The Romans dreaded the public exposure of their bodies, and shipwreck, no less than did the Greeks; thus Ovid—
“I fear not death, nor value how I die;
Free me from seas, no matter where I lie.
’Tis somewhat, howsoe’er one’s breath depart,
In solid earth to lay one’s meaner part;
’Tis somewhat after death to gain a grave,
And not be food to fish, or sport to every wave.”[18]
They refused sepulture to suicides, for they thought it unreasonable that any hands should bury him whose own had destroyed himself, and they withheld decent burial from criminals.
Albertus Leoninus, from the Low Countries, one of the ablest lawyers of the sixteenth century, says, speaking of the Romans, “If any one killed himself his body was cast out upon a dunghill to have common sepulture with dogs, &c.; but, however, it was more customary to have his goods confiscated, and his body hung on the furca, or gibbet. All such persons as hung upon this gibbet were, by the laws, denied sepulture; and a sentry, says Petronius, was set to watch them, lest anybody should come by night and steal them away.”[19] The memorable words, “and sitting down they watched Him there,” cannot fail to occur to the mind.
Our Saviour, with all reverence be it said, was gibbeted—“nail’d, for our advantage, on the bitter cross,”[20] and it was not until long after that great Sacrifice—perhaps not until the fifth century—that the cross became the generally recognized Christian sign, and gradually took the place of the Chi Rho ☧ emblem.
The number of Saints who suffered, and were exposed upon the cross or gibbet, is larger than that of those who died the death in any other way. Saint Ferreolus, martyred in 212, is shown in “Die Iconographie der Heiligen” with a gibbet proper near him; Saint Anastatius, martyred in 628, is represented in a fresco in the church of SS. Vincent and Anastatius, in Rome, upon a gibbet, and pierced with many arrows; and the martyr Saint Colman, who suffered in the year 1012, is shown in “Das Passional” of 1480 hanging on a gibbet; in “Die Attribute der Heiligen” he stands in the sclavine of a pilgrim, with a rope in his hand, indicating the manner of his death.[21]
