My Roman Crucifixion (Part 1) - Broken, Nailed, and Displayed

The Procession

I was awoken by someone pouring water over my face, then realised it was piss. 

Then they pulled me up.

Not gently. They wrenched me by the arms, dragging my raw, weeping body upright. The ropes burned against the wounds on my wrists. My skin stuck to the post behind me with blood. I groaned, barely conscious.

A centurion barked, “He walks, or he’s dragged.”

They shoved the crossbar onto my shoulders. The patibulum; heavy, rough, and splintered. The wood scraped across my torn shoulders. It felt like carrying a burning door of nails.

And I was still naked.

The guards made no move to cover me. My tunic lay in a heap behind me, stained and discarded. I pointed at them and tried to speak but no words came out. A guard in the distance saw me point, walked to my garments and kicked them into the crowd. Even the guards did not want them. 

The law was clear - crucifixion was not only death, it was disgrace. I would walk to my execution stripped of all decency.

I took my first steps.

Step one.

Pain surged from the soles of my feet - torn by stones and dirt. The crowd was already thick. People lined the edges of the narrow street. Some stood silently. Most did not.

“There he is!”

“Look at the criminal, see how he walks, like a beast!”

A young man laughed, “His back looks like raw meat!”

A woman pointed and sneered, “And see how he dangles! No shame left in him.”

One said “Is that all he has?”  

Whilst another replied “A eunuch after the blade!”

I tried to shield myself with the crossbeam, but it was too heavy, and every shift tore deeper into my shoulder wounds.

Step two.

Children ran alongside me. One threw a stone at my leg. Another pointed and asked aloud, “Why is he shaved like a woman?” His mother didn’t scold him - she laughed.

Yes, I had been shaved.

They had done it before the scourging - Roman custom for worst criminals like me. Hair was stripped from chest, armpits, legs, even my loins. It was meant to “cleanse,” but in truth, it was about humiliation. The pubis, stripped bare, made me look soft, childlike, vulnerable. Worse, it made every exposed detail stand out.

And they all saw.

Step ten.

A soldier walked behind me, occasionally jabbing my lower back with a stick to keep me moving. My testicles, swollen and bruised from the lashes, swung freely between my legs. The head of my penis, dry and crusted with blood and dirt, was exposed. The foreskin had retracted and then pulled back in the cell, nothing covered it now. Every breeze, every jolt, every glance reminded me I was on display. I felt sick with shame, not just my penis was on display, but the glans were open and visible to all. 

One boy said to his mum, “his penis is strange, what is on the end”. He said it loud as he was still young. Quite a few others heard him and laughed. His mum said that I had had my foreskin cut off by my mum when I was a baby and that it was called circumcision. The boy said “it looks ugly”. Others laughed and one women close by said “that’s why he’s here”.

He recoiled “I hope mine never looks like that”, his mother said “no, you’ll never try to fight Rome, and having a foreskin covering is more respectful and more normal”. 

Others laughed as the crowd draw closer and a few shouted “he’s cut”. More came over and agreed, while laughing.  

As a walked, the guards occasionally whipped me, this was a standard whip with just leather thongs rather than bone studded. Another guard had a spear which he used to hurry me along, aiming for already cut skin or the sensitive anal area from behind. 

Someone shouted, “He’s not even a man anymore. Rome took that from him.”

Another responded “look how small it is, he was never a man”. 

And a voice answered, “Look at that poor little thing… even the birds wouldn’t peck it.”

“There’ll think he has a mushroom between his legs”, said another. 

The crowd howled.

Step thirty.

We passed the bakers’ row. The smell of bread turned my stomach - not from hunger, but nausea. Blood ran down my thighs in thin streams. A stray dog followed me, licking at the trail.

A girl in a green tunic watched me. I looked at her, hoping for pity. She narrowed her eyes, then spat. It landed in my face. 

She ran beside me, laughing. She said “everyone can see your little skinless hairless cock, why aren’t you shy?”. I did not answer. She said “aren’t you embarrassed to show it to all the hundreds of women that will see you?”. 

“Are you proud to show off little skinless maggot, nothing his hidden, even the head is on show”, she continued. 

She continued to follow, shouting “nail him, nail him high, nail him”, others joined in the chant. 

Step fifty.

My knees buckled. I fell forward, smashing the weight of the beam into the ground. My chest hit first, then my groin. The pain was white. My penis was crushed beneath me. The crowd erupted.

“Can he not even carry wood like a slave?”

