Well, the Romans were quite creative with this matter.
– Damnatio ad bestiae: A classic. Being condemned to be devoured in an amphitheater by wild beasts for the amusement of the mob is no small feat either. And it wasn’t always lions. Sometimes there were animal rapes, for example by a giraffe, or a lion, or mythological recreations, for example a bull raping a woman condemned to death (the myth of Europe).
– Staircase of Gemonías: It’s what in Spain we would call the classic “paseillo”, but with steps. Usually, if the convict was of little importance, they had the detail of strangling him before throwing him down the stairs. But there were other cases when the convicts had to descend these steps alive.
Vitellius descending the Gemonian Stairs. Uplifting.
Then there’s the ever-reliable crucifixion, in which you died slowly and without a trace of human dignity.
Crassus crucified every slave in Spartacus’ army that he managed to capture along the miles of the Appian Way.
– La Roca Tarpeya: The precipice from which the Sabines threw the treacherous Tarpeya became a famous execution site from which the Romans threw some criminals from the cliff. There were illustrious ones, like Simon Bar Giora, the rebels of Taranto, or Marco Manio Capitolino.
The place today.
Andabatae: Groups of criminals were sometimes sentenced to fight to the death in the arena wearing heavy helmets that obscured their vision. The public bet on the survival of this or that and guided them in this or that direction. Of course, there was always the typical wild card that tried to confuse them.
Recreation of an andabata helmet.
– Poena Cullei: The feather of the bag. This punishment was reserved for parricide. Capital crime for the Romans, due to the reverence for parents (and elders in general) that the Mos Maoirum required. In this sentence, the culprit was placed in a bag along with a viper, a rooster, a dog, and sometimes a monkey, and then thrown into a river or lake. In their desperation to escape the bag, the animals attacked blindly, destroying the parricide’s body. The last detail of this form of execution was that, by not dying in contact with the earth, the soul of the deceased would have no rest, and would become a larva (the horrible and restless shadow of an evil man).
Mosaic detailing the feather of the sack.
I add more penalties:
– Fustuarium: The noble and refined art of beating a human being to death. Military punishment, this penalty was applied when a soldier was accused of cowardice, or if he was caught sleeping when assigned a guard. It was also the penalty applied when a consul decided to punish an entire legion by means of the Tithe to restore discipline (Decimatio) – as Marco Licinio Crassus did with two of his legions, when, contrary to his orders, they attacked Spartacus, and were killed, defeated . The procedure was simple: the condemned was stripped. Several companions of his companions were then given wooden sticks, which they savagely beat while being closely watched by a prefect to ensure that the sentence was carried out. When the prefect considered that it had been enough,
In case it was decided to decimate a legion, it was decided by lot who would be executed, but as the name implies, it was the tenth part of a legion. Both the brave and the coward could be condemned.
The height of Roman civilization. Milites restoring discipline.