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Impalations

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Re: Impalations - A Couple of Thoughts

willowfall said:
xirvan said:
The most notorious impaler was of course the original Dracula, Vlad the Impaler. He is said to have surrounded his castle in Transylvania with impaled victims. If the technique was done skillfully, the spike could avoid all vital organs and the victim could live on in agony for days. For men, the technique had the additional humiliation of changing their sex.

about victims living for days.

I can see it if the victim is impaled perpendicular to the stake. They executioner can then drive the stake through the belly area avoiding any organs in which the organ failure kills you quickly. The stake itself can impede blood loss allowing the victim to die slowly.

However if you impale the victim parallel to the stake I just can't see them surviving a long time if it goes into the chest. Let's just take me as an example, you as executioner decided to impale my pussy.

First I am designed to 'expand' down there but there will be tearing and immense pain but nothing fatal up to about 4-5 inches. However 5-7 inches deep (the depth of the average woman) that stake is going through my cervix and into my womb. Again pain and damage but not immediately fatal. Same for the stomach etal immediately above that. However once you get into my chest you have my lungs and heart and no way to get around them. Even if you missed them, there is no way there is enough room in my chest for a 4-5 inch object. That would crush my lungs or heart by squeezing them. I'm just not going to linger for days with that type of damage. Incredibly painful hours yes, but not days.

Now if you want to impale me perpendicular you need to use a stake with a blunt or rounded point. That shoves up into me and only very VERY slowly batters its way through to my chest. Now THAT would take me days to die. If you use a sharp stake you have to hope I lean back and it comes out my belly or forward and it comes out my back before it gets into my chest. I suppose most guys would want me to lean forward so they can watch my breasts jiggle, shake and swing as I linger in pain.

And it doesn't change a guy's sex you just go up his ass.

kisses

willowfall

We've just watched an Ancient History programme which contained a computer experiment about this very subject. It is certainly not our cup of tea but we watched it because I remembered this thread. The accounts of Vlad (The Impaler) Dracula are well known especially the accounts of his thousands of victims lingering for up to three days. The computer reconstruction was carried out by two skeptical medics to discover whether the accounts could be true. A virtual stake was inserted in the rectum and soon ruptured the bowel. This was unavoidable. This by itself would release bacteria which would kill in 2-3 days. By experimenting with many victims Vlad could have found a way around the major blood vessels and be able to squeeze the heart to one side and finally the stake would exit through the mouth. To avoid suffocation the stake would have to be finely tapered at the end. It was possible.
The TV prog also demonstrated the effect of 39 lashes by the Roman scorpion whip. They used it on a pig which fortunately was already dead. The number of lashes was set by law, unless the punishment was crucifixion.
Apparently the "Pear of Anguish" was used mainly in the mouth although they may have glossed over that bit.
Oh! They also came to the conclusion that as a child Vlad was imprisoned by the Turks and sexually abused which could go some way toward explaining his extreme anti social behaviour.

Melissa
 
Re: Impalations - A Couple of Thoughts

willowfall said:
Let's just take me as an example, you as executioner decided to impale my pussy.

First I am designed to 'expand' down there but there will be tearing and immense pain but nothing fatal up to about 4-5 inches. However 5-7 inches deep (the depth of the average woman) that stake is going through my cervix and into my womb. Again pain and damage but not immediately fatal. Same for the stomach etal immediately above that. However once you get into my chest you have my lungs and heart and no way to get around them. Even if you missed them, there is no way there is enough room in my chest for a 4-5 inch object. That would crush my lungs or heart by squeezing them. I'm just not going to linger for days with that type of damage. Incredibly painful hours yes, but not days.

Now if you want to impale me perpendicular you need to use a stake with a blunt or rounded point. That shoves up into me and only very VERY slowly batters its way through to my chest. Now THAT would take me days to die.

If there were a footrest - a couple of large nails would do - fixed in the Stake so you could press your toes on it only when the tip's got 6" or so inside you, you'd have to use it to try to ease the pain, though of course it would only prolong your agony - same principle as the sedilia on the Cross.

On the historical side, I don't think anyone's mentioned Boudicca's revenge on the Romans for flogging her and raping her daughters - according to Cassius Dio, she had the "most noble" captured Roman women and girls impaled on stakes, with their breasts cut off and sewn into their mouths. Tacitus, who was better informed, doesn't mention this - so it may be black propaganda - though he does say the Britons used gibbets and crosses to execute the captives.
 
Re: Impalations - A Couple of Thoughts

Melissa said:
The TV prog also demonstrated the effect of 39 lashes by the Roman scorpion whip.... The number of lashes was set by law, unless the punishment was crucifixion.

Melissa,

I'm off subject but curious: if the soldiers or guards whipped those sentinced to be crucifed as many times as they wished, wouldn't that cause the prisoners to fade and pass away after mere hours and not days?

Ed

Eulalia said:
If there were a footrest - a couple of large nails would do - fixed in the Stake so you could press your toes on it only when the tip's got 6" or so inside you, you'd have to use it to try to ease the pain, though of course it would only prolong your agony - same principle as the sedilia on the Cross.

