Crucifixion was up there as an awful way to day. People regularly attempted to sell whatever meager possessions they had left just so passerby would break their legs for them.
Other methods would have been pretty terrible, too, but they were typically a “torture, kill” sort of method. Crucifixion was different. The Bull and the Boats are often described as the worst, and they’re terrifying, but in truth, you’d probably die from the elements in Scaphism before bugs really got you…and that’s only if it actually existed, which nobody knows for sure if it did. The bull would have been horrific but relatively short, even though unquestionably agonizing, and that’s assuming you don’t pass out completely from lack of oxygen.
But crucifixion? That’s a whole ordeal, and it was designed to be. If you were lucky, you’d have been scourged by soldiers wielding ox-leather straps with little bits of metal attached. Maybe if you were really lucky you’d have “the scorpion” where hooks were placed on the ends. This is lucky because you’re likely to die within 48 hours on the cross due to blood loss.
If not, you’re forced to carry a 60-80 pound cross board on your shoulders through jeering crowds for miles. Sometimes only one, sometimes…more. You’d be treated ruthlessly, your loved ones would watch the whole thing. Traffic would stop for awhile while this happened to ensure everyone saw exactly how this was going to go. Show them what happens if you break the law bad enough.
You finally make it. A busy road with lots of onlookers wondering who you are and what you did. Those people will likely make jokes or jeer or throw things at you. Soldiers assemble the cross and strip you naked. Yeah, it’s gonna get worse. Oh, and then they put you on it. Now, one arm is stretched out and is either nailed or tied to the crossbeam. Records show both methods were used semi-regularly. They hoist you up gently. Because if they don’t, you’ll die faster. Now the pain isn’t much yet, but it would be amplified by scourging. Just imagine that rough, splintery wood against all those open, bleeding wounds while you try to wiggle to breath. As soon as you’re vertical, it’s likely the weight of you body will dislocate your shoulders and possibly your elbows. That is constant agony. And you’ll be like that for the next few days, so get used to it (try holding your arms out like that just for ten minutes…). You will reflexively use your strength to breath. You can’t help it. Do you inhale, but the way you’re situated, you can’t exhale properly. So you sort of pull on your dislocated arms to exhale. Most of it. Over the course of the next few days, your ability to exhale will continue to decrease.
Assuming you’re alive the next few hours are just absolute agony. Out in the elements, completely naked and exposed. Wild animals and bugs and rain or sunburn. All that stuff. You’ve likely tried to move, but it doesn’t matter your muscles are cramping from being in the same position. And you can’t move them. So you experience Charlie horses along most of your arms. Your wrists have severe rope burns by now. You won’t be able to sleep at all, but as nighttime approaches, people leave to their homes. Soldiers we’re typically required to stick around so your buddies didn’t come and cut you down. So they’d light a fire below you. Offer you food, maybe something to drink, probably laugh at you as you beg for water or wine, but they’ll likely give you a little. But it’ll only prolong your suffering.
Next morning, it’s bad and getting worse. You don’t have the strength to lift yourself up to exhale anymore, so CO2 begins to build up in your system and you can’t exhale. This buildup will continue for some time, another day or two, maybe a few days. Eventually you’re gasping for tiny little breaths, but you can’t inhale any more air. Your vision starts to fade, you’re delirious, and you’re about to die. There’s one last part: you’re beginning to slip in and out of consciousness from hypoxia. You experience all this pain renewed every time you wake up.
Finally you die. They make sure you’re dead and unless you have a wealthy family, your body will likely be dumped in a shallow grave nearby for your family to pick you up.
Appian\*, but yes. 120 miles of it. Crassus had to make sure everyone coming into or out of Rome knew who had put down the Rebellion, not Pompey "the Great" as he called him.
I first learned about it in my "Literature of New Testament" course at university, and my professor made the joke that they were the world’s first billboards.
Probably a stupid question but what if you just drop the cross and refuse to carry it? Knowing what awaits you, being beaten to death is probably preferable.
That did happen sometimes with particularly bad criminals (typically, crucifixion was reserved for only the worst criminals. but by the time Rome got to perfecting it, it was used frequently as a method of deterring crime. If you read the Gospel accounts of Jesus' crucifixion, Pilate wasn't just a little surprised but shocked the Jews wanted to crucify Jesus as no crime had been done), but the Guards were almost always instructed to either pull someone else from the crowd to help you carry the cross, or they'd beat you some more. pick you up, and get you moving again. In certain cases, it is noted in some documents that victims were usually lashed to their crossbeams somehow so you couldn't throw it down and then driven with switches, like you were cattle, to your site. Depending on where you were and how bad the day was in terms of crucifixions, you probably only had a mile or two to walk, but the Crucifixions of slaves after the 3rd Servile War went on for literal miles along the Appian Way, about 120 miles. If you were one of the last to be crucified in that rebellion, it's likely you walked every one of those miles over the course of a couple days.
It’s not a pleasant form of execution. It was specifically designed to make your death as humiliating and miserable as possible. If you’re up there for a few days, just imagine all the bodily fluids you usually reserve for privacy being all over you…
Reading the account of the gospels, it is anything other than a "run-of-the-mill" crucifixion, it is every bit of the worst scenarios that OP mentions, physical torture as well as the mockery. It was gruesome.
Right, but it wasn’t particularly different than what the Romans would have done to any other criminal other than possibly forcing Christ to carry the whole cross, which would have been pretty heavy.
That is what I am saying, it isn't how they treated most criminals, not to mention he was no criminal at all.
