The Cross, a Stumbling Block? Understanding Roman Crucifixion

It’s 63 BC. You are a Roman citizen named Rabirius, and you’re on trial. Caesar himself has accused you of murdering a tribune of the people. Crucifixion was eventually ruled out during the trial, but for your lawyer, Cicero, the very idea of it being considered for a Roman citizen is unthinkable and, frankly, punishment enough. In his brilliant closing remarks, he says,

How grievous a thing it is to be disgraced by a public court; how grievous to suffer a fine, how grievous to suffer banishment; and yet in the midst of any such disaster we retain some degree of liberty. Even if we are threatened with death, we may die free men. But the executioner, the veiling of the head and the very word “cross” should be far removed not only from the person of a Roman citizen but from his thoughts, his eyes and his ears. For it is not only the actual occurrence of these things or the endurance of them, but liability to them, the expectation, indeed the very mention of them, that is unworthy of a Roman citizen and a free man.¹

Crucifixion is at the center of Christianity, but in light of Cicero’s words, it should not surprise us that Paul calls the cross of Jesus “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to the Greeks” (1 Cor 1:23; see also 1 Cor 2:2; Gal 5:11).

The heart of the Christian message, which Paul described as the “word of the cross” … ran counter not only to Roman political thinking, but to the whole ethos of religion in ancient times and in particular to the ideas of God held by educated people.²

Yet the language of the cross is ubiquitous in Christianity, whether in the New Testament or the writings of the early church. The cross is central even though “Jesus’ cross was a sign of extreme ‘shame’ (Heb 12:2).”³

Removed as we are from that culture, we often miss just how shocking crucifixion was. We wear gold crosses as jewelry. We display beautiful, polished crucifixes in our sanctuaries. However, the reality of this Roman execution was unimaginably horrifying and shameful.

The horror of crucifixion

The Romans did not invent crucifixion, and evidence of its use is found in various other ancient cultures.⁴ But the Romans perfected it as a tool of terror. They used it primarily to punish slaves, pirates, and political rebels. Roman writers called it the summum supplicium, “the supreme penalty.”⁵

Quite a bit of popular (and even some scholarly) work focuses on the crucifixion of Jesus as an accurate description of the practice as a whole.⁶ This is at least partly because the Gospels provide the longest and most detailed account of a crucifixion in the whole of ancient literature. But given the brutality and indignity of the practice, this is no surprise, as “no ancient writer wanted to dwell too long on this cruel procedure.”⁷

It is important to note, however, that there was no standard practice for crucifixion.⁸ But one common thread was that the aim of crucifixion was “subjecting the victim to the utmost indignity.”⁹ Additionally, the physical ordeal began long before the actual cross. Put simply, crucifixion, including any preliminary abuse, gave “the caprice and sadism of the executioners … full rein.”¹⁰ While the process of crucifixion varied widely, there were some elements in Roman crucifixion that were common enough to establish a broad, four-part outline.

1. Scourging the victim

Prior to the act itself, victims were ruthlessly flogged and beaten (see Matt 27:26; Mark 15:15; John 19:1). This was usually done with a flagrum, a short Roman whip interlaced with heavy iron weights and sharp pieces of sheep bone. Some victims were also disfigured in various ways, like having their tongues ripped out or their eyes burnt out. In some cases, victims died from the scourging before ever reaching the cross.

2. Carrying the cross

After such a beating, the victim was expected to carry the crossbeam, known as the patibulum, to the execution site.¹¹ This heavy wooden beam could weigh up to a hundred pounds, physically exhausting the already weakened victim.¹² The heavy vertical pole was typically kept stationary in the ground at the execution site and reused for multiple executions.