“He flattens his little Roman prize!”

A drunk shouted, “Maybe he likes the dirt on his cock - he’s kissed worse!”

Another teenage girl laughed and said “he’s been shaved like a sheep, the best of him was washed away”.

They kicked and whipped me until I stood again.

Step one hundred.

The sun climbed higher. My body darkened with dust and blood. My mouth was cracked. My nose ran. My genitals were now caked in a dry crust of blood, dirt, and filth. There was no hiding. Every step, every tremble of my thighs, put me on parade.

A group of teenage girls came into view. They were all laughing, they had a small basket of tomatoes but as I got closer I saw they were blackened. One of them took a tomato and threw it in my direction. I moved slightly and it missed. Another more bold girl took one and running beside me she thrust it in my face. I tasted the foul thing which smelt disgusting. By now they were all walking beside me, two on each side. They asked me questions, what had a done, did I feel good. I did not answer. 

One of the said “they say you have had your foreskin removed but we don’t know”. “Are you a cut boy?” I did not answer. She said “he wants us to check”. One of the girls said “I’ll check”. She looked down and said “yes, he has a bare head”. 

Another girl laughingly said “how can you tell, there’s nothing to see”. The first girl responded “if you look very closely you can see his little cock head fully exposed and his little piss slit on display”.  “Its the same size as a baby rats”. Others hearing the conversation laughed and told the girls off for being crude. 

A new girl answered “he’s proud of his exposed cock head, he realises how good he looks”, she continued “that’s why he’s shaved himself, to show how proud he is”. 

They asked how old I was, again I didn’t answer. One girl responded “I think he is ten years old, no pubic hair and a tiny cut cock”. Another interluded, “cut from the whip?”, with a response “no, he had his foreskin cut off”. 

They continued throwing the tomatoes at me. 

I group of boys joined them, perhaps the same age as the girls. One asked if I was one of the girls boyfriends, they all laughed and one said “he is dirty, and has not reached puberty yet, beside what use was that cock”. 

The boys laughed, one said “I thought it had been cut off already, there’s nothing there”. While another “I thought it was a hair, one he missed when he shaved himself”  More laughter came. 

Halfway.

We passed a fountain. I could hear water trickling. My lips parted instinctively. A woman near the basin poured a bucket over her hands, then met my gaze.

“Thirsty?” she asked.

I nodded.

She flung the contents in my face and laughed. “Drink that, pig.”

Three-quarters.

A priest looked down from the temple steps. He made the sign of Jupiter in the air, not in blessing, but as if warding off impurity.

The guards jeered too, but quieter now. Some began to look uneasy. They knew I was near the end.

At the crucifixion site there many people. I heard some say that it would be the best crucifixion for years. 

They stood me there for a while, as if to allow me time to take in the scene. I looked up, there were many rows of upright poles fixed into the ground, perhaps fifty or so. Some were just poles whilst others had cross beams, some were low and others much higher. 

The shock came when I saw a couple in the distance, they had human bodies affixed to them. I had to look twice, as through it was a bad dream, a scene from hell. One body was whole and was the focus of birds and dogs, one had no legs, others were just bones. 

The final rise — Golgotha.

I started the walk, a dog passed with a meaty bone is its mouth, other dogs followed, a fight broke out, the crowd threw stones at them and they dispersed. I guess it was a man’s bone, they would have mine later. 

I now knew what crucifixion was. 

It was a hill of dust and scattered bones. My feet slipped. I was pulled the last stretch by ropes, the patibulum now smeared in blood and sweat. My nakedness was no longer an insult, it was simply my state of being.

A child asked, “Why do they leave him naked, mama?”

Her answer came cold: “So all Rome can see what becomes of shame.”

They laid me down on the ground. I saw the nails. The hammer. I saw the post darkened with blood from the last man. I closed my eyes. But the voices didn’t stop.

“He’ll twitch like a fish.”

“Watch when they nail his balls to the wood.”

“Does he have balls?”, one woman said. 

“I’ve seen bigger men die with less whining.”

“Why is he bald” said one child, “he’s shaved like a woman” said his mother. 

“Lets move close, I want to see the expression on his face when they nail him”, whilst another said “not too close as he may piss on you”. 

“They should nail his manhood, right through his pee hole, he won’t piss then”, said another woman. 

I was about to be crucified.

But in truth, I had already been undone, not by the nails, but by every eye that saw me, every laugh, every whisper that reduced me from a man to a warning.