My mental fantasies seem to work best when I can base them on pictures I have seen. I am finding lots of great pictures of naked men on the cross here on these forums, and I have also found some good pictures of flogging and scourging. But I am missing what happens in between--the long march along a busy street with the patibulum across the shoulders and the crowds of shoppers jeering and mocking. I am probably just not looking in the right places. Is there a thread for those pictures? Or am I going to have to dig through thousands of pages to find them? Or is that just something nobody makes images of? Thanks!
Yea that is one of the best bits. Mel made it a long bit of his blood bath movie, & though I hated that film the dragging the cross thtrough the streets of Matera was the best bit in my opinion, the scourging was too savage & bloody it tended to make the crucifixion seem the easier option, & the crucifixion surprisingly boring. I have done in the long gone past a couple of images of that part of the procedure, but have lost them & I am not going to do any more.
Question is, did the victims drag the whole cross, I like that scenario but experts think it unlikely. However I know that seasoned timber of a whole cross is not too heavy for an adult to just about manage. the timber doesn't have to be as thick as a railway sleeper to bear the weight of a person, 4 x 3 inches is enough. Dragging the whole executing instrument is a powerful image, maybe with the nails & hammer also being taken by the victim either hanging in a bunch from the neck or attached to the scrotum to painfully dangle around between the legs.
How is tthe criminal to be dressed? The Bible suggests that Jesus was dressed again in his own clothing after his stripping & mocking in the purple robe in front of the company of soldiers just after his sentencing. Why bother to dress him again, he could have been made to bear his cross ridiculously 'dressed' in the robe thrown over his naked body & the crown of thorns, & this is almost what he has been depicted in art & movies with the coy addition of a loincloth throughout. Maybe the local laws of nudity or an undressed state within the urban area were respected by the Romans in this case Jerusalem, but once outside the city the regular method of complete humiliation were enforced.
Bearing the cross naked is a nice scenario but as I have argued before it ruins the anticipation for the hostile crowd of the delayed stripping at the place of crucifixion, it was worth following the procession there if one wanted the cheap thrill of seeing the criminal's naked body as well as their public torture.
Maybe the 'obligatory' scourging, or rather a whipping could have been done as the criminal was bearing the cross if they were either naked in so doing or as I argue above allowed for public decency to keep on whatever underwear they wore round their waists. Being constantly whipped with a leather whip on one's bare back, chest & legs whilst carrying the cross would make one move a bit faster.
However this part was, it must have been an enormous attraction to the people, proof being the huge crowds lining the length of Oxford Street in London every time some poor sod was taken on a cart to be hanged at Tyburn. People in the past loved executions.
A stupid mistake in movies, Jesus wearing sandals! also why did the thieves carry the crossbeams whilst poor Jesus the whole cross, why the different treatment? Though in the fictitious accounts I have written he was given a more savage method of crucifixion than the two common thieves because of his percieved threat as an insurgent & that he had grossly offended the Temple authorities with false accusations of blasphemy & also annoyed Herod when rumour of his king claim went round. he had to be given far harsher punishment than two ordinary thieves. Maybe they were just roped to crosses in thier tunics ( a method that satisfies the religious taboo of nudity), Jesus as an exception was crucified in the way the most notorious criminals in Rome were by being nailed naked to the cross. He had to suffer the very worst way possible to satisfy the Scriptures.