Idomeneus
Assistant executioner
Hi. So, I'm running on 2 weeks sleep deprivation and somehow this found its way on to my word processor. I have no idea if I'll continue it or if it's just a one off. I hope you all enjoy it either way.
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It was an overcast day in Hebron, 135 CE. The coffle of nude women wending its way up the hill was alternating between cold and sweaty. The there all bone tired anyway, and couldn’t wipe the sweat of their brows because their hands were bound behind their backs.
“Halt!” called the centurion. All ten women collapsed gratefully to the stony ground immediately.
It was a while before Hannah could take any interest in anything but the exhaustion and pain wracking her body, but after the fatigue receded a little she managed to look around. She froze, her breath knocked out of her body as surely as if one of the legionnaires had kicked her in the stomach, a sensation she was by now intimately familiar with.
She crawled on her knees to her best friend and co-wife and nudged her with an elbow. “Jessica!” she hissed, panic gripping her, “wake up! Look!”
Jessica was in arguably even worse shape than her. She wasn’t as meek, pleasing, and obedient as Jewish women were supposed to be in Roman opinion, and therefore she now sported a large wooden dowel shoved between her teeth and tied viciously tight behind her neck, as well as a large, purplish bruise covering the entire left side of her once-beautiful face. The bit had interfered with her breathing, making it harder for her to get the necessary oxygen during their coffled trip through the city and its outskirts, so she was even more dazed than Hannah had been up till now. Hearing the urgency in her co-wife’s voice, however, she shook her head adamantly, trying to clear it, and looked in the direction Hannah was using her chin to gesture at.
For a moment nothing really registered. Planks of wood littered the muddy ground. So what? She wondered muggily. Why should I care about some—
The planks laying flat on the ground weren’t some random debris, she realized in horror. They were all comprised of a short beam nailed in a straight angle to a large beam, about two thirds of the way up.
Those were crosses. Jessica gave a quick look around. Now that she wasn’t focusing on solely on taking one shackled step after another before the slack ran out and getting enough air in the bargain, she realized that the top of the hill the coffle was now laying on was dotted with old crosses standing upright. She knew they were old because they still had body parts and bones nailed to them. One even had a crow still picking morsels of rotten flesh from one. Jessica could have sworn it looked at her knowingly before it cawed and flew off.
“Th-they’re not going to do that to us, are they?” Hannah was hyperventilating. “They only crucify the men! Women are taken as slaves!”
Jessica nodded numbly – it’s not as it she could give a coherent answer after all – and as far as she knew Hannah was right. Men, particularly captured warriors and leaders, were crucified to make a horrific warning from the Romans to the Jewish native of the land.
“Don’t you dare think about revolting,” that statement was saying bluntly, “or you’d be begging for our spears to finish you off.”
But women weren’t supposed to be part of that game. They were always considered far too valuable to waste on public executions in some godforsaken province of the mighty Empire. No, they were to be secured in chains and taken to Rome or other large cities, there to be sold as slaves or perhaps be killed in some entertainingly grisly manner in public spectacles for the plebs to enjoy. Jessica has only heard of old women, usually prominent men’s mothers or wives, ever being crucified, and even that was exceedingly rare. Much easier and more efficient to gut an old hag where she stood rather than go through the effort of nailing her up. Jessica, Hannah and the rest of them were important men’s wives and daughters, true, but they were still young and nubile, and would be considered valuable slaves by the fleshmongers of Italy and Greece, she knew. They would bring many denarii displayed in a marketplace. Here they’d just be wasted as crow food.
And yet… she had wondered. Things didn’t make sense for a while now. The revolt had been crushed weeks ago. Bar Kochba was long dead and so were the rest of the Jewish leaders. The country – what remained of it after the Roman legions were done pillaging and burning, anyway – was systematically being emptied of its ancient people. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands of the surviving Jews were loaded on ships and shipped away as slave, to Antioch, Ostia, Cyrene and Carthage. Probably even as far as Narbo.
Except for them. They stayed languishing in dungeons, chained to the walls and occasionally raped by bored garrison soldiers. It made no sense!
Unless…
Unless they were never going to sell us as slaves, some horrible voice whispered in her mind’s ear. Unless this is what they had in store for us all along.