On the historical side, I don't think anyone's mentioned Boudicca's revenge on the Romans for flogging her and raping her daughters - according to Cassius Dio, she had the "most noble" captured Roman women and girls impaled on stakes, with their breasts cut off and sewn into their mouths. Tacitus, who was better informed, doesn't mention this - so it may be black propaganda - though he does say the Britons used gibbets and crosses to execute the captives.

Eulalia,

If one were to look at the Lewis and Short Latin-English Lexicon, one would find that the word crux was originally the tow-pole of a carriage, then probably an impaling stake, then the well-known Roman execution device and finally the Christian Cross. Lucian in the 2nd Cent CE and Porphyry in the late 3rd Cent CE said that the Roman crux was still a type of execution instrument that impaled people who were condemned to it. This leads me to believe that for the cross, the sedilia was always a impaling device even if a short one. A sedilia that impaled one kept him/her alive the longest by not only providing vertical support but also horizontal restraint. I suspect the Romans figured this out early on.

The words Tacitus used were patibulum and crux. He could have been referring gibbets or overhead beams when using patibulum and to complete 'male' crosses and/or impaling stakes when he used the word crux.

Ed
 
That's interesting. I've thought for a long time that Crucifixion was an evolved form of Impalement, and the semantic development of crux reflects that. So, as you say, the cornu (in rectum or female vagina) was a 'crucial' part of the Torture. Although we think of Crucifixion as a Roman speciality, we're told they got the idea from Carthage - have we any idea what form it took there?

Going back to Willowfall's post, an even crueller thought is that, if you were impaled hogtied wrists to ankles, you'd be forcibly bent back and the Spike would burst out of your abdomen well below the diaphragm, leaving your heart and lungs intact - gruesome, eh? :ymdevil: But I don't think you'd last long, you'd be bleeding buckets.
 
Ed-M said:
This leads me to believe that for the cross, the sedilia was always a impaling device even if a short one.
Sorry, I've studied many historical documents on the Roman crucifixions. It seems that for a great number of crucifixions (like slaves of Spartacus), or when the killing had to be quick, the Romans did not bother to fix a sedilia on the stipes of the cross. Historians wrote about crucified slaves, who lived nearly a week on the cross: without seidilia, they never could. Of course, this was not an element of comfort! It allowed them to find another foothold - or suffering - as the nails, and to prolong their agony. And it made them to take ridiculous positions, to expose their extreme nudity, to complete their humiliation. But for those who were nailed on the cross to be burned, or to be devoured by the big cats, their death being planned in the very short term, the carpenters did not give himself the trouble of adjusting a sedilia.
 
Before we give the Roman's all kinds of credit for being clever (and they really were in a lot of fields) we have to remember that we in the west view crucifixion as a "Roman" punishment.

Yet we know that it goes back at least to the Phoenician expansion in the west and was extensively used in China. The same can be said for impaling (which lasted a form of execution through at least the Vietnamese-French war)

That being said there are a lot of variations than can be used and there is probably no 'specific' way of conducting the execution.

A support of some sort would allow the victim to hang and not exhaust themselves thus allowing them to linger longer since energy wasn't expended on movement. I've been thinking that stretching a victim out (like we see in church) may also accomplish limiting energy expenditure.

Things that stuck, poked or cut a victim would accelerate blood loss (as both nails and scourging did) hastening death.

Breaking of the legs is thought to have brought on suffocation since you could no longer rise to fight for breath.

Providing water would prevent dehydration (leading to death by starvation) prolonging the agony.

I suspect that the methods and refinements used varied based on the intent.

For example the Romans weren't going to expend guards to keep people from rescuing Spartacus' men. Thus a quick death was desirable. If you have a villa and you want the field hands to learn the cost of disobedience a prolonged death might better serve your purposes.

In the arena a faster but more horrifying death (such as torture or burning) would be more entertaining and allow you to move to the next act (the crowd would get bored with lingering slow deaths; Americans think of the difference in baseball vs. football). The same thing with a judicial execution where the victim could be heard screaming for hours on end and then the corpse left to hang and rot denying the family the ability to perform funerary rights.

Today, Iran law provides for the crucifixion of apostates but if the victim is still alive in three days it is a sign Allah has forgiven them and they are to be released.

I suppose that a victim could have been purchased off the cross (maybe to compensate a criminal's victims) so having them both punished but on display might be desirable.

All in all, I suspect what happened historically, like on this board, is limited only by imagination, technology and the condition of the victim.

kisses

willowfall
 
Eulalia said:
That's interesting. I've thought for a long time that Crucifixion was an evolved form of Impalement, and the semantic development of crux reflects that. So, as you say, the cornu (in rectum or female vagina) was a 'crucial' part of the Torture. Although we think of Crucifixion as a Roman speciality, we're told they got the idea from Carthage - have we any idea what form it took there?

