9781422284070

“By tying him to a ladder, by suspending him, by scourging him with a whip, by cudgeling him, by racking him, and further by pouring vinegar into his nostrils, by heaping bricks on him, and every other way.” Romans, Sorcery, and Magic Roman law was similar to that of the Greeks, permitting the torture of slaves. In the case of sexual crimes and treason , however, as well as a woman believed to have poisoned her husband, the accused themselves could be tortured. Under the Roman emperors—particularly the later ones who converted to Christianity—magic and sorcery were declared equal crimes. In addition, citizens were permitted to torture their debtors, and criminals were tortured before death or banishment. Cases of treason, or even the suspicion of treason, always resulted in torture. In A . D . 31, the commander of the Praetorian Guard (the personal bodyguards of Emperor Tiberius) was accused of murdering the emperor’s only son and suspected of devising a plot to depose the emperor. The commander was executed, but Tiberius was so filled with panic that he went on to torture everybody he mistrusted—and even racked to death a friend who happened to arrive on a social visit. Tiberius’s successor was the monster Caligula, who enjoyed watching prisoners being tortured while he ate. He had them repeatedly stabbed with a small knife so that the victim, as he said, could “feel himself die.” Roman historians recorded that he also had living men sawn in half, and that the author of an insulting satire was burned alive in the Circus. Even “the gentle Claudius” allowed the torture of conspirators and suspected assassins. The historian Tacitus reported the fate of a Roman knight who made the dreadful mistake of wearing a sword in the emperor’s presence. Claudius also had his adulterous wife, Messalina, tortured. Sorcery and magic, too, it was thought, could threaten an emperor’s life. And, because it competed with the duties of the priests, it was regarded as heresy. Before Christianity was adopted in Rome, Christians themselves were considered heretics, and were tortured to force them to deny their faith and accept the religion of the emperor. One of the earliest Christian authors, Tertullian, wrote: If other criminals plead ‘not guilty’ you torture them to make them confess. The Christians alone you torture to make them deny … You assume that we are criminals from the fact that we confess the Name [of Christ]; and under torture you try to force us to renounce our con- fession; so that, in effect, we are forced to deny the crimes that you presume we were guilty of.

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THE HISTORY OF TORTURE

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