One of the things that throw scholars off...

Crucifixion d'un Chrétien en Algier - detail. Il est empalée aussi!
Source: Gallica.bnf.fr / Biibliothèque nationale de France

Part 2: Length of Survival, or, Time of Expiry for the Executed

One of the things that throw scholars off is the idea that impalement as a death penalty invariably ends with an immediate, or at least a quick, death. Gunnar Samuelsson (Crucifixion in Antiquity, p. 44, n. 31) and John Granger Cook (Crucifixion in the Mediterranean World, p. 3) both hold this conviction. Yet travelogue narratives, as well as sketches, from the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries clearly indicate that this was not so!

In the revised and expanded first part I have shown, with period sketches, how the Turks and others transfixed the impaled person through the length of his body from the rectum and out the back below one of the shoulders without killing him instantly. To the typical Western European of the time was a disgusting and exceedingly vile combination of the utmost cruelty and what they considered unnatural sex.

Now there are several written accounts of how impaled persons suffered a slow lingering death for up to two or three days or even longer while transfixed through. There is even one account of a person surviving this after being recused by his friends!

Perished Straightaway, i.e., during the impalement process.

Now mind you, some who were longitudinally transfixed through certainly perished straightaway, as witnessed by Henry Blount (A Voyage into the Levant, p. 52) in the Levant, Paul Lucas (Voyage du sieur Paul Lucas, pp. 277-278) somewhere in North Africa (Mauretania or Tunisia) on 27 February 1705, Jean de Thevenot (The Travels Of Monsieur De Thevenot Into The Levant, vol. 1, p. 259) in Egypt.

Blount witnessed the impalement of three robbers, two of which perished during the process, and the third having survived the process was instantly killed otherwise:

The other was of three Arabs, who robbed in the wildernesse betweene Rossetto and Alexandria; they were taken at a place called Maidyah, where at my returne I saw execution done in this manner: They were laid naked upon the ground, their face downeward, their hands and legs tyed abroad to stakes; then came the hangman, who putting their own half-pikes in at the Fundament did with a Beetle, drive them up leisurely, till they came out at the Head, or Shoulder: two of them died suddenly, but the third whom the Pike had not toucht neither in the heart, nor braine, would have lived longer, had not the standers not dasht out his braines.

Lucas saw two men impaled, the first died during the process, the second was impaled only partial depth using a wooden stay, or brake, and so survived for at least few hours (“a long time”) sitting on the brake, suspended thus with his legs hanging in the air.

Pendant cette expedition infortunée on avoit surpris quatre Maures avec plusieurs Lettres addressées à quelques personnes de Tunis par les Mécontens retirez aux Frontieres du Roïaume. Le 27. Fevrier 1705 les fit mourir d'une étrange maniere. On en mit deux en croix: on leur cloua les mains & les pieds. Les deux autres surent mis au Cafouque , ou empalez. De ces miserables les deux premiers étoient encore vivans 12. heures aptès: le troisième mourut dans faction. Quelle apparence de-vivre! le bois lui traversoit non seulement les entrailles, mais le cœur, & lui sortoit par les épaules. Le dernier n'étant empalé que jusqu'au milieu du corps, demeura long-temps en vîe: il paroissoit comme assis, & aïant les mains libres; il poussoit vers le Ciel des cris , qui lui demandoient une mort plus prompte, & qui touchoient tous les spectateurs de compassion.

During this unfortunate expedition one sees suddenly four Mauretanians with several letters addressed to certain persons of Tunis for the Mécontens returning to the frontiers of the kingdom. On 27 February 1705 they were put to death in a strange manner. Someone put the two on crosses: he nailed their hands and feet. The two others then were put to the Cafoque, or impaled. Of these unfortunates the first two survived for twelve hours; the third died during the action. What an appearance for the living! The wood traversed not only the entrails, but also the heart and exited the body through the shoulder. The last was not impaled quite to the middle of the body, suffering for a long time alive: he appeared as if seated, and had his hands free, he directed his cries towards the Giel, who demanded that he be given a quicker death and who moved the spectators with compassion. (my transl.)

Thevenot witnessed a similar scene, except at the time to complete the process two or three hours later, the executioner removed the brake and let the impaled person drop and the pale emerged at his breast, killing the person instantly:

Impaling is also a very ordinary Punishment with them, which is done in this manner. They lay the Malefactor upon his Belly, with his Hands tied behind his Back, then they slit up his Fundament with a Razor, and throw into it a handful of Paste that they have in readiness, which immediately stops the Blood; after that they thrust up into his Body a very long Stake as big as a Mans Arm, sharp at the point and tapered, which they grease a little before; when they have driven it in with a Mallet, till it come out at his Breast, or at his Head or Shoulders, they lift him up, and plant this Stake very streight in the Ground, upon which they leave him so exposed for a day. One day I saw a Man upon the Pale, who was Sentenced to continue-so for three Hours alive, and that he might not die too soon, the Stake was not thrust up far enough to come out at any part of his Body, and they also put a stay or rest upon the Pale, to hinder the weight of his body from making him sink down upon it, or the point of it from piercing him through, which would have presently killed him: In this manner he was left for some Hours, (during which time he spoke) and turning from one side to another, prayed those that passed by to kill him, making a thousand wry Mouths and Faces, because of the pain be suffered when he stirred himself, but after Dinner the Basha sent one to dispatch him; which was easily done, by making the point of the Stake come out at his Breast, and then he was left till next Morning, when he was taken down, because he stunk horridly. Some have lived upon the Pale until the third day, and have in the mean while smoaked Tobacco, when it was given them.

A very short time.

Jean-Antoine Guer (Moeurs et usages des Turcs, vol. 2, p. 161) in Constantinople, and John Matthias Korbinsky (Geographisch-historisches und Produkten-Lexikon von Ungarn, p. 139) about a case in Hungary both describe impaled persons perishing in a very short time after being impaled. Guer noted that unless the pale went askew, the impaled person perished either during the process or some short time thereafter; he didn’t specify which:

On empale les assassins, & ceux qui font coupables de crimes plus énormes. Un crimine! Qui (Du Pal) doit être empalé, est conduit fur un chariot à une des places de Constantinople; là on le met sur une Espéce de pieu pointu, ayant un poids attaché à chacune de ses jambs, de façon que la pointe entrant par le fondement, pierce jusqu’aux entrailles, & sort par le haut du dos. Si le pieu va de travers, le Criminel languit plus long-tems: on en voit assez communément qui souffrent plusiers jours, avant que d’expirer; en attendant ce dernier moment, les Musalmans charitables vont les consoler, & leur portent des refraîchissmens.

They impaled murderers, and those who are guilty of most heinous crimes. A crime! Whosoever (of the Stake) must be impaled, is led just like a wagon [i.e., on a leash] to one of the squares of Constantinople; there they shove in a kind of pointed stake, with a weight attached to each of its jambs, so that the tip entering through the fundament pierces the entrails, and exits through the upper back. If the stake goes awry, the Criminal languishes much longer: we see them quite commonly suffer several days before expiring; until that last moment, charitable Muslims will comfort them, and carry them refreshments. (my transl.)

