Other Authorities.
Not only did Rufinus write thus, but Socrates, Theodoret, and Sozomen, all of whom lived within a century after the Invention, tell the same story, so that it must have been of current belief.
Punishment of the Cross.
The punishment of the Cross was a very ordinary one, and of far wider extent than many are aware. It was common among the Scythians, the Greeks, the Carthaginians, the Germans, and the Romans, who, however, principally applied it to their slaves, and rarely crucified free men, unless they were robbers or assassins.
Alexander the Great, after taking the city of Tyre, caused two thousand inhabitants to be crucified.
Punishment of the Cross.
Flavius Josephus relates, in his Antiquities of the Jews, that Alexander, the King of the Jews, on the capture of the town of Betoma, ordered eight hundred of the inhabitants to suffer the death of the Cross, and their wives and children to be massacred before their eyes, whilst they were still alive.
Augustus, after the Sicilian War, crucified six thousand slaves who had not been claimed by their masters.
Tiberius crucified the priests of Isis, and destroyed their temple.
Titus, during the siege of Jerusalem, crucified all those unfortunates who, to the number of five or six hundred daily, fled from the city to escape the famine; and so numerous were these executions, that crosses were wanting, and the land all about seemed like a hideous forest.