The Cross

Humankind has long been inventive when it comes to the sphere of killing one another; I could probably write a whole other blog solely on the subject of weaponry for the next 50 years before running low on material, and that doesn’t even approach the field of organised execution. Hanging and stoning are two old-as-the-hills methods still, unfortunately, in use in some parts of the world, and countless others have been developed with varying degrees of complexity, pain and success involved. However, one execution method has proved to carry more cultural weight than all others, and mostly thanks to one man; I speak, of course, of crucifixion.

We all think of crucifixion as a Roman punishment, but like so many Roman things it wasn’t their invention (seriously, even their religion was nicked from the Greeks). Crucifixion first started off in Persia in around the 6th century BC, in the area that would later become the Seleucid Empire after Alexander the Great went and conquered all of it. Like so many other things, the practice later spread across the remnants of Alexander’s Empire, including his native Greece, and here it began making its way towards the ‘civilised’ world of the time. The Greeks were, apparently, generally opposed to this horrible method of execution and used it very sparingly, but much of Alexander’s old Empire would later find its way into Roman hands, and so the idea eventually made its way to Rome. Given that this was a culture whose primary form of entertainment (garnering hundreds of thousands of spectators, something even modern sporting culture can’t match) involved various people and animals dressing up to kill one another in as ‘entertaining’ a fashion as possible, it is perhaps not surprising that the Romans thought crucifixion showed potential as an execution method, particularly for those they wanted to make an example of.

This is hardly surprising; of all humanity’s execution methods, few can rival crucifixion when it comes to being horrifying and showy. This is partly helped, slightly bizarrely, by its cheapness; to show them off to the general populace, something like hanging or beheading would require some sort of raised platform, which covers only a small area and takes a decent amount of time and energy to create. The Roman alternative (the arena) was even more expensive, requiring an investment in either animals or an elaborate set of costumes and procedure in order to provide an ‘entertaining’ execution, and given that games were generally free to go and watch (paid for by the emperor or local governor to curry goodwill with the populace) it wasn’t going to pay itself back. By contrast, the sum total of all monetary investment required for crucifixion is two long sticks, some rope or nails, and a bloke to affix the resulting structure to; the crosses were even moved to the required site by the prisoners themselves, and erecting them took a few soldiers almost no time at all. This cheapness made it easy to show off their victims on a vast scale; after the gladiator Spartacus’ slave revolt was crushed in 71BC, the 6,000 captured prisoners were all crucified along the Appian way, a trail of crosses stretching from Rome to Capua. That’s 200 kilometres (125 miles), along both sides of the road. A forceful example indeed.

The very nature of crucifixion itself also helps when it comes to being showy. The crosses used in crucifixion were big old things, three or four metres tall if they’re an inch, just to ensure the unfortunate victim could be seen from great distances away. The mechanics of the execution build on this; it is often assumed that death by crucifixion comes from exhaustion, hunger, pain and blood loss, but in fact crucifixion causes death by suffocation as much as anything. With one’s upper body held only by spread eagled arms, it becomes very tiring to keep it in position, and one’s head and torso tend to fall forwards after time. However, with the arms pinned in position this stretches out one’s joints extremely painfully, offering no respite from the agony, and pulls upwards on the ribcage. This in turn puts extreme stress on the diaphragm, meaning it has to pull one’s entire weight upward every time you attempt to take a breath, and crushes the lungs under one’s own weight, slowly squeezing the air and life out of the victim. If the executors were feeling kind, then the victim would be tied to the cross, resulting in a slower but slightly less agonisingly painful death. However, Jesus was famously attached to his cross by nails through his feet and wrists (some versions say the hands, but the flesh there isn’t strong enough to hold up the weight of a body properly), and whilst this could offer the possibility of blessedly quick unconsciousness and death due to blood loss and the extreme pain, the sheer agony of the experience doesn’t bear thinking about. No matter how devoted to their cause the victim was, their screams must have undoubtedly echoed for miles as they died, just adding to the showiness of their death. Crucifixion was the ultimate tool, for the Romans, for sending out a warning, a very obvious, demonstrative way of discouraging people from following the lead of the victim.

That this approach failed somewhat is like saying the Pope thinks God is a kinda alright guy; crucifixion has guaranteed martyrdom for countless early saints and, of course, Jesus. The concept of ‘he suffered and died on the cross for us’ is, more than anything, the fundamental message of Christianity, embodying the idea of undergoing extreme pain and hardship simply to try and do right by the world and emphasising the pure and unadulterated goodness of Jesus as a person. But this has had an unexpected effect in the long run; since the story is told so often to children, the gory details are often glossed over, or the story simply because so fundamental and oft-told that it becomes very easy to forget just how horrific his agony would have been. Even this post has treated the subject of crucifixion with a decidedly neutral tone, without considering properly just how horrible it is to inflict this level of pain onto a fellow human being. Crucifixion might have been abolished by the Roman Empire 1600 years ago (by Emperor Constatine, if you’re wondering), but it would not do to forget it. Very few things are ever worth forgetting, and torture and murder are most certainly not among them.

