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

My body must have looked grotesque, marked everywhere, dirt, blood, piss and shit all over me, my legs spread in an undignified manner, hairless, everything on display - what had Rome done to me?

The pain moved from one area to another. 

My whole body and soul was in pain, it’s just where the prominent pain came from that won the battle, my mind was overcome and couldn’t process it all at once - pain overload.

I could feel the sun baking my thighs, my stomach, even my exposed glans - dried, bruised, split from the lashes and the long walk. My testicles hung dark with pooled blood. The shaved skin of my groin now showed raw patches where I had scraped against the wood and been whipped.

The cross was facing the sun, it burnt my tender skin and highlighted my dirty, bloodied and displayed body to the maximum. I was located on a small hill at the main junction into the town, I was up high, my groin being level with the average persons eye line, further drawing attention to my sex.

None of this was by accident, it was all carefully designed by the romans for maximum effect and crowd pleasure. 

People stood below, looking up.

An old man shielded his eyes and said, “Disgraceful, he seems to enjoy showing himself with his legs spread open like that”.

A woman covered her mouth, giggling to her friend. “The Romans flayed his pride first.”

One of the guards smirked, “No need for modesty now; all of Rome can read him like a scroll.” 

And they did read me - every bruise, every wound, every inch of skin like a map of shame. I tried to close my legs but the nails were placed into me feet in such a way that my legs could not be bent inwards. 

A group of boys threw pebbles. One struck my thigh. Another hit my scrotum - I gasped, involuntarily.

One of them said, “That made him twitch. Maybe there’s life in him still.”

The other said “try to hit his cock, that strange thing at the end”. The other said “what is it, I haven’t seen that before, it looks strange”. Another said “err, it’s all red and there is a crack at the end, is that where the pee comes from?”.

An older brother was with them and said “he has been circumcised, his foreskin was cut off when he was a baby, sometimes they do it to low class slaves”. 

The boys laughed and started to throw some more stones at me. No one stopped them. 

I couldn’t close my legs as the nails were positioned to ensure I could not bring my knees together. I flinched as a couple hit home. 

My limbs began to cramp.

The pain in crucifixion isn’t just the nails. It’s time. My legs trembled, then gave out. My whole weight dragged against my arms. My chest compressed. I couldn’t breathe.

I’d force myself up with my nailed feet just to gasp. The pain that shot through my legs and loins was blinding. But it was that, or suffocate. Over and over — the cruel rhythm of the cross: rise, scream, breathe… fall, suffocate, rot.

My head sagged.

I took the opportunity to look down my body. My chest was a series of red and purple stripes, with pieces of flesh missing, with gaping holes where blood was caked. Lower down I noticed something white and realised this was a rib. Some more ribs were showing, I felt nauseous to see that was mine. One nipple was gone while the second left nipple was cut severely. 

Down lower my belly was equally damaged, at the side I noticed something protruding, it was part of my intestines. I could see some muscles protruding too. 

My legs were similarly cut and torn, my knees shredded due to the constant falling. 

However the biggest shock was my man parts. My hairless pubic was bruised and cut. Blood from my upper body had run down my stomach and was flowing along the creases in my thigh and down my legs. 

My penis had shrunken into my body through cold and fear, no wonder so many people passed comments. The foreskin was fully retracted with small folds of skin sitting puckered up behind the fully exposed glans. 

The glans were bright red from the severe whipping but no broken skin.   

The shaved pubis made all look more vulnerable.

The same could not be said of my testicles. Both were purple in colour but held close to my body. One was the usual size but the left side was swollen and the scrotum split and cut. They hurt terribly, although in reality my whole body hurt. 

Flies buzzed at the wounds. A vulture circled above. I could hear the next condemned man screaming from the post beside mine.

The sun was blinding me, burning and drying my skin. I needed water but knew I wouldn’t receive any. 

Yesterday it had rained for some of the day, I prayed that it would rain today, but the sky was clear, there were no clouds, only hot dry sunshine. It amused me to think that earlier I didn’t want rain as it would make the procession slippery, but now I wanted it, but god wasn’t listening. 

The sun beat down on me without mercy, burning my skin and blinding my eyes. Every breath felt like fire in my throat, dry and rasping, as the heat drained the strength from my body. Sweat stung the wounds across my body until even the breeze became agony. Time stretched endlessly beneath that blazing sky, the sun itself seeming to join in my punishment.

During the hottest days people tried to stay in, if they did have to go out they would be fully covered, and wear a turban or vail to cover their head. The crowd below me were all dressed well to avoid the damaging rays, yet I was here completely exposed for a full day. 

Most of the crowd had plenty of water to drink, food to eat and wine to drink from the numerous food venders selling their wears. It made me feel sick as I had nothing and no one would even think to offer me someone zero pity for the criminal slave. 

A group of young women came by, similar age to me. They grouped below me, looking up and studying my naked body in detail. 

There were six girls, dressed in the finest fabrics, they looked beautiful with fresh skin, handsome faces and trim bodies. I should have felt lust but in my current situation I felt nothing but shame. 

They had some wine and it was clear they were all quite drunk. 

They started to talk to me, normal everyday conversation like they were talking to a person on the street, not a person in my situation, in pain and my last few hours of life.

One started by saying “we are sorry we are so late, we heard that you performed so well, that their friend said that it was the best show for years, the best entertainment in the Roman Empire”. I didn’t know how to respond so I said nothing. 