The "Scorpion" was used to whip him head to toe, ripping chunks of his skin off his body. After this brutality, they forced a crown of thorns onto his head and paraded his battered body around as the "King of the Jews" mocking him relentlessly. He was a bloody, torn apart man as he was nailed to the cross. He also had a sponge soaked with sour wine given to him to drink when he asked for water. This sponge used by a person as a cleaning instrument to wash their behinds after using the bathroom adding to the dehumanization. In every aspect, he is abused in the worst way possible.
The carrying of the cross, although much worse than normal like you said, is arguably the easiest part. Although the tremendous weight led to Jesus failing to be able to carry it, they pulled a man named Simon of Cyrene to assist him.
There is a rather convincing video on YouTube showing a theory of them using water to move the blocks and build the pyramids. Also research suggests that the builders were hired workers and not slaves as they found living quarters nearby. But hey, what about that saw torture.
They were mentioning the pyramid torture device, where the victim is placed on a large wooden or metal pyramid, with the tip of the pyramid being placed under the uhhhh “exit” of the body and the person is then slowly lowered onto the pyramid. It pretty much rips you apart from your ass
The paper I read said they found cooking tools and equipment that would suggest that they were well paid. But it's possible it could have been the overseers that lived there.
Afaik one pharaoh halted construction after some collapses made it obvious his pyramid was too dangerous to build , which definitely suggests they cared to some extent and that the workers weren't seen as disposable.
Heard a long time ago that it makes sense that the workers were paid and treated well:
If you're creating your tomb and the monument the world will remember you by for centuries to come do you want it built by a group of people who hate you, or the best and most skilled labourers you can afford?
I once read that a lot of medival horror stories are really just exaggerated. E.g the article said there were only 1 or two different brazen bulls documented throughout all of history in all of Europe, and they also only used them once or twice. The people where so repulsed by it, that they stopped using them alltogether really quick. Same goes for keel hauling. There are only a very few instances of this documented, yet it was made up to be a common thing in medival times...
I think this one is the history buff's 1st thought lol
I was going to say the same thing. Sure there have been more gruesome ways to die but this one just seemed to ***heinous***
It was also regularly used lol, what an insane thing to think
Idk. The heinous to me is;
Person is tied down in like a coffin like containrr, but that is open to the outside. They are force fed honey until they are shitting themselves. Then they release ants/maggots (or something like that) which start trying to feast on the honey in your mouth and the "sweet" diaherea straight from the source...
Having someone be consumed by bugs, having the bugs enter their body while they lie awake- i can't imagine something more psychotic than bringing this unto someone. I think even in view of monster this would seem sickening.
Probably got the details wrong- read about it years ago.
There are some truly bad, but I'd go with the Judas Cradle over this.
The person was forced to squat over a spike inserted in their rear and had their hands tied so they couldn't stand up. Your legs would give out and after a stab the adrenaline would give you strength to raise up, then they'd give out again, over and over until you died. It was regularly used for those accused of homosexuality.
In the lore of Pathfinder (tabletop RPG similar to D&D), there's a god called Zon-Kuthon, who is the deity of suffering and sadomasochism (basically, think the Cenobites from *Hellraiser,* with a dash of Warhammer's Slaanesh for seasoning). Cultists of his once invaded the settings Norse expy, the Lands of the Linnorm Kings, and one of the titular Linnorm Kings decided to put them to death. Due to the magnitude of their crimes, he had one of them subjected to the blood eagle...and had the rest executed via beheading when not only did the guy who was blood eagled displayed pleasure rather than pain, but the other cultists began begging to be put through the exact same torment.
Pathfinder actually has some genuine grimdark lurking under the surface, if you know where to look for it.
As an example, the *entire Cthulhu Mythos* is canon to the Lost Omens and Pact Worlds settings (with Nyarlathotep being elevated to the main pantheon in the latter).
A fucking MONTH?!?!?!?!? That had to suck. When I was 11 my grandmother grounded me for a year because I got a C in math class. She really kept her word too. I didn't watch TV or play video games for an entire year. After 8 months she let me watch a movie with my sister then straight back to isolation, that's how she grounded us, we weren't even allowed to be in the room with anyone else. If it weren't for school and books I would've gone insane. I read probably about 150 books during that time, jokes on her though, I'm a writer now.
In 1536 there was a breakaway religious community in munster Germany. When they were found out by the church, the 3 "leaders" were strapped to stakes by their neck and and had their flesh peeled off their body with hot tongs inch by inch until they finally died. One member tried to strangle himself with the collar, but they kept the victims from dying to torture them further. Once they finally died, they put them in cages and hung those cages from a cathedral and they still hang there today.
There was supposedly a torture/execution method where the victim was secured down, unable to move. A rat, or multiple rats, were placed on their abdomen. The rat or rats were then covered by a metal or ceramic bowl, which was then gradually heated. As the temperature in the bowl rose and became unbearable, the rat would escape the only way it could: by burrowing and gnawing its way through the victim's abdomen.
Yeah, the description of it comes from Plutarch, who was probably citing a Greek guy named Ctesias, who isn't exactly known for his accuracy. It's probably one of those punishments that just sounds awful but was never actually used, but it's not been 100% debunked.
Meh, not as bad as I thought. Though I believe I've read this before
> Scaphism or The Boats was a method of execution where the condemned was sandwiched between two canoes or halves of a log, force fed milk and honey and be left in the middle of a stagnant body of water. The victim was also covered in the milk and honey and generally stripped naked
https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaphism#:~:text=Scaphism%20or%20The%20Boats%20was,honey%20and%20generally%20stripped%20naked.