Korbinsky on the other hand describes a case in Hungary where the transfixed person perished after only nine minutes (indecipherable 18th-Century German).

Two to three hours, “some” hours, or a “long time.”

In their same accounts as above, both Paul Lucas and Jean de Thevenot described criminals being impaled for only about a foot or eighteen inches, and kept from sliding further down by a stay, or brake. Lucas said the person stayed suspended for a “long time” while Thevenot describes another criminal suspended thusly for three hours, until the time arrived to dispatch him. In his account above Jean-Antione Guer also mentions that if the impaling stake were to go awry (i.e., askew) during the process, the person so impaled would suffer for a much longer time.

Another account was of the 1601 execution of the Archbishop Serapheim (Nomikos M. Vaporis, Witnesses for Christ, pp 101-102 – page view inaccessible), upon which the account of the impalement scene in Ivo Andric's award-winning novel The Bridge on the Drina is dependent.

William Shepard (Paris, in 1802, and 1814, p. 255) recounts that in one of his Paris visits, when viewing the skeleton of an assassin of General Kleber in a museum, one of (I presume) the museum guides explained that the assassin was executed by impalement, and had suffered for “some hours” on the stake alive.

Quitting the wild beasts we visited the Museum of Anatomy. Here the first object pointed out to us was the skeleton of the Assasin of General Kleber. This wretched enthusiast was impaled alive, and though two of his lower vertebrae were broken by the stake, he lived in torture for some hours.

In The Bridge on the Drina, third chapter, Ivo Andric describes the impalement of a Bosnian Serb named Radisav, who tried to sabotage the bridge's construction. A certain unnamed man from Plevlje has been assigned to supervise the impalement of Radisav. The man from Plevlje, who answers to Abidaga, a Turkish official, tells a gypsy assigned to do the dirty task that he would be paid double if he and his two assistants ensure that Radisav survives on the stake until nightfall. The hired man is careful to drive the stake correctly, i.e., askew, and the stake finally emerges below Radisav’s right shoulder. At the end of the short narrative, after Radisav was set upright on the top of the unfinished bridge and thereby suspended over the river Drina, the man from Plevlje checks on the now transfixed Radisav and verifies that he was still alive, conscious and breathing, and that his internal organs had not been damaged. And as the man was checking on him, Radisav uttered a curse on him and the whole Turkish lot:

Through the clenched teeth came a long drawn-out groaning in which a few words could with difficulty be distinguished.

"Turks, Turks, ..." moaned the man on the stake, "Turks on the bridge ... may you die like dogs ... like dogs."

Another literary account comes from the 43rd issue of The Casket (Purser, “A Turkish Execution,” pp 337-339). This scene describes the impalements of two local Syrian men, who were two of Damascus’ criminal elements, carried out by two very muscular Nubian (black African) executioners; one of them was impaled transversely from back to front, the other in an undescribed manner but presumably the typical longitudinal method. The story finishes the scene with the two suspended men very much alive and conscious, one was even uttering prayers to his Prophet:

The first robber who had suffered still preserved his proud stubborn silence; the distorted and leaden features, and the creeping shivering of the limbs, told of the torments of hell – but the tongue was mute! But the other! The Nubians had been unable, as he struggled beneath them, to stanch the blood, as in his companion, and it issued from the gaping wound, made it still more hideous by his writhings, in a black flood, tricking down his back, matting together with the black masses of his hair, and thence descending in clotted gouts to the ground. His face too! The eye was white and orbless, and the black and frothy lips muttered indistinct curses and appeals to his prophet.

Six hours.

According to William Hurd (A New Universal History of the Religious Rites, Ceremonies and Customs of the Whole World, p. 308), the penalty for converting a Muslim to Christianity was the death sentence – by live impalement – for both the catechist and the catechumen. For punishment for this religious crime, an innovation was added: after the process was completed, the impaled was hung on a cross-shaped gibbet. One man suffered such for six hours at Smyrna:

Near the out parts of the city, at the common place of execution, a gibbet is erected in the form of a cross, and the person condemned by the cadi, or judge, is brought out and stripped naked. A small piece of wood, almost in the shape of a lance is thrust in at his fundament, till the other end comes out at his shoulder, and in this manner he is hung up on the gibbet, and left to expire. When Mr. Thompson was at Smyrna, he saw a man suffer in this manner for changing his religion, and he continued in tortures upwards of six hours, before he expired….

Possibly twelve hours or more.

There is an account in a scholarly or popular book or article somewhere offline except for Google-books, of an impalement event somewhere in the Ottoman Turk-occupied Balkans when sometime during the following night, a strong wind developed and managed to uproot one of the occupied stakes and knock it over to the ground, with the man still attached to it. This person, who was ravenously thirsty, struggled as he crawled to the nearest town to drink some water from the fountain its town square in order to slake his thirst. Once he got to the fountain, he took a drink and dies straightaway. The townspeople found his body next to the fountain with the pale still transfixing it.

Fifteen hours.

Giles Fletcher and Jerome Horsley with Edward A. Bond as editor (Russia at the Close of the Sixteenth Century, p. 172) describe in bad 17th-Century spelling the execution of one Knez Boris Telupa who was found out and convicted of treason and sedition (confederacy with disaffected nobles) was sentenced to be impaled. In this account instead of the pale being driven into him, he was drawn onto the stake – in crucem trahere indeed! Once transfixed and suspended, he suffered in horrible pain for fifteen hours alive on the stake before he perished:

Knez Boris Telupa, a great favorett of that tyme, ‘being’ discovered to be a treason worcker ‘traytor’ against the emperor, and confederatt with the discontented nobillitie, was drawen upon a longe sharpe made stake, soped to enter ‘so made as that it was thrust into’ his fundament thorrow his bodye, which came owt at his næck; upon which he languished in horable paine for fifteen howres alive….

Twenty-four hours or more.

This account by Friedrich Wilhelm von Taube (Historische und geographische Beschreibung des Königreiches Slavonien und des herxogthumes Syrmien, vol. 2 pp 70-71, n. **) is in barely decipherable 18th-Century German, but once transcribed and fed into Google-translate, one finds out it describes robbers being transfixed through, suspended and then often surviving for twenty-four hours on the stake:

**) Das Spiesten ist fomol in der ganzen Türkey, als ach in den hungarischen Ländern eine geivohnliche Strafe. Nachdem der Uebelthäter nactend auf deu. Baud gelegt und der auf der Erde festgebunden warden: so hauet ihm der Scharf-richter mit einem Beil den hintern auf und stedtet den holzernen Speiss hinein, welcher vorn mit Eifen beschlagen ist von hinten von den henterstnechten mit hoelzernen Reulen in den Leib des Missethaeters hineingetrieben, vom Scharf-richter, nach Inhalt des Urtheils, den Speiss so Lenten, dass solcher inwendig im Leide neben dem Ruedgrade hergehe und im Nachten oder auf den Schultern wieder heraustomme. In diesem Falle lebet der rauber oft 24 Stunden, rauchet am Speisse…

After the malefactors nactend on eng. Baud placed and the warden tied on earth: so he hews the Scharf-richter with an ax to butt in and steadies the hewn spit onto which the iron front end is ‘herded’ from behind by subjoining with a wooden stake in the body of evildoers, the Scharf-richter, according to the instructions of the sentence, drives the spit so slowly that such inwardly in harm shall go beside the spine and coming out again at the neck or the shoulders. In this case, lives of the robbers are often 24 hour, racketed on ‘kebabs’…. (Google-translate transl., modified)

Two to three days.