She went on “she wanted to see me before the final performance, to talk to me, to get to know me, and show their appreciation for the hard work I had performed for the towns enjoyment”, I still said nothing. 

Further she said “what part of the show did I enjoy best, the scourging, the march, the nailing, the raising, or did I enjoy this stage, showing my proud strong body?” She said “my friend said that the whole event was performed well but the most dramatic was the nailing, the complete loss of body control and the resulting performance”. 

Her friend said that I should have at least cleaned myself up for such an important occasion. I scanned their faces and they all looked at me in disgust, they agreed I deserved this treatment for what I had done to the girl. 

One said, “he is enjoying displaying himself, look at the way he spreads his legs wide open”. Her friend laughed and said “he must be proud to show us his man parts, he has everything on show, even his cock end”. 

They all giggled loudly. A colleague shouted at me, “are you not shy”. I did not answer, another said “whats your name”, again I did not reply. 

Then we will give you a name, said one of the group. They discussed and then shouted out a few crude names between them - “mushroom head, button cock, clipped maggot, cropped top, red head, skinned head, roundhead, clipped tip, trimmed worm, kings crown”.

The abuse continued, one girl asked “why do show off your cock head”, I looked away but continued to listen. Another said “it’s disgusting showing that thing, are you not ashamed of showing this to women and children? Why don’t you cover it with your foreskin”.  

“I know why he is shaved” said one girl to group. “He wanted to prepare for the show and give us a good laugh, he did it to entertain us all”. They all laughed, clapped and thanked me. 

Another said, “he’s shaved as it makes his cock look bigger, imagine if he had hair, his cock would be buried and invisible”. Even the soldiers laughed at this joke. 

Finally I heard one of them say I looked like some butchered meat hanging on a butchers display stand. 

Someone in another group, came over to them and said “I don’t know how he raped a girl with such a small thing, it wouldn’t have touched the sides”, there was some laughter, with one responding “she must have been a very young girl”. They seemed angry, picked up some dirt and flicked it into my face. I turned away but much caught my eyes and mouth which were open. My eyes strung but I couldn’t do anything to clear them, while my mouth was so dry I could not raise spit to expel the grit, only some breath. 

Flies and insects swarmed over me as if I were already dead, crawling across my face, my mouth, and into the corners of my eyes. I had no strength to brush them away, no freedom to turn from them; even the smallest fly commanded me. They drank from the blood of my wounds, settled in the sweat on my skin, and returned no matter how I tried to shake them off. Bound to the wood, I could not resist them—my body was theirs as much as it was the crowd’s or the sun’s. In that helplessness, I knew even the insects ruled over me.

I now realised why the soldiers retracted my foreskin and tied back - it had been one of the main focuses of the crowd and a mainstay of the humiliation agenda - the soldiers knew how to gain the greatest result from the crowd. 

I could feel their eyes on me as much as the sun or the nails. Stripped bare, there was no hiding what I was, and I imagined their whispers turning sharper when they saw I was circumcised or I had retracted my foreskin on purpose. To the Romans, it marked me as foreign, lesser, not truly a man in their eyes but something diminished. I believed the crowd took satisfaction in it—proof of my weakness, something else to sneer at as they watched me suffer.

Hanging there, I thought on why the Romans despised what they saw in me. To them, the body was meant to be whole, untouched, a reflection of strength and beauty as their gods had shaped it. Circumcision, they said, was a mutilation, a mark of weakness and a rejection of nature itself. In their baths and arenas, the body was a source of pride, but mine, to their eyes, carried a scar of difference. They could not see as a man - only something barbaric, a sign that I did not belong to their world. In their gaze, my very flesh was another reason to mock me.

The second most exploited amusement was the shaved body, especially the shaved pubis and penis/scrotum. 

I felt the shame burn even deeper than the sun when I thought of how they had stripped me of every hair. To the Romans it was another way to humiliate, to show I was no man but something reduced, exposed, and helpless. Without beard or hair, I looked like a child, yet my body was broken like an old man’s. I could not hide myself, not even in the smallest way, and every eye upon me saw me bare and shorn, mocked as much for my nakedness as for my suffering. It was as if they had taken from me the last shred of dignity, leaving me with nothing but my pain.

I imagined their laughter as they looked upon me, smooth and hairless, no longer carrying the marks of manhood they prized. To the Romans, hair was a sign of strength, of maturity, of standing among men, and without it I must have seemed weak, almost unformed. Perhaps they thought me soft, unworthy of respect, a figure to mock rather than fear. My bare skin, gleaming under the sun, made me seem less than a warrior, less than a man, and I could feel in their eyes that this was part of my punishment—to be displayed not only in pain, but in ridicule.

It was coming to the end. 

And still, the crowd stayed. Watching. Whispering. Laughing.

They didn’t come for justice. They came for spectacle.

My body - once whole, clothed, private - was now their theater. My penis, once mine, now part of the story they would retell over wine: “I saw him… swaying there. Shaved like a harlot. He begged before the nail. He wept for water. You should’ve seen his eyes when they struck his groin…”

And in that, I understood.

This was what Rome feared most — not rebels, not thieves - but dignity. And so they stripped it, piece by piece, lash by lash, until only the body remained.

I hung there. A man unmade. A body broken. A soul already left behind.

And Rome watched.