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Mr. Bulletproof

My last post covered the early history of Edward ‘Ned’ Kelly, one of the most iconic figures of Australian (and, indeed, Irish) history, up until the Fitzpatrick affair of 1878 had landed his mother and two friends in jail. Not only that, but both he and his brother Dan were now wanted men; at his mother’s trial the prosecutor said that, had Kelly been there, he would have ‘given him twenty one years’ (some sources say 15, but that’s really a triviality). Seeing the situation was hopeless, and finally losing their tether at the injustice and aggression of the police, Ned and Dan fled the district and went into the bush, and here we pick up the story.

The police were anxious to finally and properly deal with the Kelly brothers and to close down their rustling racket (although they never had any evidence for it), and a £100 reward (a large sum in those days) was put on both their heads. Ned and Dan saw the need to lay low, and made their way to the Wombat Ranges, where they attempted to raise some cash by means of a whiskey distillery and gold panning. Their plan was not, for the moment, anything criminal, but all that changed in late October when the police learned of their whereabouts, and nine policemen set out to capture them. They aimed to execute a pincer movement, one group aiming to catch the gang as they ran away from the other, but this plan went swiftly awry. As they searched for the Kelly camp (the Wombat Ranges was a large area), one of the groups (comprising four men) made camp at Stringybark Creek, unknowingly less than a mile from the Kelly camp. Ned Kelly, who had presumably been keeping a watchful eye out for the police, saw the camp, gathered his brother, two associates who had joined them (Joe Byrne and Steve Hart) and made for it. At around 5pm, the four men (with five guns between them; Ned carried two rifles) surprised the two officers who remained at the camp (the other two having gone off to explore) and told them to lay down their arms. Although Constable McIntyre surrendered immediately (which was probably the sensible thing, given that he was unarmed), a Constable Lonigan, who Kelly had some history with, went for his gun. Ned Kelly immediately shot him in the head. When the other two officers returned they were presented with a similar demand to ‘bail up’, but instead chose to open fire. Both men were shot dead (one thanks to Kelly), but the ensuing chaos gave McIntyre the opportunity to escape on a horse. Upon his return to his home police station he told of Kelly’s ambush on their party, and the slaughter shocked the whole area. All four men were declared outlaws, to be taken dead or alive.

The police took this idea rather… enthusiastically, and gave themselves emergency powers to, basically, break in to anywhere they liked without a warrant and to arrest any suspected sympathisers. Needless to say this did not endear them to the common folk of Australia, particularly when even these tactics failed to find Kelly. Shock at the Kelly gang’s murders slowly turned to annoyance and resentment towards the police, and sympathy with the plight of the Kellys grew. However, the Kelly gang themselves were in dubious shape; without any money they were struggling to keep themselves going, or to help any of their sympathisers who found themselves in prison. The outlaws needed cash, and fast; and so Ned Kelly decided to rob a bank. What the hell, they could only hang him once.

This first raid, on the town of Euroa, was masterful in its execution; after taking over a building to act as a base and to rest their horses, they marched into the bank, weapons drawn, cut the telegraph lines to prevent any messages getting out, and walked out a few minutes later £2260 the richer, an enormous sum. Many of the hostages were, apparently, surprised and charmed by how dignified and polite their kidnappers were, nobody had to be killed and even the newspapers had to admit the robbery had been a veritable triumph. Some of the sympathy for the Kelly gang turned into veritable admiration as, once again, they disappeared into the bush and left the police floundering in their wake. Several months later, it was the turn of the Bank of New South Wales at Jerilderie, an equally slick and bloodless operation that also included, the next day, Ned reading out a weighty 7391-word manifesto/autobiography to the town’s populace. He intended it to be distributed across the country and the world but, as it was, ‘the Jerilderie letter’ went via a complex route into the government archives, and wasn’t published until the 1930s. It is, basically, the Kelly viewpoint on everything that had befallen them, and his views on why he felt his action was justified and the police were ‘cowards’, among other things; it’s phrasing makes it tricky to read, but it provides a shining insight into the mind of the famous outlaw. This letter is the reason beyond all others that Ned Kelly, more than all his compatriots, is remembered to this day.

