is a dishonourable discharge which means the dischargee usually can't get a decent job. Servicemembers can't seek address for sexual or homophobic harassment because then they will be under increased suspicion! Oftentimes they have to defend themselves with no support whatsoever. Sometimes they're brutally murdered like Barry Wenchell, who was beaten to death with a baseball bat simply because he fell in love with a MTF transgender who had begun to present herself as a woman... yet he was otherwise straight.

It is past time to let our fellow GLBT servicepeople to serve their copuntry openly!

Prop 8 Trial Re-Enactment, Day 1 Chapter 2

2010-02-02T19:10:00.000-08:00

In this installment we have the Defense-Intervenor's opening arguments and the first two Plaintiff's witnesses: Jeff Zarrilli and Paul Katami. Jeff and Paul describe the bloody discrimination they face every day because they are not married. Usually the everyday slights, misunderstandings and downright "why did you ask for a single kingsized bed for???" type of reprimand. All this does nothing except shame and humiliate gay men, lesbians and the like. Paul also tells of a queerbashing in which the bashers threw rocks and eggs over the perimeter fence of a gay-friendly establishment. He and Jeff, along with others, got hit by the eggs and rocks. No doubt that there was property damage and I'm convinced the eggs were rotten aas well. People do not accept same-sex couples unless we are legally married! Toward the end of the vid the DI's team try to prevent the "Stand Up" (freight train and commuter trains) video in which certain California religious right ministers manage to get the conservative Christian church membership all worked up in fear with POSSIBLE SCAREY OUTCOMES if they don't go out to the polls and "Stand Up for Jesus" by voting to take already-recognized same-sex marriage rights from GLBT people (and same-sex sham marriage rights from straight people) with only irrational prejudice and religion for justification.

Here is the stinkin' "Stand Up" video. By showing two COMMUTER TRAINS, it portrays us GLBT people as an unacceptable, dangerous threat. The real Jesus would have nothing to do with this, except to rebuke the producers, directors, crew and cast, especially the featured preachers!

BTW the black preacher, Ron Prentice, looks gay. Hahahahaha. Ouch. :'(