Going back to Willowfall's post, an even crueller thought is that, if you were impaled hogtied wrists to ankles, you'd be forcibly bent back and the Spike would burst out of your abdomen well below the diaphragm, leaving your heart and lungs intact - gruesome, eh? :ymdevil: But I don't think you'd last long, you'd be bleeding buckets.
I've yet to engounter any ancient documents in Latin about Carthaginian crucifixions wherein they are described as being suspended from a patibulum. Likewise in the Greek. Just references like fixing onto a crux (with or without motion), bearing someone up to a crux and 'paling' (staurow) someone on a 'pale' (stauros). Remember, it was the Romans who had the idea of having the slave ferry the crossbeam roundabout town prior to his execution. If they simply impaled at first, getting the idea from the Carthaginians, it wouldn't take long for them to have two other posts to hold the crossbeam and the prisoner would hang impaled... truly a bizaare and excruciation combination of sensations: you're being stretched by gravity at the same time a pale is working its way deeper into you.

And maybe the Romans did something similar to the hogtieing you describe. In Lucan Pharsalia 6.538-553 where it describes crucifixion, it has one line describing the effects of something pointed punching its way through the abdomen! :-o
 
chelior said:
Ed-M said:
This leads me to believe that for the cross, the sedilia was always a impaling device even if a short one.
Sorry, I've studied many historical documents on the Roman crucifixions. It seems that for a great number of crucifixions (like slaves of Spartacus), or when the killing had to be quick, the Romans did not bother to fix a sedilia on the stipes of the cross. Historians wrote about crucified slaves, who lived nearly a week on the cross: without seidilia, they never could. Of course, this was not an element of comfort! It allowed them to find another foothold - or suffering - as the nails, and to prolong their agony. And it made them to take ridiculous positions, to expose their extreme nudity, to complete their humiliation. But for those who were nailed on the cross to be burned, or to be devoured by the big cats, their death being planned in the very short term, the carpenters did not give himself the trouble of adjusting a sedilia.
I would disagree in that in most crucifixions, the prisoner was expected to suffer for days, plus the Romans had other methods in hastening death on a cross. The crucified slaves who fought with Spartcus were reported to have been hanged in one document and apparently impaled in another. Plus they were reported to have conversed with the soldiers for up to three days. Plus, there was the breaking of legs and the stabbing with a pilum or spear to bring about a quick death. Why go through all that trouble when all they had to do was deny the sedilia? With those coups de graces, it would seem to me that the Romans did not want to remit one iota of the utter humiliation and sitting torture of a full-blown crucifixion.

If they were burned straightaway after they were nailed, perhaps, but if they had to hang all day only to be lit up at night, they'd definitely suffer the impaling torture in my estimation.

And in the ampitheatre, they still could have used the impaler as a safety device to keep the condemned on the cross as the big cats and other large wild animals clawed them apart. Oterwise, the body might fall and the animals would get spooked. Martial in Liber Spectaculorum 7, he describes a condemned criminal being eviscerated by a Scottish bear whilst suspended on his cross. With the forces introduced by this heavy creature - about 1500 pounds mass on average - the animal could very well have pulled the criminal off the cross and onto the ground had there been no sedilia to support him. I just do not see the nails as being sufficient for the task at hand. And the Puzzuoli graffito shows a person on a cross, in the ampitheatre, with a sedilia penetrating his/her anus.

http://www.infotdgeova.it/dottrine/pozzuoli.php
 

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Alternative method for Damnatio ad Bestias

And here's a mosaic where big cats are pouncing on or have pounced on criminals who have been condemned to be Roman Cat Food. The criminals are wheeled out on mobile poles (poles mounted in chariots). They appear to be secured to these poles with iron fetters around their ankles and wrists (which are apparently behind the poles) behind their backs. Threre appears to be a horizontal where the wrists are to be secured to keep the criminal from being pulled off the pole. Notice also the angle of the vertical pole and the horizontal pole the slave is gripping. When he sets the horizontal pole down, the vertical pole and the pounced-on criminal upon it will lean backwards, making full-blown cruxfixion or other impalement unnecessary.

But when the vertical pole stays vertical, the criminal leans forward.

And it makes the job much safer for the attendants.

Back to impalement.

Carry on!
 

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When Alain Robbe-Grillet was making his film 'L'Eden et Apres' (1970), the lead actress, young Catherine Jourdan, revealed to him her secret fantasy-fear of being impaled. It gave him the hint to slot in flashes of this Torture Chamber scene at 'climax' moments in the film. As well as the girl on the spikes, there's another being very nicely crucified on a wheel-like thing!

Attached, sorry I'm technologically challenged - it's from the Italian Wikipedia article on the film, http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oltre_l'Eden. You can watch 4 minutes of delicious acting by Mlle Jourdan, including one of the flashes of this scene, on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q90_ZjuKgo. Until recently you could watch the whole film, but it seems to have been pulled.
 
Hi,
Here's three screenshots from the clip. The one with the hook and chains looks very familiar....so what manip am I thinking of and who did it? :)

Melissa
 

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........
 

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Hi,
Here's three screenshots from the clip. The one with the hook and chains looks very familiar....so what manip am I thinking of and who did it? :)

Melissa
something with hell and bell perhaps?
 
Painful thread!

And to please the friends of sharpened wood ...
here some drawings of Maetre Le Chat ...

Ouch,
Julia
 

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