D
Deleted member jedakk
Guest
Plautus mentions it in one of his plays, can't remember which, but the line, said by a slave who knew he was going to be in a lot of trouble, was something like "They'll call me splinter shanks!" - i.e. he was joking about being crucified and having his legs broken.
What we can infer from the gospels is that breaking the legs was not done any time soon after the victims were raised on their crosses, and maybe not at all in many cases. The Jewish leaders had to ask Pilate to have it done, with the justification that it would be unseemly to have the victims' suffering continuing into their sabbath. It would appear from that that he would have been quite willing for the crucifixions to have gone on for several days until the condemned expired without any intervention on the part of the executioners. He seems to have been amazed that Jesus died so quickly, and he seems to have feared that this might have been viewed as some kind of mercy on his part, allowing this criminal to escape through death without paying for his crimes in full measure.
All of this suggests that the Romans expected a victim to spend a very long time in agony on the cross. The humiliation of nudity and the shameful torture of the sedile or cornu added to their punishment. The reasons that the Romans might have shortened the punishment are unknown, outside of the specific case of Jesus' crucifixion. Perhaps there were instances where they felt that the interest of the onlookers had dwindled to the point that the expense of maintaining a guard at the foot of the cross was no longer justified, and so chose to dispatch the victim for simple economic reasons.
My own speculation is that following the breaking of the legs, the victims' suffering could have gone on for some time before death. While I do believe that death on the cross was most often as a result of asphyxiation, I don't think that would happen until the victim's breathing muscles were so fatigued that they simply would not work any longer. Simply hanging by the wrists will restrict breathing and cause a person to have to work much harder than he normally would in order to push the air from his lungs. While that feeling of restricted breathing is torture in itself - it's called Dyspnea - it is not fatal. It is bad enough that some terminally ill patients who experience it have said that they would rather die than have to go through it again. Waterboard torture is based on this.
Having said that, some studies have indicated that a crucifixion victim who is not exhausted would still be able to take in enough air to support life. In fact, one of the things that happens during periods of Dyspnea, where a person experiences a feeling of restricted breathing, is that he works so hard for breath that he actually hyperventilates and faints. Once he faints, his breathing rate is no longer affected by the panic he feels while awake, due to restricted breathing, his body establishes a regular breathing rhythm that provides the air required, even though it may be shallow breathing, and he returns to consciousness.
This probably happened to victims on the cross, fainting from time to time and awakening. If their legs were broken, it would continue to happen until they were so exhausted that their muscles could not move a volume of air sufficient to support life, and then they would die. Depending on how far the crucifixion had progressed, i.e. several hours or several days, it might have taken hours for a victim to finally die by very slow strangulation.
This may have hastened the victim's death, but I have a hard time classifying it as mercy; and I very seriously doubt that any friends or family, having ever seen how a victim died following the crucifragium, would have ever conceived of asking to have it done to them. And no, I don't find this particular aspect of crucifixion erotic.
What we can infer from the gospels is that breaking the legs was not done any time soon after the victims were raised on their crosses, and maybe not at all in many cases. The Jewish leaders had to ask Pilate to have it done, with the justification that it would be unseemly to have the victims' suffering continuing into their sabbath. It would appear from that that he would have been quite willing for the crucifixions to have gone on for several days until the condemned expired without any intervention on the part of the executioners. He seems to have been amazed that Jesus died so quickly, and he seems to have feared that this might have been viewed as some kind of mercy on his part, allowing this criminal to escape through death without paying for his crimes in full measure.
All of this suggests that the Romans expected a victim to spend a very long time in agony on the cross. The humiliation of nudity and the shameful torture of the sedile or cornu added to their punishment. The reasons that the Romans might have shortened the punishment are unknown, outside of the specific case of Jesus' crucifixion. Perhaps there were instances where they felt that the interest of the onlookers had dwindled to the point that the expense of maintaining a guard at the foot of the cross was no longer justified, and so chose to dispatch the victim for simple economic reasons.
My own speculation is that following the breaking of the legs, the victims' suffering could have gone on for some time before death. While I do believe that death on the cross was most often as a result of asphyxiation, I don't think that would happen until the victim's breathing muscles were so fatigued that they simply would not work any longer. Simply hanging by the wrists will restrict breathing and cause a person to have to work much harder than he normally would in order to push the air from his lungs. While that feeling of restricted breathing is torture in itself - it's called Dyspnea - it is not fatal. It is bad enough that some terminally ill patients who experience it have said that they would rather die than have to go through it again. Waterboard torture is based on this.
Having said that, some studies have indicated that a crucifixion victim who is not exhausted would still be able to take in enough air to support life. In fact, one of the things that happens during periods of Dyspnea, where a person experiences a feeling of restricted breathing, is that he works so hard for breath that he actually hyperventilates and faints. Once he faints, his breathing rate is no longer affected by the panic he feels while awake, due to restricted breathing, his body establishes a regular breathing rhythm that provides the air required, even though it may be shallow breathing, and he returns to consciousness.
This probably happened to victims on the cross, fainting from time to time and awakening. If their legs were broken, it would continue to happen until they were so exhausted that their muscles could not move a volume of air sufficient to support life, and then they would die. Depending on how far the crucifixion had progressed, i.e. several hours or several days, it might have taken hours for a victim to finally die by very slow strangulation.
This may have hastened the victim's death, but I have a hard time classifying it as mercy; and I very seriously doubt that any friends or family, having ever seen how a victim died following the crucifragium, would have ever conceived of asking to have it done to them. And no, I don't find this particular aspect of crucifixion erotic.
Jedakk
