Execution: A Guide to the Ultimate Penalty by Geoffrey Abbott Read Free Book Online

no doubt savour the fact that, outraged by Phalaris’s cruelties, the populace finally rose against him, and tradition has it that after his tongue had been torn out he himself died a slow and agonising death – in the belly of the brazen bull.
     

BROKEN ON THE WHEEL
    ‘And the whole Wheel was stained with his blood, and the grate containing the burning coals was put out by reason of the drops of blood pouring down on it, while about the axle of the Wheel the gobbets of flesh were carried round and round…’
    The invention of the wheel may have been a boon, bringing immeasurable benefits to mankind generally, but thousands of people must have cursed its very existence as, while bound to a wheel, they were subjected to some of the most fiendish tortures ever devised.
    There were many adaptations over the centuries, but this particular method of execution is believed to have originated during the reign of the Roman Commodus, who died in ad 192. In his day the victim was secured on a wide wooden bench, and an iron-flanged wheel was then laid on his body. The executioner, wielding a heavy hammer, then pounded the wheel, starting at the victim’s ankles and working slowly upwards, smashing the bones to splinters, the impact of each blow on the wheel also causing dreadful injuries to other parts of the victim’s body.
    The Romans used the wheel for the punishment of slaves and to overcome the obstinacy of the Christian martyrs, and employed several different methods. In some, the wheel was mounted horizontally, in others vertically. In either position the victim would be bound to the face of the wheel or around the circumference, and the suffering could be increased by lighting a fire underneath, thereby converting the wheel into a roasting-spit. The author Josephus wrote:

‘Then were the Apparitors [executioners] directed to bring in the Christian prisoner and, tearing away his tunic, bound him hand and foot with thongs. Then they fixed him about a great Wheel, whereof the noble-hearted youth had all his joints dislocated and all his limbs broken. And the whole Wheel was stained with his blood, and the grate containing the burning coals was put out by reason of the drops of blood pouring down on it, while about the axle of the Wheel the gobbets of flesh were carried round and round, the parts adjoining the joints of the bones being everywhere cut to pieces.
Another was fastened to the Wheel, on which he was stretched and burned with fire; moreover they applied spits, sharpened and made red hot, to his back, and pierced his sides and inwards, searing the latter dreadfully.’
    Some wheels were smaller, so that once the victim had been spreadeagled on it, with his ankles and wrists extending beyond the rim, the executioner would smash the limbs, then drape them round the perimeter of the wheel.
    In other modes the device consisted of two wheels, their circumferences joined by laths, like a cylinder, round which the victim was spreadeagled. This, known as the great wheel, was then either pushed over a cliff, the fall shattering the victim’s body and limbs en route, or rolled around the city’s square, the victim being eventually killed by a blow to the rib-cage.
    Other wheels were broad, with spikes, like extensions of the spokes, extending outwards from the circumference. On this wheel, called for obvious reasons the scorpion, the martyr was stretched around the rim between the spikes, the wheel then being propelled over rows of other spikes set into the ground.
    This was the torture inflicted on St Catherine by the Romans in the fourth century. Once she had been secured round the rim, the wheel was pushed along. But divine providence interceded, for the wheel broke and the spikes snapped off, injuring many of the hitherto gloating spectators.
    Frustrated, Emperor Maxentius sentenced her to be beheaded, but so holy was she that milk, rather than blood, flowed from her corpse. As well as giving her name to that