Most people think that a cross, as an instrument of punishment, always implies a beam with a cross-bar. Not so. The Greek word is stauros, and is rendered in Latin, 1st, vallus, (a long spar of timber, a stake or post;) 2d, palus ligneus, (a post of wood to which the condemned were tied to be scourged and executed;) 3d, crux, (a cross, gibbet, or gallows.) Its simplest form was "an upright stake on which a malefactor was sometimes impaled and sometimes fastened with cords or nails." (Am. Cyc.) This was the Roman form to which "the Latin name crux was originally and more strictly applicable." (Chamb. Enc.) Afterwards a cross piece was added, to which the arms of the criminal were tied or his hands nailed; but "the shape of the cross on which our Savior suffered is not known, for the historians who record its discovery (!) give no description of it." (Am. Cyc.)
The popular form of the cross differs in one important feature from that described by the early Fathers. Justin, (Dial. Try., xci,) Ireneus, (Agt. Her., ii, 24,) and Tertullian, (Ad. Nat., xii,) all concur in affixing midway on the upright stake a "horn" or saddle, on which the culprit sits astride with his legs bound below.
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