If horror could be graduated, death by scaphismus, or 'the boats' as it was also known, would rate within the top twenty, its details being of truly nightmarish proportions. The historian Zonaras, writing in the twelfth century, spared his readers little in his description of the execution meted out by Parysatis, mother of Artaxerxes and Cyrus, to the man who boasted of having killed Cyrus when vying with him for kingship. The fact that the condemned man survived as long as 14 days before dying almost defies belief. As Zonaras reported:'The Persians outvie all other barbarians in that, in the horrid cruelty of their punishments, they employ tortures which are peculiarly terrible and long drawn out, one of the worst being "the boats".Two boats are joined together, one on top of the other, with holes cut in them in such a way that only the victims head, hands and feet are left outside. Within these boats the man to be punished is placed lying on his back and the boats anre then nailed together with iron bolts.Food is given, and by prodding the his eyes he is forced to eat, even against his will. Next they pour a mixture of milk and honey into the wretched man's mouth until he is filled to the point of nausea, smearing his face, feet and arms with the same mixture. And by turning the coupled boats about, they arrange that his eyes are always facing the sun. This is repeated every day, the effect being that flies, wasps and bees, attracted by the sweetness, settle on his face and all such parts of him as project outside the boats, and miserably torment and sting him.Moreover, as he does inside the closed boats those things which men are bound of necessity to do after eating and drinking, the resulting corruption and putrefaction of the liquid excrement's give birth to swarms of worms of different sorts which, penetrating inside his clothes, eat away at his flesh.Thus the victim, lying in the boats, his flesh rotting away in his own filth, is devoured by worms and dies in a lingering and horrible death, for when the upper boat is removed, his body is seen to be all gnawed away, and all about his inwards is found a multitude of these and the like insects, that grows denser everyday.'Execution - A guide to the ultimate penalty Geoffrey Abbot
A far from speedy death, the bastinado involved the victim's being caned gently and rhythmically with a lightweight stick on the soles of the feet. A skilled executioner was needed to sustain the torture for many hours before the mental collapse and eventul death of the victim.Although the method was widely used in Persia (now Iran), the specialists were the Chinese who, while not concentrating just on the soles of the feet, used thin lengths of spilt bamboo to torture and eventually kill their victims. The 'lictors', as they were called, were so skilled that they could flick the victim's body hundreds of times without breaking the skin, or, at the other extreme, tear the flesh off in long strips.Such expertise was achieved only after much practice on blocks of bean-curd, a substance resembling thick custard, and they were not permitted to graduate on to a living target until they are able to strike repeatedly at the bean-curd without breaking the surface.The Turks also emplyed the bastinado during the atrocities they inflicted on the Armenians in 1915-16, evidence being provided in documents placed before Parliament in October 1916. As reported by eyewitnesses, the residents of Hartpout and Mezre were subjected to beatings of as many as two hundred to eith hundred strokes until they lost conciousness. Many suffered prolonged applications of the bastinado on the soles of their feet, followed by boiling water poured over the seared and lacerated flesh, death frequently ensuing.Execution - A guide to the ultimate penalty Geoffrey Abbot
Is it for future knowledge Amaya? ^_~
Torture for me is interesting in a few ways... What people went through during the years when those punishments were meted out, the twisted minds and ideas of the people that created the tortures, a form of psychological discipline is in there as well (you always have something to compare your situations to)... Sometimes there's more to it than just that, y'know?
CyphonThis was a rare method of execution, but none the less macabre. It was described by the Greek dramatist Aristophanes (448-388 BC) as one in which the naked victim was secured by his neck and wrists in the pillory, then left to endure the burning rays of the sun and the attacks of stinging insects, which were attracted by a mixture of milk and honey with which he had been smeared.Should he, against all the odds, survive for twenty days, he was taken down and, as a degradation, dressed in women's clothes before being escorted by large crowds to the cliffs, over which he was thrown head first.Execution - A guide to the ultimate penalty Geoffrey Abbot
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Topic: Forms of Torture (Read 21808 times)