What Was It Like to Be Crucified?

If you have ever wondered what it was like to be crucified, look no further. It was one of the worst possible deaths besides scaphism.

In 71 BC, travellers along the Appian Way from Capua to Rome would have been greeted with a gruesome sight. Every few yards there was a cross, 6,000 of them in total. Fastened to each of them was a dying slave.

The Roman general Crassus had put them there. They were the stragglers and prisoners from the recent uprising by the rebel gladiator Spartacus. After three years and thousands of deaths, Crassus had finally managed to put down the most dangerous slave revolt in Rome’s history.

Crucifying the survivors served two purposes. First, it was a reminder to everyone who saw the crosses that Crassus had been the one to really put down the revolt. To hyper-ambitious Romans like Crassus, that was very important.

Second, the crosses were a reminder to the rest of the slaves in the Empire of what happened when you tried to stand against the might of Rome.

The Romans were fond of crucifixion for the message it sent and used to punish a wide range of crimes from rebellion to murder to simple disobedience by slaves towards their masters. It seems to have been considered both an extremely painful death and a particularly shameful way to be executed.

But while we know that the Romans definitely used crucifixion frequently for punishment, we don’t know actually much about how they did it. Ancient sources just don’t provide many detailed accounts of crucifixion.

We don’t know, for instance, how crosses were shaped. Some ancient historians describe t-shaped crosses, and others describe crosses shaped like x’s. Some crucifixions even seem to have been designed to impale the victim, with the post actually being driven through the body.

A later depiction of different crucifixion methods/ Wikimedia Commons

In fact, the specifics of a crucifixion probably varied from place to place based on how much the condemned person was supposed to suffer and more every-day concerns, like the availability of wood.

Another of the major questions historians have is exactly how people were attached to crosses. The popular image of crucifixion is that people were nailed to crosses through the hands and feet. But based on what little historical evidence we have, that doesn’t seem to have been the most common way to crucify people.

In fact, the specifics of a crucifixion probably varied from place to place based on how much the condemned person was supposed to suffer and more every-day concerns, like the availability of wood.

In his work, The Jewish War, 1^st-century historian Josephus describes how the Romans nailed Jews to crosses in the wake of a Jewish revolt:

[box] So the soldiers, out of the wrath and hatred they bore the Jews, nailed those they caught, one after one way, and another after another, to the crosses, way of jest, when their multitude was so great, that room was wanting for the crosses, and crosses wanting for the bodies.[/box]

Josephus describes how the Jewish prisoners were nailed to crosses, but he points out that the nailing was done “by way of jest,” implying that the Romans did it because they thought it was funny. This suggests that it wasn’t seen as a “standard” part of crucifixion.

It seems to have been more like a extra layer of cruelty that the Romans could add on to a crucifixion if they were feeling particularly fed up with putting down a rebellion. And there’s a good reason that the Romans probably wouldn’t have wanted to use nails in crucifixions, at least not by themselves.

When a body is put up on a cross, the weight of the body is pulled down by gravity. This puts a huge amount of stress on the points where it’s attached. If you’ve ever tried to hang something heavy up by a nail, you’ve noticed that it tends to bend the nail.

Josephus describes how the Jewish prisoners were nailed to crosses, but he points out that the nailing was done “by way of jest,” implying that the Romans did it because they thought it was funny.

Crucifixions would work the same way. If you were nailed to a cross by your hands, the weight of your body would start to pull on the nails. Eventually, the nails would either be pulled out of the wood, or rip through the bones and flesh of your hands. That’s especially true if you were struggling, which you probably would be if you’d just been nailed to a cross.

Instead, most evidence suggests that crucifixion worked a little differently. Let’s say that you were sentenced to die by crucifixion in ancient Rome.

First, you would probably be whipped publically with something the Romans called a flagellum. This was a wooden handle with several long leather strips hanging off of it. The strips would usually have knots or pieces of metal or bone tied into them. After you were tied to a post to keep you upright, the torturer would begin to swing the flagellum against your shoulders, then down your back and towards the soles of your feet.

