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Public Executions In The Arena

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MARGARETA OF ANTIOCHIA

"Margareta was the daughter of a pagan priest at Antioch in Pisidia. She was converted to Christianity, whereupon she was driven from home by her father. She became a shepherdess and when she spurned the advances of Olybrius, the prefect, who was infatuated with her beauty, he charged her with being a Christian. He had her tortured with fire, scourged, treated with iron hooks and then imprisoned, and while she was in prison she had an encounter with the devil in the form of a dragon. According to the legend, he swallowed her, but the cross she carried in her hand so irritated his throat that he was forced to disgorge her. The next day, attempts were made to execute her by fire and then by drowning, but she was miraculously saved and converted thousands of spectators witnessing her ordeal-all of whom were promptly executed. Finally, she was beheaded."

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TORTURING WITH TORCHES


Torches are mentioned in many of the Histories of the Saints, especially those of St. Saba, an officer of soldiers; of Saints Eulalia and Barbara, virgins and martyrs; and of St. Clement, Bishop of Ancyra.

These torches were of two sorts — some were made of the inner and denser parts of trees which produce resin, such as the pine, pitch-pine, larch, or fir. These types of torches are often spoke of by ancient writers such as Varro.

With this distinction explained, we may add that torches of both these sorts — to wit, pine torches and torches of waxed or pitched rope — were used by the Heathen for scorching Christians and common criminals to the point of death. The use of pine torches is attested by the Acts of St. Barbara, virgin and martyr, cited above (for while some have maintained that the Saint was burned with torches, others have recorded more particularly that it was with pine torches that she was tortured.

In fact both kinds of torches were often used in those days, as the authors we have quoted seem to indicate. But of the two, the pitch-pine is more abundant in resin than the other trees which produce resin as well, and produce a more pleasant flame (as Pliny says) and supply light for sacred functions. Torches, therefore, made of pitch-pine were more in use in antiquity than any others of a similar sort.

This form of torture is also — as we find in the Theatre of Cruelties — employed by the heretics of our own day for afflicting Catholics, and particularly by the Huguenots in their hatred of our holy religion, as we read in that work.
 

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VESTAL VIRGIN DOMITIA PUBLICLY SCOURGED IN THE ARENA FOR LETTING THE SACRED FIRE OF VESTA DIE OUT

In ancient Rome, the Vestals or Vestal Virgins were priestesses of Vesta, goddess of the hearth. The College of the Vestals and its well-being was regarded as fundamental to the continuance and security of Rome. They cultivated the sacred fire that was not allowed to go out. The Vestals were freed of the usual social obligations to marry and bear children, and took a vow of chastity in order to devote themselves to the study and correct observance of state rituals that were off-limits to the male colleges of priests.

According to Plutarch, there were only two Vestal Virgins when Numa began the College of the Vestals. This number later increased to four, and then to six. It has been suggested by some authorities that a seventh was added later, but this is doubtful.

To obtain entry into the order, a girl had to be free of physical and mental defects, have two living parents and be a daughter of a free-born resident of Rome. From at least the mid-Republican era, the pontifex maximus chose Vestals between their sixth and tenth year, by lot from a group of twenty high-born candidates at a gathering of their families and other Roman citizens.

Their tasks included the maintenance of the fire sacred to Vesta, the goddess of the hearth and home, collecting water from a sacred spring, preparation of food used in rituals and caring for sacred objects in the temple's sanctuary. By maintaining Vesta's sacred fire, from which anyone could receive fire for household use, they functioned as "surrogate housekeepers", in a religious sense, for all of Rome. Their sacred fire was treated, in Imperial times, as the emperor's household fire. Allowing the sacred fire of Vesta to die out, suggesting that the goddess had withdrawn her protection from the city, was a serious offence and was punishable by scourging.

In 51 b.C. the vestal virgin Domitia was condemned to be scourged in public, so she was led to the arena and scourged so cruelly that she died three days later.

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ALLEGED ARSONER TORMENTED WITH TORCHES

The word "incendium" meant the crime of setting any object on fire, by which the property of a man is endangered. It was thus a more general term than the modern Arson, which is limited to the act of wilfully and maliciously burning the property of another. The crime of incendium was the subject of one of the laws of the Twelve Tables, which inflicted a severe punishment on the person who set fire to property maliciously (sciens,prudens); but if it was done by accident (casu, id est, neglegentia), the law obliged the offender to repair the injury he had committed . The punishment, however, of burning alive, which is mentioned in the passage of the Digest referred to, is supposed by modern commentators not to have been contained in the Twelve Tables, but to have been transferred from the imperial period to earlier times. The cognitio was extraordinaria and belonged to the Praefectus urbi, who could inflict whatever punishment he pleased, for it appears that there was no punishment fixed by law. We accordingly find mention of execution by the sword, burning alive, flogging, burning with torches &c., as punishments inflicted on account of incendium.
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DEATH OF AN ADULTERESS

Pomponius Bassus, a rich Roman senator, who had married the noblewoman Pomponia Gratidia, fell in love with his young slave Dominica, so he made her a free woman and started living with her "more uxorio" .
In 259, under the reign of the Roman Emperors Valerian and Gallienus, Pomponius held his first consulship and became very busy. Dominica, who secretily loved the young slave Aquilinus, started cheating her lord.
When Pomponius was made aware of the fact, he had the two lovers condemned to die on the cross.
 
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MICHELE PATRI said:
ALLEGED ARSONER TORMENTED WITH TORCHES
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Great! One of your best! The helplessness of the condemned woman. Exposed to the torments of the torches, and to the looks of thousands of spectators. Anxiously, she has been looking forward to this moment. Stripped by the guards and strung up by her ankles in the arena, she lives her last moments without pain.
'Alledged arsoner'. She kept all the time denying the accusations. The Praefactus found her guilty. Proof against her was overwhelming, he argued.
Will she stoically undergo her right sentence, or submit to the terrible fate of being executed innocent?
 
Top-Cat said:
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Top-Cat
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001.jpg ohhhh...they are raising me in front of the very women who accused me, a poor slave, of seducing their powerful husbands! How diabolical! What could be worse? How they will congratulate themselves and enjoy watching me suffer! Don't they know what their husbands do?
 
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