3. Hanging on the cross

The form of the cross itself varied. It could be a vertical stake with no crossbeam, a vertical stake with a crossbeam, shaped like a capital T, or a vertical stake with an intersecting beam—the shape traditionally represented in Christian iconography.¹³

Positioning on the cross also varied, including hanging the victim upside down, having stakes driven through genitals, or outstretching the arms.¹⁴

Victims were affixed to the cross using ropes, heavy iron nails, or a combination of both. Nails measuring four to seven inches in length were commonly driven through the victim’s wrists (as the palms could not support the body’s weight) and through their heel bones.¹⁵

Gary Todd, “Nail & Heel Bone: Only Known Evidence of Crucifixion,” Jerusalem.

Rare archaeological evidence from a crucified man in Jerusalem is an iron nail hammered laterally through the heel bone, secured with an olive-wood plaque just under the nail head to prevent the victim from pulling the foot free.¹⁶

Crucifixion was designed to be as slow and agonizing as possible, with the victim dying “limb by limb.”¹⁷ Depending on the specific methods used, a victim could hang in agony for several days before finally expiring.

4. Dying on the cross

The final cause of death by asphyxiation has been assumed since Dr. Pierre Barbet put the theory forward in A Doctor at Calvary in 1950. The hanging position severely restricted the chest muscles and diaphragm. To exhale, the victim was forced to painfully push up on their nailed feet. Eventually, muscle fatigue and exhaustion would set in, leading to suffocation.¹⁸

However, a recent examination by a forensic pathologist has challenged these perspectives.¹⁹ Patrick Hansma strongly argues against the widely held theory that crucifixion victims died from asphyxiation. He explains that the asphyxiation hypothesis has zero scientific or historical evidence to support it. Furthermore, observations of modern, voluntary crucifixions in places like the Philippines show no signs of this rhythmic breathing struggle.

Instead, Hansma proposes several physiological mechanisms that are far more likely to have caused death during crucifixion.

• Heart failure: The extreme trauma could induce fatal strain on the heart. Right heart failure could result from pulmonary congestion, fluid buildup (edema), and acute pulmonary hypertension as the body tries to shunt blood in a low-oxygen state. Left heart failure could occur as the body loses fluid volume; blood vessels constrict to maintain blood pressure, drastically increasing the resistance (afterload) the heart must pump against until it fails.
• Embolic events (clots): Blunt force trauma from pre-crucifixion beatings or the Roman practice of breaking the victim’s legs could liquefy fat under the skin or release bone marrow. This can cause fatal fat and marrow embolisms that travel to the lungs or brain. Additionally, hanging completely static on the cross promotes deep vein thrombosis (blood clots), which could also travel to the lungs.
• Dehydration: Victims were exposed to the hot sun after extreme physical exertion and trauma. They lost massive amounts of fluid through bleeding and “third spacing” (fluid leaking out of blood vessels into surrounding tissues as edema), which thickened the blood and could lead to lethal dehydration.
• Exsanguination (bleeding to death): While the nail wounds alone might not cause a victim to bleed to death (unless major arteries in the palms were hit), the severe trauma, flogging, and blunt force injuries that routinely preceded crucifixion could cause massive, fatal blood loss.²⁰
  Rhabdomyolysis: If the victim was affixed to the cross in a way that severely hyperextended their arms backward (similar to a torture technique called strappado or reverse hanging), it could cause rapid, fatal muscle tissue breakdown.

Ultimately, Hansma concludes that instead of suffocation, a crucifixion victim likely succumbed to a combination of these cardiovascular and systemic failures brought on by severe dehydration, heart failure, embolic events, and the immense blunt and sharp force trauma they sustained.

If the Romans wanted to speed up the execution, they would shatter the victim’s lower legs with a heavy iron mallet. This violent practice further limited the movement of the victim, and thereby sped up their demise.

