According to Gibbon, the laws of the Twelve Tables, like the statutes of Draco, were written in blood. These famous decrees sanctioned the frightful principle of the _lex talionis_; and prescribed for numerous crimes many horrible forms of punishment. The hurling from the Tarpeian Rock was mild in comparison with other modes of execution. The traitor to his country had his hands tied behind his back, his head shrouded in a veil, was then scourged by a lictor, and was afterwards crucified, in the midst of the Forum by being nailed to the _arbor infelix_. A malicious incendiary, on a principle of retaliation, was delivered to the flames. He was burned to death by being wrapped in a garment covered with pitch which was then set on fire.[22] A parricide was cast into the Tiber or the sea, inclosed in a sack, to which a cock, a viper, a dog, and a monkey had been successively added as fit companions in death.[23] But the development of Roman jurisprudence and the growth of Roman civilization witnessed a gradual diminution in the severity of penal sanctions, in the case of free citizens, until voluntary exile was the worst punishment to which a wearer of the toga was compelled to submit. The Porcian and Valerian laws prohibited the magistrates from putting any Roman citizen to death. The principle underlying these laws was the offspring of a proud and patriotic sentiment which exempted the masters of the world from the extreme penalties reserved for barbarians and slaves. Greenidge, interpreting Cicero, very elegantly expresses this sentiment: "It is a _facinus_ to put a Roman citizen in bonds, a _scelus_ to scourge him, _prope parricidium_ to put him to death." The subject of this volume limits the discussion in this chapter to a single Roman punishment: Crucifixion. Around this word gather the most frightful memories and, at the same time, the sweetest and sublimest hopes of the human race. A thorough appreciation of the trial of Jesus, it is felt, renders necessary a comparatively exhaustive treatment of the punishment in which all the horrors and illegalities of the proceedings against Him culminated. _History._--Tradition attributes the origin of crucifixion, the most frightful and inhuman form of punishment ever known, to a woman, Semiramis, Queen of Assyria. We are reminded by this that quartering, drawing at a horse's tail, breaking on the wheel, burning and torture with pincers, were provisions in a codex bearing the name of a woman: Maria Theresa.[24] Crucifixion was practiced by the ancient Egyptians, Carthaginians, Persians, Germans, Assyrians, Greeks, and Romans. The Romans employed this form of punishment on a colossal scale. The Roman general Varus crucified 2,000 Jews in one day at the gates of Jerusalem. The close of the war with Spartacus, the gladiator, witnessed the crucifixion of 10,000 slaves between Capua and Rome.