The Roman Empire: Difference between revisions

 

To go into further detail about crucifixion: The nails, which were 5-7 inches long, were driven into the wrists and ankles. How the nails were driven in depended on the shape of the cross, which was I, T, X, Y or the traditional cross shape. Then ropes are tied, so the Romans can pull up the cross. The ropes cut into the skin as the cross is raised. Then the person is essentially left to die. Times passes on, the person literally gets baked by the sun. Crows start to come and peck on the eyes on the hung, if that person has no family or friends. The hung man must struggle with all of his might to get one tiny breath in, as his lungs are constricted. If he's lucky, he'll get a bitter tasting wine as a painkiller. In terms of waste removal, there was none. This further adds to the humiliation and infects any wounds below the waist. After that, there's not much left as the prisoner gets no food nor drink. Jesus lasted the good part of a day before passing on, but there are cases of men who lasted THREE DAYS of this. It's also where we get the word "excruciating", literally from from the cross.

 

Quite where the nails went (or if they were even used) and what the person was supposed to die of are debated by historians ([[The Bible]] isn't too clear on the subject either, due to translation issues from the original Greek). The usual theory has been suffocation, but some experiments concluded otherwise- certainly exhaustion and dehydration would have occurred too. Jesus' seven traditional sayings on the cross i.e. "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" ("My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" in Aramaic) would have been very hard, though not impossible, to get out in these circumstances. In order to speed things up, the legs of the condemned might be broken. How long it took to die varied widely and there are cases of people surviving due to a reprieve.

** Caracalla (198 - 217): Expanded Roman citizenship to all free people throughout the empire. Whatever ruling ability he may have had was utterly overwhelmed by his extreme paranoia, which counted among its victims his brother and co-ruler Geta and the citizens of Alexandria. Assasinated by a soldier.

** Macrinus (217 - 218): First non-senator to become emperor, had Caracalla killed [[Properly Paranoid|before the other way round would've happened.]]

** Alexander Severus (222 - 235): Elagabalus' cousin. Did his best, but was somewhat [[Momma's Boy|dominated by his]] [[My Beloved Smother|mother]]. Also assassinated, which meanwhile had become common in Rome.

 

* Theodosian Dynasty

** Theodosius (379 - 395): Last emperor to rule over east and west. Split the Empire after his death, the west going to Honorius and the east going to Arcadius.

* Romulus Augustulus (475 - 476): A kid who was the puppet of his father Flavius Orestes, who himself had violently supplanted the previous emperor Julius Nepos. When Orestes denied the barbarian troops that had helped him to dethrone Nepos the promised rewards -- specifically to grant them a third of Italy for settlement -- he was in turn overthrown by the German(ic) general Odoacer, who deposed the puppet Romulus and assumed the title "commander of Italy". Romulus is usually identified as the last emperor in the west, although some insist that Julius Nepos, who ruled in Dalmatia until 480, was the last one.<ref>Romulus' prominency in the history books is somewhat boosted by his name, which ironically recalls Romulus the mythic founder of Rome.</ref>

* Justinian (527 - 565): Emperor in Constantinople, he reconquered much of what had been the western Empire. Also known for compiling Roman law in the Corpus Juris Civilis, which became the basis for law in civil law jurisdictions.

== Comic Books ==

* ''[[Murena]]''

 

== Film ==

 

== Literature ==

* ''The Last Days of Pompeii'' (1834) by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Adapted to film many times.

* ''[[Detectives in Togas]]'' (1953) by Henry Winterfeld, set in the reign of Emperor Tiberius.

* ''[[The Eagle of the Ninth]]'' (1954) by [[Rosemary Sutcliff]]. Set in the Empire times in Britain.

* ''[[Cambridge Latin Course]]'', the UK's counterpart to ''Ecce Romani''.

 

== Live Action TV ==