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The shame of crucifixion

While all of this is obviously horrific, crucifixion did more than just kill you. “In crucifixion, everything was done to humiliate and dishonor the victim in addition to torturing him or her to death.”²¹ For instance, victims were almost always executed without clothing, both to make them more susceptible to blows and to increase their shame. Crucified bodies were also regularly left up and denied burial. ²² In fact, in some cases, even though execution had taken place by other means, a dead body was later crucified.²³ Thus, Horace refers to people on the cross as food for crows.²⁴

Shame in Greco-Roman society

This public degradation was part of the horror of crucifixion, and it is one that is easily missed in settings that aren’t steeped in the concepts of honor and shame. Social scientific scholars such as Richard Rohrbaugh call honor and shame “core values of the biblical world.”²⁵

Honor is not simply self-esteem. Rather, it’s more like publicly acknowledged self-esteem.²⁶ Conversely, shame is recognizing when your self-esteem is not acknowledged by the public.²⁷

If one has a higher opinion of oneself than society does, then an adjustment needs to be made, either by publicly proving one’s worth or by adjusting one’s self-perception. The ability to feel shame is understood as a good thing because it is an individual’s recognition that they have stepped outside the bounds of what their society will allow. They are ashamed, and this motivates them to return to conformity with societal expectations.

A shameless person, however, would disregard public expectations.²⁸ Put simply, if you break the societal convention, the expectation is that shame will return you to conformity. If it does not, then you are uncivilized, rude, and should be shunned.²⁹

Further, in a collectivist society, both honor and shame were shared. Neither honor nor shame was individual in nature. Both were applied broadly to families and other social associations. One was connected not only to family but also to any other significant relationships.

These values are deeply embedded in the Greco-Roman world.

• Plutarch says, “For the wise man takes pleasure in what is honourable, but the fool is not vexed by shamefulness.”³⁰
  Xenophon says that the love of honor is the only thing that separates us from animals.³¹
• Augustine, speaking of the Romans, says, “Glory was their most ardent love. They lived for honor, and for it they did not hesitate to die. This single measureless ambition crushed their lesser greeds. It was their glory to conquer and control others, and a dishonor for their fatherland not to be free.”³²

Nothing mattered more to a Roman than honor, collectively acknowledged and understood. And crucifixion ripped that to shreds.

Crucifixion as public shaming

Crucifixion was “an intentionally degrading death, fixing the criminal’s honor at the lowest end of the spectrum and serving as an effective deterrent to the observers, reminding them of the shameful end that awaits those who similarly deviate from the dominant culture’s values and scripts for subordinates.”³³ The violence and shame of the cross were used by the Romans as a preventative measure.³⁴ Josephus reports that mass crucifixions were intended to quell Jewish revolts:

The main reason why [Titus] did not forbid [crucifixion] was this, that he hoped the Jews might perhaps yield at that sight, out of fear lest they might themselves afterwards be liable to the same cruel treatment. So the soldiers…nailed those they caught, one after one way, and another after another, to the crosses, by way of jest; when their multitude was so great, that room was wanting for the crosses, and crosses wanting for the bodies. ³⁵

This is also why crucifixion nearly always occurred on popular roads. As Quintilian puts it, “Whenever we crucify the guilty, the most crowded roads are chosen, where the most people can see and be moved by this fear. For penalties relate not so much to retribution as to their exemplary effect.”³⁶ They were visible reminders of what rebellion earned you. Crucifixion was essentially a terror tactic to keep provinces in order.³⁷

Crux eventually entered the vocabulary of lower classes as a vulgar taunt.³⁸ For Cicero, as we’ve seen, it’s an unthinkable punishment:

It is a crime to bind a Roman citizen; to scourge him is a wickedness; to put him to death is almost parricide. What shall I say of crucifying him? So guilty an action cannot by any possibility be adequately expressed by any name bad enough for it.³⁹

Cicero was not often speechless, but the concept of crucifying a Roman was sufficient to leave him without words. He was not alone. Crucifixion was deplorable on every level. One did not want to see, read, hear, or think about it, or be associated with it or its victims in any way.