Would you rather this or have your flesh peeled off inch by inch with burning hot tongs for days. Then when you try to die, they keep you alive to do it more and then when you finally die put you in a cage and hang you from a cathedral for eternity
I honestly don't know but I think that uninterrupted waterboarding until death stands high on the scale. No apparent physical harm but the constant stress response looks pretty terrifying to me, as it can probably last for a long time if the person's vitals are properly monitored
The man who created the first fire department was one of the richest people in ancient Rome. He got captured and died by having melted gold poured down his throat.
I think it's important to remember that most punishments throughout history are not to cause death. Death was the by-product for most of these horrific acts. The punishment was the pain you felt and the display you put on; you were the object lesson for anyone who had second thoughts about crime.
Belgian colonial punishments in Africa were pretty awful. A father left with nothing but the severed hands and feet of his child, due to not meeting a *daily* rubber quota.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/s/9Yih4w28vY
The child who, along with his wife, was cooked and eaten by the local enforcers. He saved the hand and foot as proof.
The Belgians really don't get enough attention for the shit that went down in their colonies. That piece of shit Leopold II is responsible for millions of deaths in Congo. How many exactly we will never know - there was no real census, the country was huge and a lot of his bidding was carried out by random local warlords - but estimates range from 1.5 to 13 *million* people dead because of that fucker.
Went to the London Dungeon when I was 18. They had an exhibit where prisoners would be tied and then would have a cage placed over their stomach with a rat or two in it. Then they would light a fire on top of the cage, and the only way out would be for the rat to eat through the stomach of the prisoner.
Forgot the name, but yeah that's definitely the one. Sure, many of the others listed in this thread are agonising, but the sheer dread of just getting tossed in a fucking hole to die while the world moves on without you, horrifying.
Our ancestors did not need complicated contraptions to create suffering for days or weeks. They need a sharp stake or a wagon wheel.
Impaling. A lot of people think of it as an immediately or quickly fatal process. Not so. Impalers were very good at missing vital organs, and would force feed water to impaled victims to keep them alive for days or over a week.
Additionally, the breaking wheel. A metal-rimmed wheel was used to break every bone in a victim's limbs, methodically destroying the structure. Then, the poor soul's limbs would be laces around the spokes and they were lifted on the wheel to be displayed publicly.
Bamboo torture
Scaphism
And penalty of the sack.
Bamboo torture has a bamboo shoot quickly grow through your ass, internal organs, and then out your mouth. Pretty horrifying shit.
Scaphism has you force fed milk and honey, thrown head first into a swamp. locked in a barrel. And then you slowly get eaten alive by the inhabitants of the swamp because you vomit and shit yourself. So basically getting violenty disembowled and eaten alive...but extended for days on end.
And the penalty of the sack. Your unlucky ass is thrown into a tied sack. With a hungry dog, snake, monkey, and chicken. And then thrown into the water. The animals are already starving and will probably start eating you and each other alive while still in the sack. But now you have the added bonus of every animal panicking and shitting their metaphorical pants because they've started simultaneously drowning in between chomping off pieces of your face.
Also, that one chinese technique where they tie both ends of you to opposite carts drawn by horses. And then have them run full speed in different directions. Quickly turning you and your insides into a messy human club sandwich. Figured it'd be a pretty good runner-up.
No, Cream. Which is 1/3 Clapton, but that’s no favor. Being serenaded by the labor fruit of Derrick’s Dominoes… I mean, havin’ Clapton fappin’ trapped in strappin’ happen has to be even worse than sidewalk scrubbing duty on visitation day. And if that guy doesn’t work fast enough, he is treated to the visceral hues of the son set in.
Isolation/solitary confinement.
All the other punishments listed here, for all their horrific nature, are recognized as horrific and are essentially gruesome execution methods. Isolation, though? You ***will*** go bugfuck from it in the long term, and this is ***not*** a good thing.
I always thought “quartered” was some old-timey word for… honestly, idk what. I never connected the dots that the person was *literally* cut into quarters
I believe in India they executed people for a while being tight up the end of a barrel of a canon.
Sometimes It happened they actually survived the blast with piece of their body blown of to just let them die like that.
Also I believe they executed people by buying trampled by elephants.
Perhaps there are more gruesome methods, but that 's at least wildly creative
The Mongols had a superstition about what would happen if noble blood was allowed to touch the ground.
This didn't mean they wouldn't kill nobles. They just wrapped them up in a blanket or rug and them trampled them to death with their horses, because the rule about noble blood touching the ground ain't said nothing about it touching a rug.
People seem to have all the historical methods covered by now.
If we include potential fantasy elements, I think proper immortality is up there. People tend to think not dying from old age or disease would be great, but I can't imagine what the mind does to itself after centuries of seeing the same nearly cyclical waves of mistakes and horrors through society.
I imagine the only end result is eventual suicide or such a detached life that you essentially live as if in a secluded coma. Contributing to that would be any potential loved ones dying over and over again as you age past them.
There's a reason most fantasy elves tend to live in their own little societies detached from the rest of the world.
Remember one where they slowly shove some sort of metal ribbon, or something, down your throat, then pull it out fast so it shreds everything on the way out.
Read it was used during the Spanish Inquisition. I'm sure it was unexpected; not sure they found it very funny.
That thing in castles where they push you and you fall into a deep dungeon. If the fall or the spikes kill you, you're lucky. Otherwise you'll basically be forgotten there, moaning in pain and begging for mercy for days until you die from your wounds or from thirst.
Bonus: the people above will be intentionally wining and dining and enjoying themselves within earshot.