Jean de Thevenot aboves mentions that “Some have lived upon the Pale until the third day.”

André Raymond, William Wood (Cairo, p. 240) includes Jean Coppin’s report of executions in Egypt in or around 1640. The execution was by impalement, the pale being driven through the anus and out by the shoulders; some of those impaled survived for almost two days.

I once saw two criminals pass by who had been sentenced to impalement …. Each carried a round stake about the thickness of an arm, pointed on the end coated at the top with soap, apparently to penetrate more readily .... When they arrived at the designated place, the hands of one of the criminals were tied behind his back and he was made to lie down on his stomach ... A [man] ... started to make the stake penetrate him as far as possible through the anus, then finished making it pass with great blows from a wooden mallet until it emerged above the shoulders. Next the stake was set into a hole already dug for the purpose, and the subject was left upright ... ... Some remain alive for almost two days in this state before expiring...

William Dampier (A Collection of Voyages: In Four Volumes, vol. 2, p. 140) describes in his account of a method of execution by impalement, longitudinally from the anus to the shoulders. Mr. Dampier actually saw one person suffering on the stake in this manner for two or three days.

One way is by Impaling on a sharp Stake, which passeth up right from the Fundament through the Bowels, and comes out at the Neck. The Stake is about the Bigness of a Man’s Thigh, placed upright, one End is about 12 or 14 Foot high. I saw one man spitted in this manner, and there he remain’d two or three Days

Fynes Moryson, Andrew Hadfield, (edr). Amazons, Savages, and Machiavels: Travel and Colonial Writing in English, 1550-1630, pp. 170-171) describes an account from the 16th or 17th Century, included verbatim in the volume (including the bad spelling!), of an eyewitness to an impalement wherein the malefactor survived on the stake for some two or three days.

The malefactor carryes the wooden stake upon which he is to dye, being eight foot long and sharpe towards one end, and when he comes into the place of execution, he is stripped into his shirt, and laid upon the ground with his face downeward, then the sharpe end of the stake is thrust into his fundament, and beaten with beetles upp into his body, till it come out, at or about his Wast, then the blunt end is fastened in the ground, and so he setts at little ease, till he dye, which may be soone if the stake be driven with favour, otherwise, he may languish two or three days in payne and hunger.

O. F. Mentzel and R. F. Allemann, with Margaret Greenlees translating (Life at the Cape in Mid-eighteenth Century, p. 102), describe a mass execution in the aftermath of a slave revolt with arson at a Cape Colony plantation:

Of the remaining incendiaries, five were impaled; four were broken on the wheel; … four were hanged, and two women were slowly strangled …. In warm weather it is usual for slaves impaled and broken on the wheel to live between two or three days and nights, but on this occasion it was cold and they were all dead by midnight.

Six Days

Monsieur de Pagès (Pierre Marie François), Travels around the World, p. 284

… the tyrannical maxims which actuate the tools of this mercantile government. During my short residence in Batavia [Jakarta, Indonesia] the Dutch beheaded one Indian, and impaled another with circumstances of such savage barbarity, as I believe are scarce to be paralleled in the annals of Turkey. The last unhappy man remained six days alive upon the stake, and was permitted, among those who call themselves Christians, to expire at last in the wind and rain under all the agony of all his wounds.

A recollection of a report of one surviving this process!

This recollection was years after a second-hand narration to Stephen C. Massett ("Drifting About", pp. 88-89) from a certain Jeems Pipes who related what he saw and had heard. In this account he describes the mass impalement of thirteen or fourteen robbers in Adrianople (Edirne, Turkey) who were strangled first, although the locals told him that the Turks formerly had impaled criminals alive:

They were formerly set upon the stake alive, and I heard of a case in which a man was at night removed from his stake by his friends, and none of the vital parts having been touched, he lived for many years afterwards, but never subsequently stood straight.

This apparent crookedness in the survivor’s posture seems to be very similar to the curvature in the torso of the victim in the image, Crucifixion d’un Chrétien en Algier that was shown in my previous post.

Conclusion.

With the sketches and narrative descriptions of impalements by the Ottoman Turks and others, it is quite clear that executioners can rectally impale a condemned man so that he survives for a long, long time, up to two or three days before perishing, and even speaks after they did the deed. I have also shown two previous articles that the ancient Greeks knew how it could be done, too, using both literary and visual sources. Now what does this mean for certain scholars preferring to use the word “suspend” or even “crucify” when referring to the known ancient writers’ described suspensions on wood during and before their time? It means in my opinion that one must look to see not only if there is explicit language describing an impalement, but implicit – at least strongly implicit – verbiage also; it also means that one can classify the suspension as “crucifixion” only if the language is explicit and acccording to the context of the event (ex., did the Romans do it, or did the Barbarians?).

Credits – books:

Andric, Ivo. The Bridge on the Drina. Chicago, University Of Chicago Press (1977).

Blount, Henry. A Voyage into the Levant. London: Andrew Crooke (1636).

Bond, Edward A. (edr); Fletcher, Giles; Horsley, Sir Jerome. Russia at the Close of the Sixteenth Century. New York City: Burt Franklin (1856).

Dampier, William. A Collection of Voyages: In Four Volumes. London: James and John Knapton (1729), Volume 2.

Guer, Jean-Antoine. Moeurs et usages des Turcs, leur religion, leur gouvernement civil, militaire at politique, avec un abregé de l’Histoire Ottomane, Volume 2, Paris: Chez F. G. Merigot et Piget (1747).

Hurd, William. A New Universal History of the Religious Rites, Ceremonies and Customs, of the Whole World. London: Richard Evans, (1814).

Korabinsky, Johann Matthias. Geographisch-historisches und Produkten-Lexikon von Ungarn. Pressburg, Weber u. Korabinsky, (1786).

Lucas, Paul & Fourment, Etienne. Voyage du sieur Paul Lucas, Amsterdam (1714).

Massett, Stephen C. "Drifting About"; Or, What "Jeems Pipes, of Pipesville," Saw-and-did. An Autobiography. New York: Carleton, Publisher (1863).

