Historians say that the origin of this form of execution is not documented, it can be traced back to the ancient Persians and beyond, the Greek historian Herodotus reported that the king Dareios I, having conquered the City of Babylon after besieging it for months in 521 BC, had 3000 of the inhabitants crucified. Crucifixion has been considered as the form of execution practised by barbaric people in ancient times, such as the Indians, the Scythians, even the Celts, which are said to have offered their enemies to the gods in this way. The Romans used it regularly, specifically to execute rebels, not common criminals. They probably have taken it from the Carthaginians, Cicero calls it the most cruel and terrible way of death. There are also reports that some executed people who were already dead were crucified and presented to the public as a form of deterrent. One argument for the death penalty has always been that it was a deterrent, in Germany only during the 19 th century the public was excluded from executions, but it is quite clear especially from the reports of the French Revolution, that executions were there for the entertainment of the people, and executions were like a fete to be celebrated.
Even the tourist industry sports a kind of‘ tourism of catastrophes’, in 1921 an advert appeared in a paper in Basel, Switzerland, which promised visits to the battlefields of the First World War. To us this is something very ordinary, but then it was seen as rather frivolous to go on a package tour with good food and accommodation to view the places were only a few years previously young men have suffered and died. One critic, the writer Karl Kraus, summed up the purpose of the business with those words:” They experience that 1.5 million have shed their blood on the spot where wine and coffee can now be consumed, and everything is included in the price, they travel in comfort by car to the battlefield, where as those young men were taken there by cattle truck”. Social media can call up large crowds these days to witness catastrophes like floods or suicide bombings, the crowds have one thing in common: they hinder the emergency services, and the more people are gathered, the fewer are prepared to help, unless they consider the danger for those around them.
Some time ago there was a film, called‘ the Gathering’ which focussed on those who went to look at the execution of Jesus for entertainment. In the film those people were condemned to watch such events for ever and ever.
This sounds like the medieval legend of‘ Ahasver, the Eternal Jew’, who denied Jesus, on his way to the crucifixion, a moment of rest on his doorstep.
For this he was condemned to eternal wandering. The point of‘ The Gathering’ was, that those condemned to gaping didn’ t think it as a punishment and were annoyed, when one of them tried to deprive them of their pleasure by reversing that fate.
Brigitte Williams
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