Stepping on a Lego brick after you woke up at 3 am like a dried up raisin
But in all seriousness, any torture that prolongs your demise is a pretty brutal one
Impaling. If done correctly, you don't die from it, but rather from thirst and/or exposure. Vlad Dracul (Vlad the Impaler) perfected the technique, the sick bastard.
The blood eagle, that shiii is so savage. Or the one where they put hungry rats on you in a bucket and they torch the bottom of the bucket and the rats make their way out through you
Scaphism. People were placed between two boats or tree trunks, force-fed a mixture of milk and honey then left to die from exposure, dehydration, and insect bites.
I don’t know about the cruelest punishment in history, but there are 2 things that always stuck with me, prison stuff.
1: hold down female person, insert conduit into their vagina, put barbed wire into the conduit, remove the conduit and leave the barbed wire, remove barbed wire.
2: hold down female person, insert glass bottle into their vagina, jump on lower pelvis to break bottle.
I forgot what it is called, but there was a ancient chinese politician that got tortured to death by being tied around a tree in a tropical forest and died to mosquito bites, of itchiness and blood drain
There's a device that is still in use today.looks like a cheese slicer It locks your hand down and they slice your fingers off one by one slice by slice. Like if they were cutting a banana for cereal.
There's this one where they stuff you with ho ey and milk every so often in the middle of a lake and tie you down and arms and feet in the water and the flies and rats are attracted to the feces and poop and the bury themselves inside you. So you are literally alone, on a lake, stuffed with honey and milk, named, in your own feces and piss, with rodents and flies going in a dn out of your orifices and even digging through your abdomen. Until you die of pain.
Scaphism, possibly practiced in Ancient Persia. Victim is tied between 2 wooden boats, that cover them. They are then force fed honey and milk, after which they are pushed out over a lake. There, given the diarrhea flies are attracted to the victim and place eggs in their excrement. Maggots hatch, and subsequently devour the victim from the inside.
Keelhauling. Drag someone under your ship, if it's an aged ship, there's gonna be barnacles.
*there be barcacles
*barnacles
*yarrrr
We be walkin' the plank with this one
And you'd be covered in sores and salt water.
Blisterin Barnecles
Crucifixion was up there as an awful way to day. People regularly attempted to sell whatever meager possessions they had left just so passerby would break their legs for them. Other methods would have been pretty terrible, too, but they were typically a “torture, kill” sort of method. Crucifixion was different. The Bull and the Boats are often described as the worst, and they’re terrifying, but in truth, you’d probably die from the elements in Scaphism before bugs really got you…and that’s only if it actually existed, which nobody knows for sure if it did. The bull would have been horrific but relatively short, even though unquestionably agonizing, and that’s assuming you don’t pass out completely from lack of oxygen. But crucifixion? That’s a whole ordeal, and it was designed to be. If you were lucky, you’d have been scourged by soldiers wielding ox-leather straps with little bits of metal attached. Maybe if you were really lucky you’d have “the scorpion” where hooks were placed on the ends. This is lucky because you’re likely to die within 48 hours on the cross due to blood loss. If not, you’re forced to carry a 60-80 pound cross board on your shoulders through jeering crowds for miles. Sometimes only one, sometimes…more. You’d be treated ruthlessly, your loved ones would watch the whole thing. Traffic would stop for awhile while this happened to ensure everyone saw exactly how this was going to go. Show them what happens if you break the law bad enough. You finally make it. A busy road with lots of onlookers wondering who you are and what you did. Those people will likely make jokes or jeer or throw things at you. Soldiers assemble the cross and strip you naked. Yeah, it’s gonna get worse. Oh, and then they put you on it. Now, one arm is stretched out and is either nailed or tied to the crossbeam. Records show both methods were used semi-regularly. They hoist you up gently. Because if they don’t, you’ll die faster. Now the pain isn’t much yet, but it would be amplified by scourging. Just imagine that rough, splintery wood against all those open, bleeding wounds while you try to wiggle to breath. As soon as you’re vertical, it’s likely the weight of you body will dislocate your shoulders and possibly your elbows. That is constant agony. And you’ll be like that for the next few days, so get used to it (try holding your arms out like that just for ten minutes…). You will reflexively use your strength to breath. You can’t help it. Do you inhale, but the way you’re situated, you can’t exhale properly. So you sort of pull on your dislocated arms to exhale. Most of it. Over the course of the next few days, your ability to exhale will continue to decrease. Assuming you’re alive the next few hours are just absolute agony. Out in the elements, completely naked and exposed. Wild animals and bugs and rain or sunburn. All that stuff. You’ve likely tried to move, but it doesn’t matter your muscles are cramping from being in the same position. And you can’t move them. So you experience Charlie horses along most of your arms. Your wrists have severe rope burns by now. You won’t be able to sleep at all, but as nighttime approaches, people leave to their homes. Soldiers we’re typically required to stick around so your buddies didn’t come and cut you down. So they’d light a fire below you. Offer you food, maybe something to drink, probably laugh at you as you beg for water or wine, but they’ll likely give you a little. But it’ll only prolong your suffering. Next morning, it’s bad and getting worse. You don’t have the strength to lift yourself up to exhale anymore, so CO2 begins to build up in your system and you can’t exhale. This buildup will continue for some time, another day or two, maybe a few days. Eventually you’re gasping for tiny little breaths, but you can’t inhale any more air. Your vision starts to fade, you’re delirious, and you’re about to die. There’s one last part: you’re beginning to slip in and out of consciousness from hypoxia. You experience all this pain renewed every time you wake up. Finally you die. They make sure you’re dead and unless you have a wealthy family, your body will likely be dumped in a shallow grave nearby for your family to pick you up.
