The Big Book of Pain: Torture & Punishment through History by Mark P Donnelly, Daniel Diehl
Authors: Mark P Donnelly, Daniel Diehl
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and/or noses hacked off. Five centuries later, by the time of the Maccabeean uprising, the Assyrians were a bit more civilised but no more tolerant.
The Jews hated the Assyrians because they were a constant threat; the Assyrians hated the Jews because they stubbornly refused to be subjugated even in defeat. Finally, the Assyrian king, Antiochus Epiphanies, had had enough. He sacked Jerusalem, erected a statue of Jupiter in the inner sanctum of Solomon’s temple, turned the rest of the building into a brothel and ordered anyone observing the Sabbath to be burned alive. Instead of accepting their defeat, the Jews revolted; raising a rebel army under Judas Maccabaeus. These were the Maccabees.
This method of torture and execution took many forms. Sometimes the victims were staked out on the ground and a large wheel would be used to smash each of their limbs and joints including the hips and shoulders. In other cases, the victim was tied upon a wheel and the executioner would use bars, clubs or hammers to accomplish the same result. The idea was to break all of the bones in the body without breaking the skin or causing lethal injury. In either case, the shattered limbs of the victim were usually ‘laced’ through the spokes of the wheel and then mounted on a pole and displayed to the populace, where they would slowly and agonizingly die of hunger, thirst and exposure (and presumably, internal bleeding).
Antiochus took exception to all this; after all, all he wanted was for the Jews to become docile slaves like the rest of his vanquished empire. It seemed obvious to Antiochus that what the Jews needed were a few graphic examples of just how powerful their new king was, and how silly their own beliefs were. Particularly galling to Antiochus was the Jewish dietary law which forbade the eating of pork. In one instance, a boy who refused to eat pork was tied to a wheel where his joints were dislocated, his bones broken and his flesh torn with red-hot pincers. A bed of coals that had been built beneath the wheel, to increase the boy’s pain, was extinguished by the boy’s own, flowing blood. On another occasion, seven brothers and their aged mother were hauled before Antiochus for the same offence. The king assured them that their God would understand if they ate pork under duress and forgive for the sin, pointing out that if they refused to eat, they would all be horribly executed in front of their mother. Neither the lads, nor their mother, were having any of it. After the eldest boy had been broken on the wheel and his limbs had been cut off, the king said he would reprieve the remaining six boys if they would share a succulent pork dinner with him. Again they refused. The second youth had his limbs severed and his still-living trunk cooked in a gigantic frying pan. The third brother was skinned alive and disembowelled, the fourth had his tongue ripped out before being roasted alive on a spit and the fifth was burned at the stake. When the sixth was tossed into a cauldron of boiling water, the youngest simply threw himself into the cauldron to die with his brother. Frustrated, Antiochus accused the mother of forcing her sons to their deaths by not permitting them to transgress against their religion, and sentenced her to be burnt alive. By 63 BC the Maccabeean revolt had collapsed and the Jews remained stateless, but the power of the Assyrians was also waning. A new, more advanced civilization had taken centre stage in the world, and with them they brought new and more advanced forms of torture.
The Classical Greeks were a civilised people. Well, they certainly believed they were, and we generally accept it as fact. As early as 1179 BC there were Greek laws prohibiting murder but, in a typically enlightened way, a death sentence could only be passed by an officially sanctioned court of law. This would seem to have been a good start, but unfortunately things went rapidly downhill from there. In the decades around 700
The Jews hated the Assyrians because they were a constant threat; the Assyrians hated the Jews because they stubbornly refused to be subjugated even in defeat. Finally, the Assyrian king, Antiochus Epiphanies, had had enough. He sacked Jerusalem, erected a statue of Jupiter in the inner sanctum of Solomon’s temple, turned the rest of the building into a brothel and ordered anyone observing the Sabbath to be burned alive. Instead of accepting their defeat, the Jews revolted; raising a rebel army under Judas Maccabaeus. These were the Maccabees.
This method of torture and execution took many forms. Sometimes the victims were staked out on the ground and a large wheel would be used to smash each of their limbs and joints including the hips and shoulders. In other cases, the victim was tied upon a wheel and the executioner would use bars, clubs or hammers to accomplish the same result. The idea was to break all of the bones in the body without breaking the skin or causing lethal injury. In either case, the shattered limbs of the victim were usually ‘laced’ through the spokes of the wheel and then mounted on a pole and displayed to the populace, where they would slowly and agonizingly die of hunger, thirst and exposure (and presumably, internal bleeding).
Antiochus took exception to all this; after all, all he wanted was for the Jews to become docile slaves like the rest of his vanquished empire. It seemed obvious to Antiochus that what the Jews needed were a few graphic examples of just how powerful their new king was, and how silly their own beliefs were. Particularly galling to Antiochus was the Jewish dietary law which forbade the eating of pork. In one instance, a boy who refused to eat pork was tied to a wheel where his joints were dislocated, his bones broken and his flesh torn with red-hot pincers. A bed of coals that had been built beneath the wheel, to increase the boy’s pain, was extinguished by the boy’s own, flowing blood. On another occasion, seven brothers and their aged mother were hauled before Antiochus for the same offence. The king assured them that their God would understand if they ate pork under duress and forgive for the sin, pointing out that if they refused to eat, they would all be horribly executed in front of their mother. Neither the lads, nor their mother, were having any of it. After the eldest boy had been broken on the wheel and his limbs had been cut off, the king said he would reprieve the remaining six boys if they would share a succulent pork dinner with him. Again they refused. The second youth had his limbs severed and his still-living trunk cooked in a gigantic frying pan. The third brother was skinned alive and disembowelled, the fourth had his tongue ripped out before being roasted alive on a spit and the fifth was burned at the stake. When the sixth was tossed into a cauldron of boiling water, the youngest simply threw himself into the cauldron to die with his brother. Frustrated, Antiochus accused the mother of forcing her sons to their deaths by not permitting them to transgress against their religion, and sentenced her to be burnt alive. By 63 BC the Maccabeean revolt had collapsed and the Jews remained stateless, but the power of the Assyrians was also waning. A new, more advanced civilization had taken centre stage in the world, and with them they brought new and more advanced forms of torture.
The Classical Greeks were a civilised people. Well, they certainly believed they were, and we generally accept it as fact. As early as 1179 BC there were Greek laws prohibiting murder but, in a typically enlightened way, a death sentence could only be passed by an officially sanctioned court of law. This would seem to have been a good start, but unfortunately things went rapidly downhill from there. In the decades around 700
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