Throughout history, criminal reforms have shaped the landscape of our modern justice system.
Specifically, it has shown just how extreme and violent people can get when doling out punishments for crime.
Ancient cultures couldn’tcouldn’t afford to play nice with people who murdered, raped, or stole.
Resources were scarce, life was far more precious, and although many people did not have universal rights, criminals had even less.
Abandoning life under the law was abandoning the freedom to choose how one died.
And the justices of old were not kind with their privilege.
Scaphism, torture involving boats, was one of the more horrific tortures chronicled by ancient Greek historians and storytellers.
It was a long and slow process that saw the victim eaten, sometimes alive, after a torturous overfeeding ritual.
The combination of a hopeless location, between two boats, on the water where there was no escape, and having the final blow of execution delivered by hoards of flies and bugs led to a legend of torture that escapes reality.
10 /10 The Boats
The Greek name Scaphism comes from the old Greek word meaning “boat.”
However, the boats only played a small part in the widespread torture.
The method first involved getting two boats “made to fit together.”
Not sailing ships, but more like canoes or row boats. Smaller boats where one could be fitted on top.
Essentially, they assembled a floating coffin to trap the tormented inside.
9 /10 Milk And Honey
One often hears that a “land of milk and honey” is a promised land of riches.
Persians put this phrase to an ominous use.
The tormented under Scaphism were fed excessively and covered with milk and honey inside their floating tomb.
This was to keep them alive for the period of torture.
And to feed their other torturers who would be with them on the voyage.