Mentzel, O. F.; Allemann, R. F.; Greenlees, Margaret (transl.) Life at the Cape in Mid-eighteenth Century: Being the Biography of Rudolf Siegfried Allemann, Captain of the Military Forces and Commander of the Castle in the Service of the Dutch East India Company at the Cape of Good Hope. Capetown: Van Riebeck Society (1919).

Moryson, Fynes; Hadfield, Andrew, (ed.). “Fynes Moryson, An Itinerary (1617)” Amazons, Savages, and Machiavels: Travel and Colonial Writing in English, 1550-1630. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2001).

de Pagès, Monsieur (Pierre Marie François), Travels around the World, in the Years 1767, 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771. London: J. Murray (1791).

Raymond, André; Wood, William (transl.). Cairo, Cambridge, Mass. London UK Harvard University Press (2000), contains: Coppin, Jean (ca 1640). Description de l'Egypte

Shepherd, William. Paris, in eighteen hunderd and two, and eighteen hundred and fourteen. London: Strahan and Preston (1814),

von Taube, Friedrich Wilhelm. Historische und geographische Beschreibung des Königreiches Slavonien und des herxogthumes Syrmien, Volume 2. Leipzig (1777).

de Thévenot, Jean; Lovell, Archibald (tr.). The Travels Of Monsieur De Thevenot Into The Levant: In Three Parts, Volume 1. London: H. Faithorne, J. Adamson, C. Skegnes, and T. Newborough, (1687).

Vaporis, Nomikos M. Witnesses for Christ. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press (2000).

Credit – periodical:

Purser (1 December 1827), “A Turkish Execution,” The Casket, Vol 1, No. 43, London: Cowie and Strange and Co. (1827).

Credit – web page:

Wikipedia, “Impalement” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impalement accessed May 24,2016. Includes links for the books, where included. 

Revised and Expanded: One of the things that throw scholars off... (Part 1)

... is the idea that impalement as a death penalty usually -- or invariably -- ends with an immediate, or at least a quick, death.  Gunnar Samuelsson [1] and John Granger Cook [2] both hold this conviction. Yet illustrations and narratives from the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries show that this was not so!

There was a way that the Turks -- and Vlad Țepeș (sometimes) -- did it; by transfixing the person through the length of his body from the rectum and out the back below one of the shoulders.  The Western Europeans of the time thought it was a disgusting and exceedingly vile combination of the utmost cruelty and what they called unnatural sex:

Swords, bows, and spears took the place of the pyres on which the Protestant martyrs suffered, but were just as much perpetual reminders of violence, threat, and danger. And sometimes sexual excess and perversity were suggested instead of savagery. In some images all these elements were present. Many Europeans were convinced that Muslims were pederasts and sodomites. The Turks were held to be devotees of impalement, one of the few forms of cruel punishment not practiced in the West. The depictions of this implied both unnatural sex and excessive cruelty. [3]

In this first part we will deal with the illustrations.



Show-place of Barbaric Slavery. 

 The above illustration depicts an active impalement underway in the middle foreground and behind it, people already impaled and suspended on poles. These two persons are depicted as still alive -- the one on the left appears to be interacting with two spectators while smoking a pipe.

The next two illustrations depict an impalement scene under the Ottoman Empire.The next two illustrations come from French edition of Voyages de M. Thevenot tant en Europe qu'en Asie et en Afrique and and depicts an impalement scene in Ottoman Egypt.  In the foregeround is an Arab seated upon a camel with lit candles stuck in his arms so that the hot pitch or rosin would drip down and burn not only his skin, but also the muscles within. In the background are two pyramids, and in front of that are two impaled men, surrounded by guards and spectators, one of them smoking a pipe. This pipe seems to be a popular meme in these depictions.  The second comes from the 1723 Dutch edition of Alle  de gedenkwaardige en zeer naauwkeurige reizen van de beere de Thevenot, trans. G. van Broekhuizen, 2nd impression, (Amsterdam, 1723, p. 441).   Here the landscape is changed; it appears to be southeast European or Anatolian, perhaps Levantine. The pyramids have been replaced by a stony outcropping on the left and a city at a distance on the right. The impalement scene now receives top billing so as to emphasize the brutal, cruel and unusual (to Europeans) punishments of the Turks – an active impalement is depicted in the foreground, while the scene of the two suspended men is shown immediately behind. [6]

A description of an actual occurrence from the 1687 English edition:

… Impaling is also a very ordinary Punishment with them, which is done in this manner. They lay the Malefactor upon his Belly, with his Hands tied behind his Back, then they slit up his Fundament with a Razor, and throw into it a handful of Paste that they have in readiness, which immediately stops the Blood; after that they thrust up into his Body a very long Stake as big as a Man’s Arm, sharp at the point and tapered, which they grease a little before; when they have driven it in with a Mallet, till it come out at his Breast, or at his Head or Shoulders, they lift him up, and plant this Stake very streight in the Ground, upon which they leave him so exposed for a day. One day I saw a Man upon the Pale, who was Sentenced to continue-so for three Hours alive, and that he might not die too soon, the Stake was not thrust up far enough to come out at any part of his Body, and they also put a stay or rest upon the Pale, to hinder the weight of his body from making him sink down upon it, or the point of it from piercing him through, which would have presently killed him: In this manner he was left for some Hours, (during which time he spoke) and turning from one side to another, prayed those that passed by to kill him, making a thousand wry Mouths and Faces, because of the pain be suffered when he stirred himself, but after Dinner the Basha sent one to dispatch him; which was easily done, by making the point of the Stake come out at his Breast, and then he was left till next Morning, when he was taken down, because he stunk horridly. Some have lived upon the Pale until the third day, and have in the mean while smoaked Tobacco, when it was given them. This poor wretch carried the Scales and Weights, of those who go about to visit the Weights, to see if they be just, and he had so combined with such as had false Weights, that he brought false ones also with him; so that the Searchers not perceiving the change of their own Weights, thought the other to be just. When Arabs, or such other Robbers are carried to be Empaled, they put them on a Camel, their Hands tied behind their Backs, and with a Knife make great gashes in their naked Arms, thrusting into them Candles of Pitch and Rosin, which they light, to make the stuff run into their Flesh; and yet some of these Rogues go chearfully to Death, glorying (as it were) that they could deserve it, and saying, That if they had not been brave Men, they would not have been so put to death. [6]



Des supplices en usage en Egypte.

From Voyages de M. De Thevenot tant en Europe.... (1689 edn.)

Jan Luyken: Straf empaleren Egypten
From Alle de gedenkwaardige … de Thevenot (1723 edn.)

The next illustration depicts the scene of a crucifixion of a Christian in the middle of Algiers. In the detail below it a sharpened stake can be clearly seen behind the victim with the sharp point rising above his head. In this detail, the victim is clearly shown standing up crookedly with a reverse twist in his torso.  He is also shown alive and suffering, implying that the stake was run through him before he is to be nailed to his cross, and unfortunately for him, it missed all his vital organs.  The crookedness introduced into his body suggests the stake missed nicking either of the two critical central blood vessels of the torso: the descending aorta and the vena cava. 