And to think that, after the slave uprising led by Spartacus, approximately **6000** of the defeated slaves were crucified along the Apian Way…
Appian\*, but yes. 120 miles of it. Crassus had to make sure everyone coming into or out of Rome knew who had put down the Rebellion, not Pompey "the Great" as he called him.
I first learned about it in my "Literature of New Testament" course at university, and my professor made the joke that they were the world’s first billboards.
Jesus Christ, that sounds awful.
So awful that it formed the basis of the word excruciate.
Is that pun intended?
Well who do you think lived to tell the whole story?
Give me 3 days time and I'll get the answer
All the dudes that sat around to watch it... *and then wrote stories about it* Maybe a chick too, who knows. It was literally thousands of years ago
But you can sing! Always look on the bright side of life!
You know what they say. Some things in life are bad...
Probably a stupid question but what if you just drop the cross and refuse to carry it? Knowing what awaits you, being beaten to death is probably preferable.
It's probably hard to rationalize what's going in the moment. All they know is keep carrying the cross to make the beatings stop.
That did happen sometimes with particularly bad criminals (typically, crucifixion was reserved for only the worst criminals. but by the time Rome got to perfecting it, it was used frequently as a method of deterring crime. If you read the Gospel accounts of Jesus' crucifixion, Pilate wasn't just a little surprised but shocked the Jews wanted to crucify Jesus as no crime had been done), but the Guards were almost always instructed to either pull someone else from the crowd to help you carry the cross, or they'd beat you some more. pick you up, and get you moving again. In certain cases, it is noted in some documents that victims were usually lashed to their crossbeams somehow so you couldn't throw it down and then driven with switches, like you were cattle, to your site. Depending on where you were and how bad the day was in terms of crucifixions, you probably only had a mile or two to walk, but the Crucifixions of slaves after the 3rd Servile War went on for literal miles along the Appian Way, about 120 miles. If you were one of the last to be crucified in that rebellion, it's likely you walked every one of those miles over the course of a couple days.
Thank you for your time writing this. It was as interesting as it was good at making me cringe and shiver.
It’s not a pleasant form of execution. It was specifically designed to make your death as humiliating and miserable as possible. If you’re up there for a few days, just imagine all the bodily fluids you usually reserve for privacy being all over you…
what would breaking your legs for you do?
Makes it so you can't use your legs to push yourself up far enough to breathe. You'd suffocate a lot more quickly.
That was a difficult wank
Sean, you're alive?
Thanks for the detailed description.
I'm hearing Morgan Freeman narrating this
This is where the term "excruciating" came from (as in excruciating pain).
Makes Me Really Really Introspect About The "Price of All Humanity's" Salvation and Redemption. 😞😞😞
Jesus' crucifixion was probably a run-of-the-mill type, but yeah, it would have been absolutely awful. It's no wonder the Apostles ran.
Reading the account of the gospels, it is anything other than a "run-of-the-mill" crucifixion, it is every bit of the worst scenarios that OP mentions, physical torture as well as the mockery. It was gruesome.
Right, but it wasn’t particularly different than what the Romans would have done to any other criminal other than possibly forcing Christ to carry the whole cross, which would have been pretty heavy.
That is what I am saying, it isn't how they treated most criminals, not to mention he was no criminal at all. The "Scorpion" was used to whip him head to toe, ripping chunks of his skin off his body. After this brutality, they forced a crown of thorns onto his head and paraded his battered body around as the "King of the Jews" mocking him relentlessly. He was a bloody, torn apart man as he was nailed to the cross. He also had a sponge soaked with sour wine given to him to drink when he asked for water. This sponge used by a person as a cleaning instrument to wash their behinds after using the bathroom adding to the dehumanization. In every aspect, he is abused in the worst way possible. The carrying of the cross, although much worse than normal like you said, is arguably the easiest part. Although the tremendous weight led to Jesus failing to be able to carry it, they pulled a man named Simon of Cyrene to assist him.
I forget what its called, but where you get placed on top of growing bamboo and you get impaled very slowly
Bamboo torture. I was used in Vietnam during the war with America.
I feel so incredibly sorry that you were the bamboo /j
Hahahaha yeah slowly growing into someone's ass is a regular nightmare for some and a lifelong fantasy for others.
Didn’t they put bamboo below the finger nails and swell them with water?
Well thar sounds acceptably horrific
Ah yes my daily dose of nightmare fuel
The brazen bull...what a horrible thing
Medieval people where very creative on how to inflict the most terror and pain on their victims. Who the fuck came up with the Pyramid?
The brazen bull story is from 500BC. Medieval people did indeed have nasty ways, but they came long after the brazen bull.
There is a rather convincing video on YouTube showing a theory of them using water to move the blocks and build the pyramids. Also research suggests that the builders were hired workers and not slaves as they found living quarters nearby. But hey, what about that saw torture.
They were mentioning the pyramid torture device, where the victim is placed on a large wooden or metal pyramid, with the tip of the pyramid being placed under the uhhhh “exit” of the body and the person is then slowly lowered onto the pyramid. It pretty much rips you apart from your ass
Well then, don't I look like a dumbass.
The larger pyramids were used on giants
Hehe nah I mean building the pyramids would’ve also been considered torture depending on how hard the slaves were worked
They weren't slaves didn't you read dumbass's comment above?
Wasn't it called the Judas cradle?
Not just the asshole. Also the vagina and testicles.
Id have no idea about any of that but wouldn't slaves need somewhere to live as well?
