WHEN Jesus reached the place of execution, he was offered, as was usual, a spiced wine, [782] intended to stupify the mind and deaden the pains of death. Oppressed with burning thirst, he tasted of the wine; but when he perceived the stupifying drug, he refused to drink, that he might die in full consciousness. Stripped of nearly all his clothing, [783] he was lifted up to the cross, bound, and then nailed to it by his hands and feet. [784] (The chief pain of this cruel death, according to a writer who lived while it was yet known and used, consisted in the hanging of the body while the hands and feet were nailed.)

---

Footnotes:

[782] Matt., xxvii., 34. Mark describes it exactly (xv., 23) as oinos esmurnismenos. Cf. Acta Fructuosi Tarraconensis, where it is related of the martyrs, "Cum multi ex fraterna caritate iis offerent, uti conditi permixti poculum sumerent," &c. (c. iii., Ruinart., Acta Martyrum, Amstel., 1713, 220). The merum conditum was given by the Christians to the confessors tanquam antidotum, that, by means of it, they might be less sensible of suffering (Tertull. de Jejuniis, c. xii.).

[783] John's mention of the chito`n a'rraphos is confirmed by the statement of Isidore of Pelusium, that such garments were peculiar to Galilee. Such a garment, though somewhat common in Galilee, and worn by the lower classes, might have been a novelty to the Roman soldiers, and, therefore, an object of value in their eyes. Isidore says, "ti's de` agnoei te`n eute'leian te`s esthetos ekei'nes, heper oi ptochoi` ke'chrentai ton Galilai'on, kath' ou`s kai` ma'lista to` toiouto philei gi'nesthai ima'tion, te'chne tini', os ai stethodismi'des, anakrousio`n uphaino'menon."

[784] There has been much dispute on this point, and many have given it undue importance; the result of the most candid inquiry is, that the feet were nailed as well as the hands. The most striking confirmation is afforded by the fact that the fathers, writing at a time when crucifixion was in use, speak of the piercing of Jesus's feet as a matter of course, without laying any stress upon it as necessary to fulfil Psalm 22. 17. We cannot enter into the in4uiry at length, but will only allude to the passage in Tertullian so important in reference to this question (Adv. Marcion., iii., 19). After citing "foderunt manus meas et pedes" from the Psalm, he undertakes to show that it was fulfilled in the crucifixion of Christ. The words immediately following, "quae proprie atrocitas crucis," can mean nothing else than that it was the piercing of the hands and feet which, on the whole, made this punishment of death so terrible. He then speaks of the apices crucis as belonging to the cross in general, not Christ's in particular. Further, he says that the Psalm cannot be applied to any other that had died as a martyr among the Jews; no man of God except Christ had suffered this mode of death, "qui solus a populo tam insigniter crucifixus est" (who suffered so marked a death by crucifixion--one otherwise unknown in the Old Testament--defining him, before all others, and fixing him alone as the one to whom the words of the Psalm could be applied). Cf. Hug's Dissertation, before cited; Hase's Leben Jesu, 143.