Crucifixion d'un Chretien a Alger.
Source: Gallica.bnf.fr / Biibliothèque nationale de France

Crucifixion d'un Chretien a Alger - detail.

The following image, titled "Impaled on a Stake," depicts a scene in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. The stake is depicted with a transom, which acts as a brake for the body, bringing to mind Macaenas’ line “Though I sit on a piercing cross!” (Sen. Ep. 101.10 - English transl.)

One Impaled on a Stake [in Ceylon].
Source: Robert Knox's An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon, in the East-Indies [9]

This image below is a scene showing a variety of tortures and executions meted out in Asian countries. The depiction of an impalement is midway up on the right, labeled no. 10. Here the executioners are depicted to be pushing up the stake, on which the victim already has been transfixed, his feet apparently nailed to the stake.

Scenes des supplices Asiatiques / Alle Asiatische Straffen
Source unknown.

Impalements weren’t limited to the Islamic world at that time. This 16th Century woodcut below depicts an impalement scene in Russia. The illustrator apparently showed the victim on the right with a smile; the stake as shown would have nicked his descending aorta or vena cava, guaranteeing a quick death (John Granger Cook, p. 3). The victim in the center is also apparently dead, seeing that the stake is shown emerging from his breast, apparently through his heart. The victim on the left though has been depicted with the stake driven slightly askew and emerging from his back between the spine and the shoulder. One such victim was recorded to have suffered for fifteen hours alive in such a manner. [8]

Impalement scene in 16th Century Russia.
The one on the right is depicted to be smiling.

This next one, Scenes des supplices / Elendige Straffen Dic. de. Túrcken de Slaaven doen Leyden, is a triptych of engravings illustrating several sorts of executions under the Turks in the 17th-18th Centuries. In the background, in front of the citadel, is depicted an impalement scene. One of the victims is shown transfixed through and possibly, but not necessarily, quite dead, the other one infixed only to a partial depth and obviously still alive judging by the flexing of his legs.

Elendige Straffen Dic. de. Túrcken de Slaaven doen Leyden.
Source: Gallica.bnf.fr / Biibliothèque nationale de France.

Elendige Straffen ... - detail.
Note one of the impales is obviously alive by the positioning of his legs.


So you can see, if one were to impale another with care, the victim will be transfixed to suffer extreme torture for a long, slow, lingering death.

I also found evidence that the ancient Greeks knew this was true, too; and included their knowledge thereof in epigraphs and literature... although very, very rarely.

Next Part: Descriptions of Impalement in Travelogues and Literature.

Notes:

[1]   Gunnar Samuelsson, Crucifixion in Antiquity, p. 44, n. 31.
[2]   John Granger Cook, Crucifixion in the Mediterranean, p. 3.
[3]   Andrew Wheatcroft, Infidels: A History of Conflict between Christendom and Islam, p. 260.
[4]   Voyages de M. Thevenot tant en Europe qu'en Asie et en Afrique. Paris: Charles Angot (1689).
[5]   Alle  de gedenkwaardige en zeer naauwkeurige reizen van de beere de Thevenot, trans. G. van   Broekhuizen, 2nd impression, Amsterdam (1723), p. 441.
[6]   Wheatcroft, p. 260 n. 3.
[7]   Jean de Thévenot, Archibald Lovell (trans.), The Travels Of Monsieur De Thevenot Into The Levant: In Three Parts, Volume 1 London: H. Faithorne, J. Adamson, C. Skegnes, and T. Newborough, (1687), p. 259.
[8]   Giles Fletcher, Sir Jerome Horsley. Edward A. Bond, edr. Russia at the Close of the Sixteenth Century. New York City: Burt Franklin (1856), p. 172.
[9] Robert Knox, An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon, in the East-Indies: Together with an Account of the Detaining in Captivity the Author and divers other Englishmen now Living there, and of the Author’s Miraculous Escape, London: Richard Chiswell (1681), p. 39.

The Ancient Greeks Knew... (Part 2)

Edited and Updated 20 April 2016

In the first part I brought to you several ancient epigraphy illustrations showing the different manner in which Prometheus was bound to the cliff in the Caucasus mountain range. Two of these show the Titan god to be impaled, or bound to look like he was impaled: through the rectum or perineum, out the back.


The illustrations which show the motif of Prometheus bound to a stake, or pillar, are repeated in Hesiod’s (760-650 BCE) Theogony 521, in which one of the gods carrying out the immobilizing of Prometheus instructs the other to fix a pillar in its place, driving it through the middle of… something:

For this lot Zeus assigned to him. And ready-witted Prometheus he bound with inextricable bonds, cruel chains, and drove a shaft through his middle, and set on him a long-winged eagle upon him, which used to eat his immortal liver; but by night the liver grew as much again every as the long-winged bird devoured in the whole day.

ταύτην γάρ οι μοῖραν ἐδασσατο μετίετα Ζευς. δῆσε δ΄ ἀλυκτοπέδῃσι Πρροομηθέα ποικιλόβουλον δεσμοις ἀργαλέοισι μέσον δια κίον ἐλλάσσας: καί οί ἐπ΄ αἰετὸν ὥρσε τανύπτερον: αὐτὰρ ὅ γ΄ ἧπαρ ἤσθιεν ἀπὰνατον, τὸ δ΄ ἀέξετο ἵσον ἀπάντη νυκτός ὅσον πρόπαν ἧμαρ ἔδοι τανυσιπτερος ὄρνις. [1]

Now in the above English translation (Hugh G. Evelyn-White) the scene depicted includes an impalement, which the Greek apparently includes. Part of the second sentence reads, δῆσε δ΄ ἀλυκτοπέδῃσι Πρροομηθέα ποικιλόβουλον δεσμοις ἀργαλέοισι μέσον δια κίον ἐλλάσσας (and he bound in unbreakable bonds the wily-minded Prometheus in painful chains he drove a stake through the middle). Now my English literal translation loses some of the apparent preciseness of the Greek, for “the middle” could be interpreted as the middle of the bonds and chains. This is also true of John Bowden’s English and Martin Hengel’s German because Hengel mentions that Hesiod “speaks of a post or pillar to which the god is fastened.” [2] Despite both Πρροομηθέα (Prometheus) and μέσον (the middle [of]) being in the singular masculine accusative sense, i.e., being the direct object or pertaining thereto, some ancient Greek artists clearly depicted Prometheus as bound to a pole or column with the bonds (usually ropes or leather strips) around it. So we can conclude that the Classical Greek was just as ambiguous, too; either that or the producers of ancient Greek art did not want to offend their contemporary purchasers.