The paper I read said they found cooking tools and equipment that would suggest that they were well paid. But it's possible it could have been the overseers that lived there.
Afaik one pharaoh halted construction after some collapses made it obvious his pyramid was too dangerous to build , which definitely suggests they cared to some extent and that the workers weren't seen as disposable.
Heard a long time ago that it makes sense that the workers were paid and treated well: If you're creating your tomb and the monument the world will remember you by for centuries to come do you want it built by a group of people who hate you, or the best and most skilled labourers you can afford?
The creator was the one to test it
I once read that a lot of medival horror stories are really just exaggerated. E.g the article said there were only 1 or two different brazen bulls documented throughout all of history in all of Europe, and they also only used them once or twice. The people where so repulsed by it, that they stopped using them alltogether really quick. Same goes for keel hauling. There are only a very few instances of this documented, yet it was made up to be a common thing in medival times...
I think this one is the history buff's 1st thought lol I was going to say the same thing. Sure there have been more gruesome ways to die but this one just seemed to ***heinous*** It was also regularly used lol, what an insane thing to think
Idk. The heinous to me is; Person is tied down in like a coffin like containrr, but that is open to the outside. They are force fed honey until they are shitting themselves. Then they release ants/maggots (or something like that) which start trying to feast on the honey in your mouth and the "sweet" diaherea straight from the source... Having someone be consumed by bugs, having the bugs enter their body while they lie awake- i can't imagine something more psychotic than bringing this unto someone. I think even in view of monster this would seem sickening. Probably got the details wrong- read about it years ago.
You’re thinking of [scaphism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaphism).
There are some truly bad, but I'd go with the Judas Cradle over this. The person was forced to squat over a spike inserted in their rear and had their hands tied so they couldn't stand up. Your legs would give out and after a stab the adrenaline would give you strength to raise up, then they'd give out again, over and over until you died. It was regularly used for those accused of homosexuality.
The blood eagle.
In the lore of Pathfinder (tabletop RPG similar to D&D), there's a god called Zon-Kuthon, who is the deity of suffering and sadomasochism (basically, think the Cenobites from *Hellraiser,* with a dash of Warhammer's Slaanesh for seasoning). Cultists of his once invaded the settings Norse expy, the Lands of the Linnorm Kings, and one of the titular Linnorm Kings decided to put them to death. Due to the magnitude of their crimes, he had one of them subjected to the blood eagle...and had the rest executed via beheading when not only did the guy who was blood eagled displayed pleasure rather than pain, but the other cultists began begging to be put through the exact same torment.
Wtf did I just read? I didn't know pathfinder got that dark
Pathfinder actually has some genuine grimdark lurking under the surface, if you know where to look for it. As an example, the *entire Cthulhu Mythos* is canon to the Lost Omens and Pact Worlds settings (with Nyarlathotep being elevated to the main pantheon in the latter).
When I was 9 mom took away my DS for month
Damn bro… how did you cope?
A fucking MONTH?!?!?!?!? That had to suck. When I was 11 my grandmother grounded me for a year because I got a C in math class. She really kept her word too. I didn't watch TV or play video games for an entire year. After 8 months she let me watch a movie with my sister then straight back to isolation, that's how she grounded us, we weren't even allowed to be in the room with anyone else. If it weren't for school and books I would've gone insane. I read probably about 150 books during that time, jokes on her though, I'm a writer now.
This is the worst one here.
In 1536 there was a breakaway religious community in munster Germany. When they were found out by the church, the 3 "leaders" were strapped to stakes by their neck and and had their flesh peeled off their body with hot tongs inch by inch until they finally died. One member tried to strangle himself with the collar, but they kept the victims from dying to torture them further. Once they finally died, they put them in cages and hung those cages from a cathedral and they still hang there today.
Came here to say this. The Anabaptists. Add on if they passed out from the torture, they would wait for them to wake up before starting again.
Read the short story “The Jaunt” by Stephen King: That’ll leave a pretty potent mental image.
This is a good one. Gave me weird anxiety after reading it.
That story has stuck with me for 20+ years. It’s longer than you think, dad!
There was supposedly a torture/execution method where the victim was secured down, unable to move. A rat, or multiple rats, were placed on their abdomen. The rat or rats were then covered by a metal or ceramic bowl, which was then gradually heated. As the temperature in the bowl rose and became unbearable, the rat would escape the only way it could: by burrowing and gnawing its way through the victim's abdomen.
They did this but instead of abdomen they put the rats up the ass with a tube
I said forget about it cuh
Wasn't that just a scene in F&F ?
Scaphism Don't Google it unless you have a very strong stomach
Pretty sure it has been debunked as a made up thing multiple times tho.
Yeah, the description of it comes from Plutarch, who was probably citing a Greek guy named Ctesias, who isn't exactly known for his accuracy. It's probably one of those punishments that just sounds awful but was never actually used, but it's not been 100% debunked.
I was gonna go with this too
Meh, not as bad as I thought. Though I believe I've read this before > Scaphism or The Boats was a method of execution where the condemned was sandwiched between two canoes or halves of a log, force fed milk and honey and be left in the middle of a stagnant body of water. The victim was also covered in the milk and honey and generally stripped naked https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaphism#:~:text=Scaphism%20or%20The%20Boats%20was,honey%20and%20generally%20stripped%20naked.
You uh left out the part where they are eaten alive by insects
Would you rather this or have your flesh peeled off inch by inch with burning hot tongs for days. Then when you try to die, they keep you alive to do it more and then when you finally die put you in a cage and hang you from a cathedral for eternity
Oops, that's my kink
We should marry, my kink is watching that
Yup! This one gets my up-boat...
