EVIDENCE Showing Crosses Were Sacred to the Romans. Before Christianity.

"And the power of this form is shown by your own symbols on what are called "vexilla" [banners] and trophies, with which all your state possessions are made, using these as the insignia of your power and government, even though you do so unwittingly. And with this form you consecrate the images of your emperors when they die, and you name them gods by inscriptions."

Justin Martyr, I Apology 55. (could also read, "And on this form...")

"You place the Christians on crosses and stakes : what image does not take its first shape in plastic clay fixed on a cross and stake? It is on the gibbet that the body of your god is first consecrated."

Tertullian, Apology 12,3 (slightly modified to reflect the Latin)

"Crosses, moreover, we neither worship nor wish for. You, indeed, who consecrate gods of wood, adore wooden crosses perhaps as parts of your gods. For your very standards, as well as your banners; and flags of your camp, what else are they but crosses glided and adorned? Your victorious trophies not only imitate the appearance of a simple cross, but also that of a man affixed to it."

Minucius Felix, Octavius 29.



Justin Martyr, Tertullian and Minucius Felix all knew that crosses were sacred to the Romans. Ordinary crosses, of the type used in depictions of Jesus' crucifiction, were used for the display of enemy armor, and even for the display of the wax images of the deified Caesars at their funerals.  It is the latter sort of "victorious trophy" that most resembled a man affixed to a simple cross.

Now we have plenty of archaeological and historical evidence that crosses were sacred back then, and not just to Christians.  There are multitudes of Roman coins showing the tropaeum (victory cross) on their reverse images.  Here are a few coins depicting the usual manner of displaying the tropaeum at Roman triumphs (their victory parades).  Enemy prisoners were placed at the foot of the trophy and bound.

Coin of Julius Caesar with a tropaeum.

Coin with a tropaeum on the reverse side, Venus or Roma on the obverse



Another coin of Julius Caesar with a tropaeum.

Sometimes the winged deity Victoria was depicted decorating the tropaeum. Here are a few reliefs and sculptural examples:





Via Appia Marble Altar dedicated to Jupiter, the Sun, Serapis.
This side depicts the deity Victoria with a tropaeum.
http://www.vroma.org/images/raia_images/index5.html

Barbarian captive bound at and chained to a tropaeum, to the right.
Note the pile of enemy armor at the base.

And here is a relief of Augustus Caesar on the left, an eagle at his feet, with Victoria on the right.
She is decorating a tropaeum that is standing in the middle. At the base is a bound enemy prisoner. [1]

Miniature tropaeum on display at the Berlin Museum, Charlottenberg.

The above tropaeum is interesting.  The frame has a recognizably cruciform shape of the familiar crux immissa type, but it is wearing not enemy armor, but Roman armor, suitable for a Caesar.   And this calls our attention back to the period when the above church fathers were writing: mid-Second to early Third Centuries C.E., and what they were saying: they were dedicating the wax images of their deified Caesars on these things!  So the practice must go back to the funeral of the first Caesar.

And indeed scholarship is settled on this. The wax images of both Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus were displayed in the Forum at the Rostra, suspended above the bier that held the actual body of each at their respective funerals. [2][3] The most effective display would be with the use of a cross -- especially so in the case of Julius Caesar, so that the twenty-three stab wounds could be seen.  From his extensive research, Francesco Carotta "identifies the Christian cross as a Roman tropaeum [above]; a wooden cross displaying the armor of vanquished leaders --also used to display a wax copy of Caesar's corpse." [4]

And indeed there were "crosses" evident in the Caesar's temple -- specifically the door and the comet. A a Latin cross can clearly be seen in the brass boss pattern on the central door and the comet is formed  from two crosses (+ and X), as can be seen below (click to enlarge):

Reconstruction and Visualisation of Temple of Divus Iulius [Caesar]

(Leone M. Jennarelli, CGSociety.org)

The cross on the door can also be clearly seen, in the following coin images of the same temple, with the star or comet presented in a cruciform manner in the first image below:

The coin images (two known obverse, one known reverse) depict the temple to Caesar that the Senate decreed be built in gratitude to the mercy he showed them after taking Rome. It is possible that these coins were minted by Mark Antony in memory of Caesar shortly after his death.

So perhaps the real reason why Christians were loath to depict crosses or crucifixes in their illustrations, typically found in catacombs, prior to the Fourth Century C.E. is because the Romans were using the same sort of image and structure for the deification of their Caesars.

Notes:

[1] Mary Beard, SPQR. New York, W.W. Norton & Company (Liveright Publishing Corporation), 2015. p. 486, fig. 91.

[2] Ibid., p. 339, concerning the funeral of Julius Caesar: "A few days later, Anthony staged a startling funeral for Caesar, including a wax model suspended above the corpse, intended to make it easier for the audience to see all the wounds with the body being given an impromptu cremation in the Forum, the fuel partly provided by wooden benches from the nearby law courts, partly by the clothes that the musicians tore off themselves and threw into the flames, and partly by the jewels and their children's junior togas that women heaped on top."

[3] Ibid., p.384, the funeral of Caesar Augustus: "a wax model of Augustus, not the body itself, was propped up on the rosta while Tiberius delivered the funeral address. The procession featured images not only of Augustus' ancestors but also of the great Romans of the past, including Pompey and Romulus, as if Augustus had been the descendant of them all. After the cremation, Livia -- now called Augusta, because Augustus had formally adopted her in his will -- rewarded with the sum of a million sesterces the man who swore that he had seen Augustus soaring to heaven. Augustus was now a god."

[4] Alex Putney, "Jupiter and Roman Concrete," Resonance in Ancient Roman Temples & Amphitheaters, Human-Resonance.org, September 8, 2014, http://www.human-resonance.org/roman_concrete.html, accessed 11-15-2015. Cf. Franceso Carotta, Jesus Was Caesar, "Chapter III - Crux," http://www.carotta.de/subseite/texte/jwc_e/crux.html, accessed 11-17-2015. See also and compare The History Channel's "Masks of Death - Famous Dead People,"   https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=DTVPhNoBBaw#t=2243), accessed 11-28-2015; and Gunnar Liestøl, "Sitsim Demo II," Situated Simulations (SitsimLab), Designing a Platform for Mobile Augmented Reality Genres, Oslo, Norway July 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=NliEGCnlSwM#t=154 and http://www.sitsim.no/, accessed 11-28-2015. In both of these videos, the wax image of Caesar is displayed with his arms bound and down to the sides as a common criminal being crucified.  This manner of exhibition would make some of Caesar's stab wounds rather difficult to be seen.