Now we mention the images of Prometheus being “crucified” (although a cross, or tropaeum, is nowhere to be found), which go back to at least 350 BCE: there are a few writers (Lucian of Samosata [120-180 CE], Martial [38/41-102/104 CE], Apollodorus [b. 180 CE], Ausonius [310-395 CE]) who expound on or allude to the theme of Prometheus as “crucified.” [3] In his Prometheus, Lucian is very colorful in his writing style, he uses virtually every Greek verb known for executionary suspension, particularly that employed by the Romans in his time.

Aeschylus (525-456 BCE), too, has crucifixion-like imagery in his shackling of Prometheus to the rock:

Therefore on this joyless rock you must stand sentinel, erect, sleepless, your knee unbent.

ἀνθ΄ ὧν ἀτερπῆ τήνδε φρουρήσεις πέτρον όρθοστάδην, ἄυπνος, οὐ κάμπτων γόνυ: [4]

The imagery invoked in this text appears similar to that shown by a typical crucifix or in terrible movies like Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ with the legs stretched out almost almost straight and the feet nailed through their arches into a triangular-shaped, sloped “plinth” (suppedaneum).

And Aeschylus refers to Prometheus’ using the verb paschô (πάσχω), which comes from the same root as the Latin passio, from whence comes our word, passion, which Christians use to refer to the suffering of Jesus in The Crucifiction.

See what I, a god, suffer at the hands of Gods!

ἴδεσθέ μ΄ οἷα πρὸς θεων πάσχω θεὸς [5]

Well now we get to discuss the final images, where the immobilized Titan appears to be impaled. We have already seen above Hesiod’s reference in Theogony to the κίον (kion) as a “shaft driven through his middle” in Evelyn-Whit’s translation in English [1]. Apparently Aeschylus interpreted Hesiod’s reference as some kind of steel or steel-like wedge to be driven into or through Prometheus:

Now vigourously pin the remorseless point of an adamantine wedge right through his bosom!

ἀδαμαντίον νῦν σφηνὸς αὺθάδη γνάθαν στέρνων διαμπὰξ πασσάλευ΄ ἐρρωμένως. [6]

Now there is no indication which direction this wedge [7] was to be driven, whether from below by way of the rectum or from the front like when killing a vampire, which more readily comes to mind in the English, and probably to a modern Greek as well.

But the ancient Greeks like Aechylus may have interpreted the σφην (sfên) as travelling through the body from the rectum and out, in this case, through the sternum or on either side of it, and not out through the back as per usual.

Actually Aeschylus does know of impalement, and he does know of it as torturing individuals (undoubtedly almost always men) with a slow, lingering death. From his Eumenides where the god Apollo chases the Furies out of his temple after they scare off a Pythian and have a dialogue with the ghost of Clymnestra:

This house is no right place for such as you to
Cling upon; but where, by judgment given, heads
Are lopped and eyes gouged out, throats cut, and
By the spoil of sex, the glory of young boys is
Defeated, where mutilation lives, and stoning,
And the long moan of tortured men spiked
underneath the spine and stuck on pales.

ούτοι δόμοισι τοίσδε χρίμπτεσθαι πρέπει·
άλλ' οΰ καρανιστήρες όφθαλμωρύχοι
δίκαι σφαγαί τε σπέρματος τ' άποφθορά
παίδων κακοϋται χλοΰνις, ήδ' άκρωνία,
λευσμός τε, και μύζουσιν οικτισμόν πολύν
υπό ράχιν παγέντες. [8]

That place where Apollo says the Furies belong was the βασανιστέριον (basanisterion), unique among the Greek cities and towns to Athens and possibly Miletus. [9] It was a place of public torture, a kind of stadium open to the public that was maintained for legal purposes, where the people gathered and watched people being tortured, to find out what was being said, according to Demosthenes. Indeed the Athenians prided themselves on their methods of examination by torture, thinking it to be “the justest and most democratic way” for the examination of slaves. [10]

In addition to the “torture-stadiums” the Athenians also kept public execution grounds where they killed their convicted criminals, [11] usually by ἀποτυμπανισμος (apotympanismos), a form of “planking” or “crucifying to a plank” using crimp-nails, including a collar around the neck, that could be loosened and tightened at will. But clearly other forms of executions occurred as well because the prisoners’ corpses were left lying about in these places. Indeed the Athenians must have been quite familiar, perhaps too familiar, with these people’s suffering. [12] And judging by Aeschylus’ verse, the Athenians knew that those who were impaled often suffered a slow, lingering death, and offered up a long moan; or, if I may translate more literally, “they even moan[ed] piteously many a long lamentation” (και μύζουσιν οικτισμόν πολύν).

Another Classical Greek writer familiar with impalement was Euripides (480-406 BCE) who in Rhesus describes a scene wherein the protagonist Rhesus mentions to his dialogue partner, the Trojan commander Hector, that he was going to impale and hang alive a certain criminal waiting for him in ambush:

If I can catch this knave alive,...
I will impale him at the outlet of the gates
and set him up for vultures of the air to make their meal upon.
This is the death he ought to die,
pirate and temple-robber that he is.
(My translation following E. P. Coleridge’s)

This one …, I will take alive
and at the gates' outlet impale through the spine
and set up as a feast for winged vultures.
Being a robber and plunderer of the temples of the gods
he ought to die through this fate
(David Kovacs’ translation)

τουτον -- -- ζωντα συλλβων εγώ
πυλων επ' εξόδοισιν ευπείρας ράχιν
στήσω πετεινοϊς γυψι θοινατήριον'
ληστην γαρ οντα και θεων ανάκτορα
συλωντα δεϊ νιν τωδε κατθανεϊν μόρω [13]

Here Euripides exhibits knowledge that death by impalement could come about over a long period of time, not just by the shock and bleeding from the piercing of the body ‘neath the spine but also because of the additional suffering of being molested and partly consumed alive by birds. Hermann Fulda in his Das Kreuz und die Kreuzigung cites this example to show that impalement by way of the buttocks (i.e., rectum, anus) were to be understood as under the ῥάχις (rakhis) “spine, chine, tailbone” or in Latin, obscoena “the private parts / excrements [entrails],” and (although not mentioned in this example) the pole was not pushed through the full length of the body so that one had the opportunity of speaking of one so impaled as “sitting on a cross.” [14] So here Fulda understood that impalement could cause the suspended person to suffer a long death struggle, so long as certain provisions were taken to prevent the piercing of vital organs or the nicking of vital blood vessels.

Next we have a (likely Athenian) Middle and New Comedy poet / playwright by the name Alexis (Hellenistic Era, ca 375 - ca 275 BCE). In his The Parasite it appears that we have chanced upon a bit of an ancient equivalent the Comedy of the Absurd. This sort of comedy was not unknown to the Romans (who got a lot of their ideas and attitudes and social conventions from the Greeks) as evidenced in Plautus’ play Mostellaria. [15] Now the last line of Alexis’ fragment of what is believed to be known as The Parasite, describes a punishment an enraged speaker wishes to visit upon the parasite (and one Theodotus, too): “transfix [him] upon The Wood” (άναπήξαιμ' έπι τοΰ ξύλου):

Otherwise when you must bind the cheat Theodotus,
or the parasite so that I have known the profane
playing the prude, the ones in white and the taking up of mattocks [i.e., pick-axes],
pleasant if I were to seize [them] and transfix [him] up {through him} upon The Wood.