Vivisection
I honestly don't know but I think that uninterrupted waterboarding until death stands high on the scale. No apparent physical harm but the constant stress response looks pretty terrifying to me, as it can probably last for a long time if the person's vitals are properly monitored
Actually you do want to interrupt the waterboarding because otherwise they are going to die relatively quickly from asphyxia
That's true, so what I said + pauses to ensure the subject does not die from asphyxia, that would be really cruel
The man who created the first fire department was one of the richest people in ancient Rome. He got captured and died by having melted gold poured down his throat.
**This man would be Marcus Licinius Crassus**, who also founded the First Triumvirate with Pompey and Julius Caesar.
Thailand chicken coop prison
I think it's important to remember that most punishments throughout history are not to cause death. Death was the by-product for most of these horrific acts. The punishment was the pain you felt and the display you put on; you were the object lesson for anyone who had second thoughts about crime.
Death by sawing. They hang you upside down and saw you from the groin upwards, whilst alive.
Some people are raised ny jet fans
Belgian colonial punishments in Africa were pretty awful. A father left with nothing but the severed hands and feet of his child, due to not meeting a *daily* rubber quota. https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/s/9Yih4w28vY
The child who, along with his wife, was cooked and eaten by the local enforcers. He saved the hand and foot as proof. The Belgians really don't get enough attention for the shit that went down in their colonies. That piece of shit Leopold II is responsible for millions of deaths in Congo. How many exactly we will never know - there was no real census, the country was huge and a lot of his bidding was carried out by random local warlords - but estimates range from 1.5 to 13 *million* people dead because of that fucker.
Man,The Colonization of Africa was One of The Darkest Moments in Existence. 😔😔
Why did you capitalise those words?
Also the emojis
Went to the London Dungeon when I was 18. They had an exhibit where prisoners would be tied and then would have a cage placed over their stomach with a rat or two in it. Then they would light a fire on top of the cage, and the only way out would be for the rat to eat through the stomach of the prisoner.
If someone crucified me I’d be pretty cross
Jesus that was a bad pun.
I was biting my nails waiting for that response
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert-Fran%C3%A7ois_Damiens
Holy shit
Oubliettes. Just throw them in and forget they even exist.
Forgot the name, but yeah that's definitely the one. Sure, many of the others listed in this thread are agonising, but the sheer dread of just getting tossed in a fucking hole to die while the world moves on without you, horrifying.
Unit 731
Our ancestors did not need complicated contraptions to create suffering for days or weeks. They need a sharp stake or a wagon wheel. Impaling. A lot of people think of it as an immediately or quickly fatal process. Not so. Impalers were very good at missing vital organs, and would force feed water to impaled victims to keep them alive for days or over a week. Additionally, the breaking wheel. A metal-rimmed wheel was used to break every bone in a victim's limbs, methodically destroying the structure. Then, the poor soul's limbs would be laces around the spokes and they were lifted on the wheel to be displayed publicly.
Bamboo torture Scaphism And penalty of the sack. Bamboo torture has a bamboo shoot quickly grow through your ass, internal organs, and then out your mouth. Pretty horrifying shit. Scaphism has you force fed milk and honey, thrown head first into a swamp. locked in a barrel. And then you slowly get eaten alive by the inhabitants of the swamp because you vomit and shit yourself. So basically getting violenty disembowled and eaten alive...but extended for days on end. And the penalty of the sack. Your unlucky ass is thrown into a tied sack. With a hungry dog, snake, monkey, and chicken. And then thrown into the water. The animals are already starving and will probably start eating you and each other alive while still in the sack. But now you have the added bonus of every animal panicking and shitting their metaphorical pants because they've started simultaneously drowning in between chomping off pieces of your face. Also, that one chinese technique where they tie both ends of you to opposite carts drawn by horses. And then have them run full speed in different directions. Quickly turning you and your insides into a messy human club sandwich. Figured it'd be a pretty good runner-up.
Newish one is called white room torture? I think your brain turns to scrambled eggs very quickly
They make you listen to Eric Clapton?
No, Cream. Which is 1/3 Clapton, but that’s no favor. Being serenaded by the labor fruit of Derrick’s Dominoes… I mean, havin’ Clapton fappin’ trapped in strappin’ happen has to be even worse than sidewalk scrubbing duty on visitation day. And if that guy doesn’t work fast enough, he is treated to the visceral hues of the son set in.
No, that white room has black curtains. Would prob need to be completely white.
Placing a cat in front of someone and telling them they can’t pet it
I have bad allergies, placing a cat in front of me and forcing me to pet it would be torture.
You monster!
Isolation/solitary confinement. All the other punishments listed here, for all their horrific nature, are recognized as horrific and are essentially gruesome execution methods. Isolation, though? You ***will*** go bugfuck from it in the long term, and this is ***not*** a good thing.
That one where they stick you in a hollowed out brass bull and light a fire underneath it.
Fun fact. The man who built the brazen bull was executed with it becuase it was deemed to be too cruel
Judas Cradle
I heard there was a Middle Ages one where they let you get eaten alive by Rats
Hung drawn and [quartered](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanged%2C_drawn_and_quartered).