Jessica looked upon the wet, ugly wooden crosses lying in the earth and knew the terrible truth. They were about to join their husbands and fathers and sons in God’s afterlife. They were about to be crucified.
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It was an overcast day in Hebron, 135 CE. The coffle of nude women wending its way up the hill was alternating between cold and sweaty. The there all bone tired anyway, and couldn’t wipe the sweat of their brows because their hands were bound behind their backs.
“Halt!” called the centurion. All ten women collapsed gratefully to the stony ground immediately.
It was a while before Hannah could take any interest in anything but the exhaustion and pain wracking her body, but after the fatigue receded a little she managed to look around. She froze, her breath knocked out of her body as surely as if one of the legionnaires had kicked her in the stomach, a sensation she was by now intimately familiar with.
She crawled on her knees to her best friend and co-wife and nudged her with an elbow. “Jessica!” she hissed, panic gripping her, “wake up! Look!”
Jessica was in arguably even worse shape than her. She wasn’t as meek, pleasing, and obedient as Jewish women were supposed to be in Roman opinion, and therefore she now sported a large wooden dowel shoved between her teeth and tied viciously tight behind her neck, as well as a large, purplish bruise covering the entire left side of her once-beautiful face. The bit had interfered with her breathing, making it harder for her to get the necessary oxygen during their coffled trip through the city and its outskirts, so she was even more dazed than Hannah had been up till now. Hearing the urgency in her co-wife’s voice, however, she shook her head adamantly, trying to clear it, and looked in the direction Hannah was using her chin to gesture at.
For a moment nothing really registered. Planks of wood littered the muddy ground. So what? She wondered muggily. Why should I care about some—
The planks laying flat on the ground weren’t some random debris, she realized in horror. They were all comprised of a short beam nailed in a straight angle to a large beam, about two thirds of the way up.
Those were crosses. Jessica gave a quick look around. Now that she wasn’t focusing on solely on taking one shackled step after another before the slack ran out and getting enough air in the bargain, she realized that the top of the hill the coffle was now laying on was dotted with old crosses standing upright. She knew they were old because they still had body parts and bones nailed to them. One even had a crow still picking morsels of rotten flesh from one. Jessica could have sworn it looked at her knowingly before it cawed and flew off.
“Th-they’re not going to do that to us, are they?” Hannah was hyperventilating. “They only crucify the men! Women are taken as slaves!”
Jessica nodded numbly – it’s not as it she could give a coherent answer after all – and as far as she knew Hannah was right. Men, particularly captured warriors and leaders, were crucified to make a horrific warning from the Romans to the Jewish native of the land.
“Don’t you dare think about revolting,” that statement was saying bluntly, “or you’d be begging for our spears to finish you off.”
But women weren’t supposed to be part of that game. They were always considered far too valuable to waste on public executions in some godforsaken province of the mighty Empire. No, they were to be secured in chains and taken to Rome or other large cities, there to be sold as slaves or perhaps be killed in some entertainingly grisly manner in public spectacles for the plebs to enjoy. Jessica has only heard of old women, usually prominent men’s mothers or wives, ever being crucified, and even that was exceedingly rare. Much easier and more efficient to gut an old hag where she stood rather than go through the effort of nailing her up. Jessica, Hannah and the rest of them were important men’s wives and daughters, true, but they were still young and nubile, and would be considered valuable slaves by the fleshmongers of Italy and Greece, she knew. They would bring many denarii displayed in a marketplace. Here they’d just be wasted as crow food.
And yet… she had wondered. Things didn’t make sense for a while now. The revolt had been crushed weeks ago. Bar Kochba was long dead and so were the rest of the Jewish leaders. The country – what remained of it after the Roman legions were done pillaging and burning, anyway – was systematically being emptied of its ancient people. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands of the surviving Jews were loaded on ships and shipped away as slave, to Antioch, Ostia, Cyrene and Carthage. Probably even as far as Narbo.
Except for them. They stayed languishing in dungeons, chained to the walls and occasionally raped by bored garrison soldiers. It made no sense!
Unless…
Unless they were never going to sell us as slaves, some horrible voice whispered in her mind’s ear. Unless this is what they had in store for us all along.
Jessica looked upon the wet, ugly wooden crosses lying in the earth and knew the terrible truth. They were about to join their husbands and fathers and sons in God’s afterlife. They were about to be crucified.
