bronze Roman castration clamp

[yankee masha (imported)]

Thanks, pueros, I will check it out.

Anent crucifixion, I have read a lot about it. It's amazing how litle we know about that form of execution. There are records from ancient rome telling about this oen man who hung on the cross for about a week or more, then was pardoned and removed from the cross. He later wrote his story of his experience. Crucifixion was meant to be a lasting, protracted torture till death. If the soldiers did not actually break the legs and lacerate the liver and lung, the victim might hang there indefinitely.

Also we always think of the victim as being hung high up on a cross, but in reality they were hung at personal level, meaning you could walk up to them and talk to them face to face. When they died and were rotting the dogs would come and eat at them.

But it was nromally a long process of dying. This is why Pontius Pillate was amazed when they came to ask to take the body of Christ a few hours after he was crucified. He could not believe Jesus had died so quickly. This might be why the soldiers stuck him with the spear, to make sure for Pilate that the man was really dead.

But excessive cruelty was a normal part of a Roman's daily routine, from the students in the classrooms being flogged regularly by the teachers, to the treatment of slaves, to the normal household cruelty that existed, to the favorite entertainment, the games at the Colosseum.

Some of the greatest men in Rome were cruel as a matter of course. Julius Caesar kept his captive Vercingetorix, the Gaul leader, hanging around in a prison in Rome for several years until the preparations for Caesar's triuphal games were compelted. then the main event was having Vercigetorix strangled to death in the arena as a ritual execution.

Cicero, the great orator, during the year he was Dictator of rome, had hjis personal enemies sentenced to be thrown into a citern and left to starve to death. Just one of hte many tourist attractiosn available in that fair city.