The scandal of Christ’s cross

One can imagine then the absolute befuddlement of the Romans as they watched Christianity grow after the crucifixion of Jesus. What absurdity to worship a dead leader, but more than that, a crucified one. This foolishness of the gospel for the Greco-Roman world was the final and strongest attempt of the culture to shame you back into line. Yet not only did Christians lack the good sense to be ashamed of Jesus on the cross (Rom 1:16), they went so far as to celebrate it (1 Cor 1:18; Gal 6:14)! To be Roman is to love honor, but to be a Christian is to love the cross. These values were (and remain) at an impasse.

Not only did Christians not possess the good sense to be ashamed of Jesus on the cross, but they went so far as to celebrate it!

For a striking example of how a Greco-Roman mind saw crucifixion, one of the first depictions of Christian crucifixion is found in the Alexamenos Graffito.⁴⁰ It is a carving on a wall of a man worshipping a crucified donkey. For the average Roman, Christians were shameless. They lacked the ability to recognize their shame or attempt to remedy it.

A photo of the Alexamenos Graffito (left) next to a superimposed outline of its drawing (right).

Just as victims of crucifixion were irretrievably shamed, so are those who continue to willingly be associated with them. Christians were thus culturally equivalent to the lowest of society. This, as we have seen, would go beyond the corrective measures that a society could impose.

• Celsus points this out in the second century when criticizing Christianity, saying that Jesus was “was shamefully bound, and disgracefully punished, and very recently was most [insultingly] treated before the eyes of all men.”⁴¹
  Lucian of Samosata joins in, referring to Jesus as “that crucified sophist they worship and according to that one’s laws they live.”⁴²
• Jewish views of crucifixion were no better. Anyone who was crucified was cursed by God, based on Deuteronomy 21:23.⁴³ Crucifixion was viewed by the Jews as “the most dishonourable form of death penalty, which is specifically imposed for a political crime, treason against the people.”⁴⁴

Thus, any convert to Christianity had to reckon with the social fallout of Jesus’s death. Justin Martyr tells us, “For this they accuse us of madness, saying that we attribute to a crucified man a place second to the unchanging and eternal God, the Creator of all things.”⁴⁵ Madness: Jesus experienced the pinnacle of shame, but now he is in the position of highest honor.⁴⁶

For the outsider, the cross remained the most difficult barrier to conversion. The best way to overcome that barrier was to vindicate Jesus, and there is no better vindication than the resurrection.⁴⁷

Conclusion

Let us return to 63 BC and the trial of Rabirius. Now imagine those who acquitted him after Cicero’s speech. Imagine their disgust that a Roman citizen was threatened, even briefly, with something as grotesque as crucifixion.

It’s virtually impossible that any of them would have lived long enough to hear a presentation of the gospel, but for our sake, let’s imagine they did. Imagine that they are told that the one supreme God became man (Phil 2:6–7). Perhaps that would be taken as silliness. God would never deign to become mortal. But that this God who took on mortality proved it by dying (Phil 2:8a)? Now that is absurd. Laughable even. What God can truly die? And we’re to believe this is the greatest of all gods? But wait: His death was death on a cross (Phil 2:8b)?! Lactantius preserves an objection along these lines:

Why, if he was God and wanted to die, was he not at least executed by some other honest form of death? Why particularly by a cross? Why by an infamous form of punishment, which indeed appears unworthy of a free person in spite of the fact that he/she is guilty?⁴⁸

Now this is truly insane. This is not worthy of consideration. A good Roman shouldn’t even have to hear such things.

And yet, in less than three hundred years, all Romans would. So many would accept it that Christianity became the official religion of Rome. The empire that saw nothing but disdain, shame, and insanity in the cross eventually embraced that same symbol.

Ryan Lytton’s suggested resources for studying crucifixion

• Select Works of Cicero (36 vols.) by M. Tullius Cicero
• Cook, John Granger. Crucifixion in the Mediterranean World. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 327. Second edition. Mohr Siebeck, 2019.

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