As I have explained to thee, Aglaophonos, our Sages have mercifully interpreted the words of the Law relating to the four modes of capital punishment among us—stoning, burning, beheading, and strangulation. For stoning they have substituted throwing down from a height after the criminal has been made to feel naught by drinking a mixture of frankincense, myrrh, and vinegar, which the ladies of Jerusalem supply as one of their pious duties. The criminal condemned to be burnt is in reality strangled, and then a lighted wick placed for a moment in his open mouth. In every way the aim of the Sages is to shorten the sufferings of the condemned man. But the Romans, at least in their execution of all but Roman citizens, seem rather to aim at the opposite of this; for they have selected, as their method of execution for slaves and criminals that are not citizens, suspension on a cross, by which all the organs of the body are strained and tortured till some vital organ gives way. It was this cruel form of punishment that the Romans were dealing out to Jesus the Nazarene. It happeneth oft that men live for two or three days on the cross, till they die even of hunger. I learnt to my dismay that Jesus had refused, with words of menace, to take the draught of myrrh and wine which the ladies of Jerusalem, as I have said, prepare for all men condemned to capital punishment, so that they may not feel the pain and torture. I could not go to the place of execution, as a member of the Sanhedrim. I hurried, therefore, to the northern slopes of the Temple mount, whence one can see Golgotha. At first I could discern naught, for sombre clouds covered all the heights of Scopus. But suddenly a flash came forth from them, followed by a dull roll of thunder, and I could see for a moment three crosses raised side by side on the top of Golgotha. Which of these held Jesus I knew not. I only knew that there was dying one who had seemed born to do honor to his nation, to help to deliver Israel from the men who were now torturing him to his death. Since the night before, events had so hurried past me that I had had no time to think of their import till now, when I sat me down in the purple shadow of Antonia, and gazed upon the hill of execution, where from time to time flashes showed me the three crosses on the hill. This, then, was the end of the hopes connected with Jesus of Nazara, and of the empire which he had wielded over men’s minds! But five days agone welcomed as a king, to‐day executed with the ignominy reserved for the basest slave. Each day of his sojourn in Jerusalem he had made another and yet another class of the nation his enemies. First he threatens the power of the priests; next he insults their opposites, the Pharisees; and then he puts to naught the hope of the common folk that he would help them rise against the Romans. Between Sabbath and Sabbath he had lost every friend; not even his immediate followers stood by his side in the hour of trial.