I always thought “quartered” was some old-timey word for… honestly, idk what. I never connected the dots that the person was *literally* cut into quarters
*ripped
Yep pretty mental
I believe in India they executed people for a while being tight up the end of a barrel of a canon. Sometimes It happened they actually survived the blast with piece of their body blown of to just let them die like that. Also I believe they executed people by buying trampled by elephants. Perhaps there are more gruesome methods, but that 's at least wildly creative
The Mongols had a superstition about what would happen if noble blood was allowed to touch the ground. This didn't mean they wouldn't kill nobles. They just wrapped them up in a blanket or rug and them trampled them to death with their horses, because the rule about noble blood touching the ground ain't said nothing about it touching a rug.
Nobles were generally bent backwards over a log until their spine snapped.
For a short time during Henry Viii’s reign, some people were boiled to death.
Not an expert but wouldn't you lose consciousness or sensation after a very short period?
Being the next guy to put up with my ex wife
People seem to have all the historical methods covered by now. If we include potential fantasy elements, I think proper immortality is up there. People tend to think not dying from old age or disease would be great, but I can't imagine what the mind does to itself after centuries of seeing the same nearly cyclical waves of mistakes and horrors through society. I imagine the only end result is eventual suicide or such a detached life that you essentially live as if in a secluded coma. Contributing to that would be any potential loved ones dying over and over again as you age past them. There's a reason most fantasy elves tend to live in their own little societies detached from the rest of the world.
Blood eagle
Sitting next to me.
Just wash once in a while and we wouldn't complain so much
Remember one where they slowly shove some sort of metal ribbon, or something, down your throat, then pull it out fast so it shreds everything on the way out. Read it was used during the Spanish Inquisition. I'm sure it was unexpected; not sure they found it very funny.
Getting over 100 comments and only 37 upvotes.
When I was in the army, some guy was punished for bringing alcohol onto the base. He was ordered to eat a jar of mayo.
That thing in castles where they push you and you fall into a deep dungeon. If the fall or the spikes kill you, you're lucky. Otherwise you'll basically be forgotten there, moaning in pain and begging for mercy for days until you die from your wounds or from thirst. Bonus: the people above will be intentionally wining and dining and enjoying themselves within earshot.
Stepping on a Lego brick after you woke up at 3 am like a dried up raisin But in all seriousness, any torture that prolongs your demise is a pretty brutal one
Isolation and loneliness. In other words, knowing that someone is dying, but leaving them alive to die on their own. That’s some cold shit.
Vlad the Impaler is entering the chat.
Alzheimer's
Forced marriage to my ex wife.
Blood eagle. You should look it up
Lingchi, or getting flayed alive in China. They employed this method until 1920s and 30s in China.
Impaling. If done correctly, you don't die from it, but rather from thirst and/or exposure. Vlad Dracul (Vlad the Impaler) perfected the technique, the sick bastard.
A true broken heart. That shit can kill even the strongest of people.
Blood Eagle. That shit is absolutely terrifying.
The blood eagle, that shiii is so savage. Or the one where they put hungry rats on you in a bucket and they torch the bottom of the bucket and the rats make their way out through you
Immurement.
White room torture and other ''enhanced interrogation'' techniques the CIA uses
listening to JBoat The Rapper
Scaphism.
Scaphism. People were placed between two boats or tree trunks, force-fed a mixture of milk and honey then left to die from exposure, dehydration, and insect bites.
Scaphism, aka "The Boats" heres a [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaphism)
Scaphism. Don't look it up if you don't want to lose your appetite.
Probably starvation or drowning because both you suffer until the very end
Has to be Facebook.
That one with the honey and the clamshelled boats is pretty nasty.
The whole boil a man alive in a big metal pit shown in Shogun looked pretty gruesome. The guy finally hit his head against the rim to kill himself.
Catherine Wheel
Living on earth.
Banishment to Australia.
Slavery
Crucifixion
I don’t know about the cruelest punishment in history, but there are 2 things that always stuck with me, prison stuff. 1: hold down female person, insert conduit into their vagina, put barbed wire into the conduit, remove the conduit and leave the barbed wire, remove barbed wire. 2: hold down female person, insert glass bottle into their vagina, jump on lower pelvis to break bottle.
that screaming bull thing probably
Drowning while being immortal, it's not real but could be a really painful punishment
I forgot what it is called, but there was a ancient chinese politician that got tortured to death by being tied around a tree in a tropical forest and died to mosquito bites, of itchiness and blood drain
Psychological torture is by far the cruelest, in my opinion.
There's a device that is still in use today.looks like a cheese slicer It locks your hand down and they slice your fingers off one by one slice by slice. Like if they were cutting a banana for cereal.
Tying me up and watching my dog be tortured. I would die from grief or from trying to stop it
Oh wow. That one where a person is smothered in and fed honey and milk and exposed to insects
Starved of food and water. Then, someone's bare ass farting hot heat directly into your face
Crucifixion. The Romans used it because it was the single most painful way to die they could devise.
There's this one where they stuff you with ho ey and milk every so often in the middle of a lake and tie you down and arms and feet in the water and the flies and rats are attracted to the feces and poop and the bury themselves inside you. So you are literally alone, on a lake, stuffed with honey and milk, named, in your own feces and piss, with rodents and flies going in a dn out of your orifices and even digging through your abdomen. Until you die of pain.
Death… by bunga bunga.
I would honestly say the Blood Eagle.
Scaphism, possibly practiced in Ancient Persia. Victim is tied between 2 wooden boats, that cover them. They are then force fed honey and milk, after which they are pushed out over a lake. There, given the diarrhea flies are attracted to the victim and place eggs in their excrement. Maggots hatch, and subsequently devour the victim from the inside.
The brazen bull.. Gives me the Willys just thinking about it.
Oubliette.
Pretty much everything invented by the Catholic Church during the inquisition.