άλλ' έπάν δή τον γόητα Θεόδοτον,
ή τον παραμασύντην ϊδω τον άνόσιον
βαυκιζόμενον τα λευκά τ' άναβάλλονθ' άμα,
ήδιστ' άν άναπήξαιμ' {άν αύτον} έπι του ξύλου λαβών. [16]

Like the rest of his text, the translation and interpretation is rather awkward. The verb άναπηγνύναι (anapêgnunai) is defined as “to transfix, impale.” [17] But the problem is that the transfixing is to take place upon The Wood (τὸ ξύλον [to xylon]), which in the Athens of the time probably did not refer to an impaling stake but some other kind of trimmed or fabricated wood instrument. The awkwardness and discrepancies in this verse was noticed by W. Geoffrey Arnott of Cambridge University and concludes that “in Alexis here the use of άναπήξαιμ' (anapêxaim) and the general tone of anger suggest something more vicious than whipping in the stocks or pillory: perhaps ἀποτυμπανισμος where a criminal was executed by being fixed naked to an upright plank on which iron bands encircled ankles, wrists and neck.” [18] If so, then the use of the verb suggests something more cruel and unusual, like a Roman penalty instead: i.e., “crucifying” on a plank with real nails and not those crimp-nails the Greeks usually used. But this, too, like impalement was an un-Attic penalty. It suffices to say, though, that transfixing a person with The Wood would have been patently absurd, just like those illustrations of Prometheus that appear to depict him impaled. Hence Alexis would have gotten a big laugh and a standing ovation at the end.

Now we take a look at two lexicographers from the Byzantine Era (5th and 12th Centuries CE), who compare the nouns σταυρὸς, σκόλοψ and χάραξὸς and their derived verbs. Nowhere have I found any English translation of their definitions in Byzantine Greek, but I did find Latin translations in Justus Lipsius’ De Cruce, which was some help to me in coming up with my own translations.

First is Hesychius of Alexandria (5th C. CE), from his Alphabetical Collection of All Words.

(1) Stauroi, those planted pointed stakes, palings
(2) Skolopes, upright and sharp timbers, pales/poles, palings. 
(3) Kharaksi, fencings-in, with sharp timbers, and with reedy pipes/vine stakes, and those pales/poles.
(4) Keleontes, [in Antiphon are briefly rendered] upright timbers. 

(1) Σταυροί, οί καταπεπηγότες σκόλοπες, χάρακες·.
(2) Σκόλοπες, ὀρθέα (I. ὀρθὰ) καὶ ὀξέα ξυλα, σταυροί, χάρακες·
(3) Χάραξι, φραγμοῖς, ὀξέσι ξύλοις οί δέ, καλαμοις, οι δέ, σταυροῖς.
(4) Kελέοντες [in Antiphon are briefly rendered] ὀρθα ξυλά [19]

He comments in his Etymologus, concerning the noun κελέοντες. It isn’t how the noun came about or where it came from, just how it is misused.

Keleontes, those long beams which govern a loom, [is] misused and even those planted timbers, they [the people] call these and stauroi.

κελέοντες, κυριως οί ἱστόποδες, καταχρηστικῶς δὲ καὶ τὰ καταπεπηγότα ξυλα, ά καὶ σταυροὺς καλοῦσι. [20]

Also in his Etymologus he gives us a clear relationship between the noun σκόλοψ (skolops) and the verb ἀνασκολόπιζω (anaskolopizô), and makes the meaning of the verb clear by comparing it with the roasting of fishes on spits:

On skolopes as a roast: for in olden times those dealing basely were impaled, a sharpened stake along the spine and [through] the back, just like those roasted fish on spits.

Σκόλοψιν ὡς ὅπτησιν τό γαρ παλαιό ν τούς κακούργου ντας άνεσκολόπιζον, όξύνοντες ξύλον δια τής ραχέως και τού νώτου, καθάπερ τούς όπτωμένους ιχθύς έπι οβελίσκων. [21]

In the above description, the location within the impaled could also be interpreted as “past / through the tailbone and the back” with no interpolation necessary. [22] And as noted above, “past the tailbone” would be understood as under it, i.e., through the rectum, the back passage. This of course probably was the same route the Turks used in Egypt and elsewhere to avoid lethal damage to any critical blood vessels or vital organs, resulting in a slow, lingering death.

Unfortunately Hesychius’ information is the only place where the verb ἀνασκολόπιζω is connected to the noun σκόλοψ, and is clearly explicit that the verb referred to impaling, probably because at the time of Hesychius, people were being executed by being skewered on spits. [23] Modern scholars today may see this linkage that this is a case of Byzantine-era etymological fallacy, in this case the projection of contemporary times upon the past: all other mentions of this verb, particularly ones that antedate this one, do not make the linkage. Unfortunately, Hesychius does not tell us whether this method of execution resulted in a slow, lingering death, or in a quick, messy death.

Finally we have Eustathius of Thessalonica (1115-1195 CE), a late Byzantine / mid-Mediaeval grammarian who produced his Commentaries on the Iliad and Odyssey. In three places he discusses the nouns σταυρὸς (stauros) and σκόλοψ and in two of those places links them with the verbs ἀνασταυροω (anastauroô) and ἀνασκόλοπιζω and claims the verbs are derived from the nouns:

Skolopes are called these of such a kind, and stauroi – and from these [derive] the verbs anaskolopizeiv and anastauroun.

σκόλοπες λέγονται δὲ οἱ τοιτοῦτοι σκόλοπες καὶ σταυροὶ -- ἐκ δὲ τούτων τὸ ἀνασκολόπιζειν, καὶ ἀνασταυροῦν. [24]

Stauroi: upright and sharpened timbers. But these themselves are called by this, and skolopes; from these [derive] the [verbs] anaskolopizesthai and anastaurousthai.

Σταυροὶ ὀρθὰ καὶ ἀπωξυμμένα ξύλα. -- οἰ δ΄ αὐτοὶ καὶ σκόλοπες λέγονται,ἀφ΄ ὧν τὸ ἀνασκολόπιζεσθαι, καὶ ἀνασταυροῦσθαι. [25]

Here in this work in two places (comments on Iliad ή.441 and Odysseus ώ.452-3) Eustathius clearly states that two Classical-Koine-Byzantine Greek verbs for executionary bodily suspension, commonly meaning “impale” and “crucify (again)” in modern English, came from their respective nouns; not only that, but also because the nouns refer to one and the same kind of pole – sharpened timbers. The verbs, too, apparently in his time referred to one and the same action – suspend on sharpened timbers, that is, impale -- despite today having entirely different senses. And in the third place he confirms that in his time, stauros and skolops were two words for one and the same thing – and they weren’t crosses:

But skolopes even now [are] upright timbers, these and stauroi.

