Remember Spartacus? The slave revolt he led ended with thousands of slaves crucified throughout the Italian peninsula, their violated bodies rotting for months and possibly years along major roads.

Crucifixion was an intentionally humiliating act of state terrorism, reserved near Rome mostly for slaves, and in the provinces for those who challenged Rome’s hegemony.

Crucifixion was a critical tool in Rome’s expansion. They set out to deliberately inspire terror in subject provinces to make the idea of revolt against Rome unthinkable. And they used it liberally.

Another famous story of crucifixion in the historic record involves a very young Julius Caesar crucifying a group of pirates after they kidnapped him for ransom when he was heading home from his first military campaign. (And coincidentally as he was being taunted for reportedly having a submissive homosexual affair with the king of Bithnyia.)

Caesar supposedly befriended the pirates and entertain them with jokes, stories, and pleasant companionship until the ransom was paid. There’s a hint in the stories that he may have been a little “too friendly" with the pirates. The fact that he was a “beautiful youth" at the time is emphasized in the sources with something like a knowing wink.

After his ransom arrived and he was released, Caesar somehow raised the necessary funds and put a small fleet together. He pursued the pirates, captured them and crucified all of them, reportedly joking and telling amusing stories as they died.

There is an undeniable sexual-abuse undercurrent to this story. Whether the pirates would have dared rape a young Roman patrician, even a relatively impoverished one like Caesar, is questionable. But people would have believed they did.

So Caesar, who had no stake whatsoever in capturing them, and who would have faced no opprobrium for simply going home, spent a fortune and months pursuing them and crucifying them.

He figuratively raped them in return for the rape they dished out to him, whether it was literal rape or a figurative assault on his dignitas.

This episode became a critical element of Caesar’s myth and became very important to the political success he found later in life.

I think it helps illustrate exactly how much crucifixion was viewed as sexual assault.