Crucifixion, as a form of punishment, was unknown to the ancient Hebrews. The penalty of death was enforced among them by burning, strangling, decapitation, and stoning. The "hanging" of criminals "on a tree," mentioned in Deut. xxi. 22, was a posthumous indignity offered the body of the criminal after death by stoning, and struck horror to the soul of every pious Israelite who beheld it. Among the Romans also degradation was a part of the infliction, since crucifixion was peculiarly a _supplicium servile_. Only the vilest criminals, among free men, such as were guilty of robbery, piracy, assassination, perjury, sedition, treason, and desertion from the army, met death in this way. The _jus civitatis_ protected Roman citizens against this punishment. _Mode of Crucifixion._--A sentence of death having been pronounced by a Roman magistrate or tribunal, scourging became a preliminary to execution. This was done with the terrible _flagellum_ into which the soldiers frequently stuck nails, pieces of bone, and other hard substances to heighten the pain which was often so intense as to produce death. The victim was generally bound to a column to be scourged. It was claimed by Jerome, Prudentius, Gregory of Tours, and others that they had seen the one to which Jesus was bound before His scourging began. After the flagellation, the prisoner was conducted to the place of execution. This was outside the city, often in some public road, or other conspicuous place like the Campus Martius at Rome. The criminal was compelled to carry his own cross; and when he had arrived at the place of crucifixion, he was compelled to watch the preparations for his torture. Before his eyes and in his presence, the cross was driven into the ground; and, after having been stripped naked, he was lifted upon and nailed to it. It sometimes happened that he was stretched upon it first and then lifted with it from the ground. The former method was the more common, however, as it was desired to strike terror into the victim by the sight of the erection of the cross. The body was fastened to the cross by nails driven into the hands and sometimes into the feet; more frequently, however, the feet were merely bound by cords. The pictures of crosses in works of art are misrepresentations, in that they are too large and too high. The real cross of antiquity was very little longer than the victim, whose head was near the top, and whose feet often hung only twelve or fifteen inches from the ground. Pictorial art is also false because it fails to show the projecting beam from near the center of the cross upon which the criminal sat. That there was such a beam is attested by the almost unanimous voice of antiquity.