The whip would catch against the skin and tear it. Done hard enough, the flagellum could strip the skin and muscles away from the bone.

How many times you were whipped would probably depend on the mood of the Roman judge in your particular case. There was no limit to the number of strokes a judge could sentence you to, but they were expected to have some idea of how many blows you could take without dying. Most probably had enough experience in these cases that they did.

The whipping wasn’t supposed to kill you, after all. It was just the first part of your punishment.

How many times you were whipped would probably depend on the mood of the Roman judge in your particular case.

Most modern images of crucifixions have the victims carrying an entire cross. Not only was this unlikely given how heavy an entire cross would be, but to save wood, the posts for a legal crucifixion were usually left in place. After one victim died, the Romans would take them down so they could reuse the crossbeam for the next crucifixion.

Instead, the Romans would place a 100-pound wooden crossbeam on your back and make you carry it outside the city to the place of crucifixion.

Once you arrived with your crossbeam, the Romans would bend your arms over it, as though you were laying your arms across someone’s shoulders. They would then tie your arms down with rope. If they chose to drive a nail through your arms or hands, they would do it now.

Figure 1. Note the footrest version

As for your feet, that’s another layer of confusion. Some images of the most famous crucifixion in history, that of Jesus, show his feet resting on a small plank.

Practically, it makes sense. Transferring some of the weight of your body to your feet would help keep you on the cross. But there’s no real historical evidence for a foot rest. Instead, some writers mention a sedile, which was basically a small wooden seat, possibly more like a rail, attached to the front of the cross. If that makes it sound more bearable, think again.

A narrow wooden bar between the legs would press against the sensitive nerves of the groin under the weight of the body and would cause excruciating pain after a few minutes. After a few hours, you’d have begged someone, anyone, to take it away.

There are heel bones from around the 1^st-century that still have nails driven through, which implies that, in some cases, your legs would have been placed on each side of the post and nailed through the heels. But in most cases, they were probably just tied.

What happened after you were placed on the cross is another question. Most doctors and historians have concluded that it wasn’t immediately fatal if performed the right way.

Instead, you’d have stayed on the cross for days as the weight of your body compressed your lungs, making it harder to breath. Often people on the cross would beg or attempt to bribe people walking by with what little they had left for water or to simply kill them.

Figure 2. Jesus being stabbed by a spear

In the popular imagination of Jesus’s crucifixion, he is said to have been stabbed by a Roman soldier in the side with a spear. Usually, this is seen as a final insult. But a person on a cross might have recognized it as an act of enormous mercy.

If you couldn’t manage that, most people being crucified would have settled for having their legs broken. This would put more pressure on the arms, eventually pulling them out of their sockets. With this last source of strength gone, the weight of the body would suffocate them. Again, this was something people being crucified were happy to pay someone everything they had left to do.

That’s because the alternative was to slowly grow weaker from dehydration. Over a few days, you would grow delirious and fade in and out of consciousness as your body steadily lost water.

Soon, your body would start shifting the supply of blood to your heart and brain to use what precious little moisture was left to keep you alive. The lack of blood to your kidneys would result in toxins building up in your blood. Finally, your heart would stop beating.

Once you were dead, the Romans would either leave you up for a few days or months as a warning to others as birds picked at your decaying flesh. Eventually, they would pull you down and throw your remains into a mass grave reserved for criminals.

The lack of blood to your kidneys would result in toxins building up in your blood. Finally, your heart would stop beating.

The goal of a crucifixion was to produce suffering. The Romans understood that simply tying someone to a cross for days was enough to accomplish that by itself. But they also had many ways they could make the process even worse. So there was likely no single, standard way of crucifying people. Just how it happened was probably different at different times and different places.

Ultimately, it was likely one of history’s most brutal, and varied, punishments. Nearly as brutal as scaphism, that is.