Sabina's whipping begins. From this point on, everything follows in sequence with no false starts or interruptions until she is hanging nailed to her cross, crucified. Sabina narrates what happens to her:
I was standing before the whipping post when I was shocked out of my reverie by the sound of Balbus’ ringing voice speaking my name. For a Roman slave, there was no sound more dreaded than hearing her name from the carnifex’s lips. I wanted to shrink inside of myself as a hush fell over the slave market and every eye turned toward us. Towards me, the condemned, already dead under the law.
“Sabina, slave of Julia Lepida, will be crucified this day by order of her Domina,” Balbus announced briskly. “She will be whipped before you here and then will carry her patibulum to the Sessorium where she will be nailed to the cross, there to die the slow, shameful death of a slave.” he continued, “She will receive no mercy and her legs will not be broken to hasten her dying. Let her example be a warning to all slaves of the punishment that awaits those who disobey.”
My cheeks burned with shame. I resisted the urge to raise my shackled hands to my face to wipe the tears that blurred my eyes. We all know that we will die someday, but it is quite a different thing to hear your death sentence announced. Worse yet to know that it means three days or more of agonizing torture and humiliation on a cross.
The crowd began to gather for the entertainment. At least part of Balbus’ motivation for whipping me at the slave market was to show off his work. With his final words still ringing in the air, he nodded to Hercules and Ajax, his two Nubian slaves, and they moved to obey. Like the rest of the execution crew, they wore only belted loincloths of the type favored by gladiators. Black as ebony, massive as tree trunks, they were so strong that I was like a child in their grasp.
I was wearing the old gray woolen peplos Salonina, out of kindness, had dressed me in for my execution. It didn’t fit well, sagging off my shoulders, and too much cloth folded over in front. But I knew very well that it would only cover me until I reached the Forum, and the time had come for them to take that away.
Ajax seized my upper arms from behind and pulled them back, while Hercules untied my sash and roughly tore out the pins that held the peplos together at my shoulders. He pulled the cloth away and tossed it on the pavement, exposing all of me except what was underneath my loincloth.
There were murmurs and hoots from the crowd; the show had begun. I had relived this scene so many times in my mind that I had to remind myself,
this is not another dream, this is really happening. I had been part of the crowd at so many executions, but this time I was the one facing execution, the one everyone was jeering at.
They will crucify me today, I thought,
by mid-morning I will be nailed to a cross. I still held onto a thin shred of hope that it would stop, that the crowd would go home grumbling instead of jeering at me as I hung on a cross.
My breasts were bare, thrust forward for everyone to see, and I felt my cheeks burning again with embarrassment. My pink nipples began to swell and tingle, quickly growing as hard as pebbles from the cool morning air and the palpable stares of so many eyes studying my breasts and eager to see the rest of me.
I lost my nerve when Hercules bent and reached for the front of my loincloth. Even though I had no hope that they would leave me this token bit of modesty on the cross, it was the last thing that lay between me and what they were about to do to me. So when I saw his hand coming, I twisted my hips away, pressed my legs together, tried to squirm out of Ajax’s unyielding grip to reach the cloth, to hold it, anything to keep them from taking it away.
But then I felt his big fingers force themselves between the cloth and my lower abdomen, dragging it down, pulling it loose. A thrill shot through me as I felt the roughness of his knuckles brush across the turned-up front of my lower lips, and then nothing but the cool morning air between my legs. Hercules tossed the wad of rags onto the rumpled pile of cloth that had been my peplos. I had an irrational thought that someone should collect that and give it back to Salonina since I wouldn’t need it again.
Suddenly I was standing there as naked as the day I came out of my mother’s womb. I should have been prepared for the shock of being stripped naked before the crowd, but I had never been on the slave block and when I’d felt the whip before it had been behind closed doors. Combined with the sheer helplessness of being so completely overpowered, it was more humiliating than I ever anticipated in my fantasies. All of them were staring at me! I turned my head and closed my eyes to shut out the shame. My cheeks were burning once again with embarrassment.
Ajax spun me around to face the whipping post, pulling my arms up over my head as he pushed me up against the rough wood. I squealed in fright and jerked as he thrust his huge, rough hand between my legs from the rear and grabbed my porcella. He clutched me by the back of the neck at the same time and lifted me off the ground so that I was straddling his massive forearm, my legs dangling and kicking.
I nearly wet myself with shock! There were gales of laughter from the crowd and I could feel both of the Nubians shaking with mirth as the one holding my shackles slipped the chain over the top of the post and onto a rusty iron spike on the other side. Ajax took advantage of the moment to rub and squeeze my porcella roughly, to the further delight of the crowd. My cheeks were hot with shame. He set me down on my feet then, gave my porcella a final squeeze before taking his hand away, delivered a sharp slap that left my bare bottom stinging, and walked away.
Some notes about these renders: The whipping chapter was the first one that I began developing illustrations for back in 2011, and I learned a lot while doing these. They were done on my previous computer and it took at least an hour of rendering time for each of them, the version of Poser I was using back then was slower and had less features, etc. So I didn't do as many renders and they probably aren't up to the quality I'd do now.
Nevertheless, these do a pretty good job of capturing the vision I had for the story. And there is some humor in the last three renders where Ajax lifts Sabina up by her crotch. Salonina warned Sabina that there'd be things like this done to her. I could have simply had him push her up against the post and drag her up by the arms or something, but the method shown here is a lot better in my humble opinion.
) that I've never read this actual quote until now. 
