Crucifixion in Roman Antiquity: The State of the Field

Abstract

Crucifixion in Roman AntiquityThe State of the Field Felicity Harley (bio) Chapman, David W. Ancient Jewish and Christian Perceptions of Crucifixion. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament II/244. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008; republished by Baker Publishing Group, 2010. Pp. xiii + 321. €29.00. Chapman, David W. and Eckhard J. Schnabel. The Trial and Crucifixion of Jesus. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 344. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015. Pp. xxiv + 867. €39.00. Cook, John Granger. Crucifixion in the Mediterranean World. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 327. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014 (a second enlarged edition scheduled to appear in 2019). Pp. xl + 549. €79.00. Samuelsson, Gunnar. Crucifixion in Antiquity: An Inquiry into the Background and Significance of the New Testament Terminology of Crucifixion. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament II/310. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011; rev. ed. 2013. Pp. xxxii + 364. €79.00. Late in January 41 c.e., a newly composed mime about the exploits of the notorious Roman bandit Laureolus was performed before the emperor Gaius and his guests in the Imperial Palace, on Rome's Palatine Hill.1 The performance was part of the ludi Palatini, a private festival held in honor [End Page 303] of the deified Augustus; the historian Josephus observed that at the mime's climax, the capture and crucifixion of the runaway slave turned robber, a great quantity of fake blood was shed across the stage.2 In the same city several decades later, before tens of thousands of spectators, blood remained central to the staging of the same mime but was no longer artificial. The poet Martial records that the dénouement was a live execution, a criminal being cast in the role of Laureolus and executed on stage, suspended not from a theater set but from a real cross (non falsa cruce), before being fatally mauled by a bear: Nuda Caledonio sic uiscera praebuit ursonon falsa pendens in cruce Laureolusuiuebant laceri membris stillantibus artusinque omni nusquam corpore corpus erat. Laureolus, hanging on no false cross,gave up his defenceless entrails to a Scottish bear.His mangled limbs were still alive, though the parts were dripping with blood, and in his whole body there actually was no body.3 In the modern imagination, crucifixion (from the Latin verb crucifigo, "to fasten to a cross") constitutes a highly specific method of execution: the fatal suspension of a living victim from a cross-shaped scaffold. This narrow definition is conveyed linguistically by the English word and its equivalents in a variety of modern languages, and visually by the remarkably stable iconography of Jesus's crucifixion that was formulated by the late sixth century and circulated widely. On this understanding of crucifixion, the death of Laureolus on "no false cross" is easy for us to visualize; and on this scaffold, the victim becomes an easy target for the bear, who claws away his flesh in an add-on torture that both hastens and colors the death. In fact Martial does not provide any specific information about the scaffold. He takes some delight in describing the bloody process [End Page 304] of disembowelment, lingering over the fact that despite being little more than a hanging carcass, severed nerves cause Laureolus's lacerated limbs to twitch, as though still alive.4 Yet nowhere does he describe the shape of the scaffold (crux), or the method used to affix Laureolus to it. A similar lack of interest in these details, which are fundamental to the modern definition of crucifixion, is betrayed in Josephus's account wherein Laureolus is simply described as crucified (σταυρωθέντα), as though the reader knew exactly what this entailed and so supplied the particulars from their imagination or memory. Yet what those particulars were is a moot point. In antiquity, there was no single word to designate "crucifixion" in the narrow way that term is used and understood in various modern languages today. Hence the recovery of ancient understandings of crucifixion is a complex process, more so than is customarily assumed, with the methods of doing so contested, as a recent body of literature has demonstrated. When searching for descriptions of or references to crucifixion in ancient sources it is...