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| Polykrates by M. Kozlovsky (1790) Source: Wikipedia |
First, Herodotus lived in the fifth century (ca. 484–ca. 425)
BCE and probably sometime around the year 425 BCE wrote his magnum opus, a long
account of the Greco-Persian Wars that he titled The Histories.
In it we have an account of the fate Polycrates, tyrant of
Samos, who lived from ca. 538 BCE to 522 BCE at the hand of a Persian Satrap,
Oroestes.
“Having killed him in a manner not fit to be told, Oroetes
suspended him” (Apokteinas
de min ouk axiôs apêgêsois Oroitês anestaurôse) (Herodotus Histories 3.125.3)
A “manner not fit to be told” (Greek original) suggests that
the manner used to kill Polycrates was degrading and not appropriate for one of Polycrates' station, his public visage.[1] But it
also suggests that the manner of death was simply too hideous for the listeners
of Herodotus’ The Histories as read out loud, and for the readers. Both are confirmed
by the verbiage in 3.125.2: “After having come into Magnesia, Polycrates was
horribly destroyed, and not [in a manner] worthy of him and of his high
thoughts” (apikomenos
de es tên Magnêsiên ho Polukratês dieftharê kakôs, oute eôutou axiôs oute tôn
eôutou fronêmatôn). And the
mention that Oroetes suspended him – Oroitês anestaurôse
– follows immediately after the mention of his having killed him suggests that there
was probably no interruption between his death and subsequent suspension, and
that the manner of death probably was intended to take a long time to kill,
while Polycrates was suspended. The
manner of execution that best fits the bill in my opinion is impalement: not
crucifixion, which was a Roman penalty, and not tying to a pole.[2]
Notes:
[1] Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, an abridged
edition by Helmut Werner, English abridged edition prepared by Arthur Helps
from the translation by Charles Francis Atkinson. New York: Vintage Books
(Random House), 2006, p. 166 including n. 8 (color-formatting and Greek
transliteration mine):
It
goes without saying that we, when we turn to look into the Classical
life-feeling, must find these some basic element of ethical values that is
antithetical to “character” in the same way as the statue is antithetical to
the fugue, Euclidean geometry to Analysis, and body to space. We find it in the
Gesture. It is this that provides the
necessary foundation for a spiritual static. The word that stands in the
Classical vocabulary where “personality” stands in our own is prosôpon, persona--namely, role or mask.
In the late Greek or Roman speech it means the public aspect and mien of a man, which for Classical man is
tantamount to the essence and kernel of him. An orator was described as
speaking in the prosôpon as a priest or a
soldier. The slave was aprosôpos—that
is, he had no attitude or figure in the public life—but not asômatos—that is, he did have
a soul. The idea that Destiny had
assigned the role of king or general to a man was expressed by Romans in the
words persona
regis, imperatoris.8 The Appollinian cast of life is
manifest enough here. What is indicated is not the personality (that is, the
unfolding of inward possibilities in active
striving), but a permanent and self-contained posture strictly adapted to a so-to-say plastic ideal of being. The
significance of Aristotle’s phrase zôon politikon---quite
untranslatable and habitually translated with a Western connotation---is that
it refers to men who are nothing when single and lonely and only count for
anything when in a plurality, in agora or forum, where each reflects his
neighbor and thus, acquires a genuine reality. It is all implicit in the phrase
sômata poleôs, used for the
burghers of the city.
8
prosôpon meant in the older
Greek “visage,” and later, in Athens, “mask.” As late as Aristotle the word is
not yet in use for “person.” Persona,
originally also a theatre-mask, came to have a juristic application, and in
Roman Imperial times the pregnant Roman sense of this word affected the Greek prosôpon also.
[2] The correct translation is in this case, in my opinion,
“suspended” because the act of impalement takes place upon the ground or any
other flat surface from which the victim is then suspended. Indeed, “suspended”
appears in Gunnar Samuelsson, Crucifixionin Antiquity, pp 42-43; whereas “crucified” appears in Martin Hengel, Crucifixion,
p. 22, in John Granger Cook, Crucifixion
in the Mediterranean World, p. 219, and in the 1920
A.D. Godley translation of Herodotus, The
Histories, among others. “Impaled,” on the other hand is mentioned in a
translation of The Histories (an
introduction and notes by John M. Marincola), p. 224, and in Wikipedia, and also appears
in M S M Saifullah, Elias Karim & Abdullah David, Crucifixion or
`Crucifiction’ in Ancient Egypt? http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Contrad/External/Crucify.html,
updated 23rd January 2009, accessed 17th September 2010, printout pages 6-7 of
18 (color-format of Latin and brackets mine):
Note how the English
translation uses the word “crucified” which is the translation of the Greek anestaurôse
from the verb anastaruroô
meaning “to impale”. Also notice that the victim Polycrates had already been
killed before being crucified. … …
There appears to be no
word for “crucifixion” as such in [classical] Greek.
The Greek text of Herodotus speaks of “impalement” which is sometimes
translated as crucifixion. Herodotus
uses the verbs anastaruroô
and anaskolopizô
both of which mean “to impale”. Generally, he uses the derivatives of the verb anaskolopizô
for living persons and anastaruroô for corpses. However, after Herodotus the verbs used to
describe the execution in Persia became synonymous with “crucify”, in modern
literature. As mentioned earlier, the Greek word for “cross” stauros,
which actually denotes an upright stake or pole. The word crux (cross) is Latin and is also the core of
several English words including “crucifixion”.
In many cases, especially during the Roman period, the execution stake
became a vertical pole with a horizontal crossbar placed at some point, and
although the period of time this happened is uncertain, what is known is that
this simple impalement later became to be known as crucifixion. Whether the
victim was tied, nailed or impaled to the stake, the same Greek words were
still used to describe the procedure.