Σκόλοπες δὲ καὶ νῦν ξύλα ὀρθα, οἱ καὶ σταυροί. [26]

This is Eustathius’ comment on Homer’s Odysseus η. 44, which describes “Tall walls” as “Fit together with upraised stakes” (Τείχεα μακρὰ … Ὑψηλὰ σκολόπεσσιν ἀρηρότα [Teikhea makra … Ypsêla skolopessin arêrota]). So even in the Late Byzantine - Mid Mediaeval time of the 12th Century ce, we have a clear indication that the stauros and skolops, outside of the Church and outside of the Greek Orthodox Bible, meant only one thing: an upright pale or stake, with no transom indicated. Additionally, the derived verbs would probably have meant, as in Hesychius’ time the 5th Century CE, to suspend on an upright pale or stake, i.e., impale.

So, in conclusion, we can plainly see both from the extant artwork and epigrams that the Greeks, possibly as late as the 5th Century CE and even the 12th and beyond, probably knew, and most certainly did know according to Aeschylus and Euripides, that it was possible to execute someone by impalement, and have that action result in a slow, lingering death. This, of course, is contrary to the conclusions made by certain scholars today!

_________________________

Notes:

       [1] Hesiod, Theogony 520-5, Hesiod. The Homeric Hymns and Homerica. With an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Univ. Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. (1914), page unknown. Cited in: Gunnar Samuelsson, Crucifixion in Antiquity. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, (2011), p. 69.
       [2] Martin Hengel, Crucifixion, trans. by John Bowden. Philadelphia: Fortress Press (1977), p. 11 n. 1, the English of δεσμοις ἀργαλέοισι μέσον δια κίον ἐλλάσσας reads, “bound with inextricable bonds, driving a shaft through the middle.” 
       [3] Ibid., pp. 11 n. 1, 2 n. 2, and 58 n. 13. For further investigation see the references cited by Hengel, to wit: Lucian, Prometheus 1-2, 7, 10, 12, 17; Apollodorus 1.7.1; Iuppiter confutatus 8, De sacrifiis 6, and Dialogi deorum 5(1).1; Martial, Liber spectaculorum 7.1ff; and Ausonius, Technopaegnion (De Historia) 10.9ff. See also Lucian’s Prometheus 4, 9 and 15. The extant Greek texts are available for viewing and downloading at the Perseus Digital Library (PDL), Latin at the PDL and The Latin Library.
       [4] Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 31. From Aeschylus, with an English translation by Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D. in two volumes. Vol. 1, Prometheus Bound. Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. 1926 (found at PDL).
       [5] Ibid., 93. Trans. mine.
       [6] Ibid., 64-5. Trans. mine.
       [7] From the Perseus Greek Word Study Tool (PWGST), referencing the LSJ and Middle Liddell lexica, we have this for σφηνὸς: it is the genitive of σφην (sfên), “wedge, shim, plug.” It is related to σφην-εύς (sfên-eüs), “mullet-like fish”; σφην-ισκος (sfên-iskos), “wedge-shaped nostril plug, irregularly truncated pyramid”; σφιγ- (sfêig), “related to binding, nooses, sphincters, constipation, sphinx, bracelet, greed”; σφην-οω (sfên-oô), “shape like a wedge, to be cloven with a wedge, inlaid, fix by means of a wedge, to become fixed like a wedge, plug up, close up, close, catch cold in the head, obstruction, torture, rack” (the last two in Plutarch An vitiositas 2.498D). The fact that this word σφην is related somewhat to the ancient Greek for “sphincter”, and the fact that the references to “torture, rack” in the derived verb could refer what the Inquisition called the Judas Chair or in Italy il cavaletto, might be a clue that the wedge was an item meant to enter the person through the anus.
       [8] Aeschylus, Eumenides 185–190. Aeschylus. With an English Translation by Herbert Weir Smyth, 2 vols., LCL. London: William Heinemann; New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons (1922), page unknown. Cited in: Eva C Keuls, The Reign of the Phallus. Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens. Berkeley - Los Angeles – Oxford: University of California Press (1993), pp 8-9.
       [9] Keuls, p. 7.
       [10] Lycurgus 29, quoted in Keuls, p. 7.
       [11] Keuls, p. 8.
       [12] Plato, Rep. 4.439e, cited in Keuls, p. 8.
       [13] Euripedes, Rhesus 513-7, original Greek cited in Hermann Fulda, Das Kreuz und die Kreuzigung, Breslau, Wilhelm Koebner, 1878, p. 114. First transl. mine, following The Plays of Euripides, transl. by E. P. Coleridge, Volume I, London. George Bell and Sons (1891), page unknown (found at PDL). Second transl. from Euripides. With an English Translation, by David Kovacs, LCL, Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press (1994), page unknown, cited in: Samuelsson, p. 72.
       [14] Fulda, p. 114.
       [15] Here (Plautus, Mostellaria 359ff; transl. by John Bowden, in: Hengel, Crucifixion, p. 52 n. 3) the slave Traino believes he has found himself in a bit of a pickle, and expresses his willingness to pay someone to take his expected penalty for him:

Ego dabo et talentum primus qui in crucem excucurrerit;
sed ea lege, ut offigantur bis pedes, bis bracchia.
Ubi id erit factum, a me argentum petito praesentarium.

I’ll give a talent to the first man to charge my cross and take it
on the condition that his legs and arms are double-nailed.
When this is attended to he can claim the money from me cash down.

This is a clear case of an ancient comedy of the absurd. How would his place-taker accept the talent (about 200 Pounds Sterling in Victorian days) of precious metal if both his hands and both his feet are secured with two nails each?
       [16] Alexis (The Parasite), 224.10 (222.10 as cited in the LSJ listing (s.v άναπήγνυμι) in the Perseus Greek Word Study Tool and the PDL), transl. mine.
       [17] This LSJ listing includes at least two citations for demonstrating the first person singular sense of the verb (άναπήγνυμι) as “I transfix, impale”: Aristophanes Ecclesiazusae 843a (λαγῷ΄ αναπηγνύνασι, “they are spitting the hares”) and Plutarch Artaxerxes 17.5 (διὰ τριῶν σταυρῶν ἀναπῆξαι, “impaled across [lit.: through] three pales”).
       [18] W Geoffrey Arnott, Alexis: The Fragments: A Commentary. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press (1966), p. 645.
       [19] Hesychius, Alphabetical Collection of All Words, s.v. Σταυροί.
       [20] Hesychius, Etymologus ??.??
       [21] Hesychius, Etymologus 100.51
       [22] LSJ, s.v. “ῥάχις” at PDL and PGWST.
       [23] Samuelsson, p. 284.
       [24] Eustathius, Commentaries on the Iliad and Odyssey, Iliad ή 441.
       [25] Ibid., Odysseus ξ.11.
       [26] Ibid., Odysseus η.44.