After Jerilderie, the Kelly gang disappeared for 17 months, and the police pressure intensified. The price on their heads was upped to £4000, over $2 million in today’s money, and the whole ‘locking up friends and sympathisers’ plan ‘ went into overdrive; a select blacklist were banned from owning land in a certain area, for fear they might provide a safehouse for the Kelly gang. This angered the gang, who were incited to one final act of defiance. After shooting an informer (who the police had intended to use as bait), the gang took over the town of Glenrowan, subduing the occupants, and settled down to wait for the police to arrive. It was also here that the Kelly gang donned the outfits that would cement their reputation in history; home-made, 44kg suits of metal body armour, covering chest, back, head and groin, leaving only legs and arms unprotected. These were the first pieces of bulletproof armour, (sufficient to stop a bullet at ten paces), and must have made the outlaws seem mighty fearsome.

The police coming after them knew about the armour from their inquiries, and upon arrival (a released hostage prevented the gang’s attempt to sabotage the train line from being successful) began a shootout against the Kelly gang; 50 against four. During the 15 minute gunfight, Joe Byrne was hit once and Ned 3 times (it is a testament to their armour’s effectiveness that it wasn’t more), before they retreated to the hotel where their hostages were kept. Slowly, it became apparent that the Kelly gang were losing; some time later that night, Joe Byrne was killed thanks to a stray shot to the groin, and the terrified hostages began to escape to the police line. The next morning, Ned Kelly attempted to ambush the police from behind (or had already been out and went back to rescue his compatriots; stories differ), but they now knew to aim for the legs. After 28 shots to his flesh, and countless to his unpeirced armour, Kelly finally went down, somehow still alive despite horrific blood loss. When the police finally fought their way through into the hotel, they found Steve Hart and Dan Kelly dead. Both had almost certainly committed suicide rather than be captured.

Ned Kelly was hanged less than a month later, but his memory has survived long past that Australian November day more than a century ago. The British have had a long history of being brutally controlling to their possessions, both across the empire and in Ireland (indeed, if you go back far enough we can count Scotland and Wales too), and it was invariably the common people who suffered at the hand of harsh taxation, a near-total lack of care for the welfare of the poor and a brutal legal system. Many thousands of people have suffered at such injustices, but Ned Kelly is a rare example of a normal guy who stood up almost alone against the system- and won. His memory acts as a rallying point for all thoughts of freedom from control, of oppression, of having one’s destiny decided for you. He lived fast, he died young, he represented the fight against some of the worst aspects of Britain’s imperial age. And, even today, that means something.

Plus, a bulletproof suit of armour? SO GODDAMN COOL!!!

Behind Bars

Prisons are an odd thing in modern democracy; in some ways the pillar of our justice system, a testament to a way of doing things that means we can endeavour to transform criminals into productive members of society and a way of punishment that allows us to hold the moral high ground over serious criminals to whom we do not do the whole ‘eye for an eye’ thing. But on the other hand it is, when you think about it, a somewhat barbaric practice; to take a fellow human being, another person born free and equal, and to take away not only their freedom for the immediate future, but in some respects their equality for as long as their criminal record lasts. If crime is a contentious issue, then ideas concerning punishment are even more controversial.

The idea of imprisonment was invented less as a tool of justice and more one of political convenience; whilst an opposing warlord is locked up, he can’t orchestrate a war or rebellion (as I have found out whilst playing Crusader Kings II). Indeed, throughout medieval times, common criminals were never punished by imprisonment; they were either fined, had body parts (usually hands) removed, or were executed (usually by hanging; the chopping block was for noblemen right up until the guillotine, which was a great social leveller when it came to execution). Locking someone up meant they needed feeding and housing, which was only really worth the cost for noblemen who one could ransom. It was also considered somewhat dishonourable to kill noblemen in most cases, even more so the higher rank they were; indeed, there was much outrage when Oliver Cromwell ordered King Charles I executed despite the fact that he had been convicted of treason and was highly unpopular (as well as, by all accounts, something of an arsehole).

Quite a good way of tracking the history of imprisonment as a punishment is to study the history of the Bastille in Paris; a fortress built in the 1300s, it was first declared a state prison in 1417. Originally, it held whichever landed gentry and noblemen had pissed of King Louis the Whicheverwasinpoweratthetime, but over time this role changed, and the commoners started to find their way in too. This was fuelled by the fact that people often got very angry at seeing certain types of often petty criminals, many of whom were barely out of childhood, getting strung up on a gibbet, and riots were generally things to be avoided. Particular bones of contention concerned those who had Things To Say about the French monarchy and government (especially once the state tried to censor the material spewing from the newly invented printing press), and people whose religious alignment disagreed with whoever was in power, but would certainly agree with large sectors of the mob. To try and placate the populace, therefore, the Bastille began to take on more  prisoners who the ruling classes felt would cause… a disturbance were they to be publicly hanged. Increasingly, the Bastille began to be used as a place to hide away those who had spoken out against or in some way fought against the state (whose death would really infuriate the mob), and the prison increasingly became a bone of resentment, a symbol of the stranglehold those in power had over their subjects. As such, it was a natural target for rioters when the French Revolution broke out in 1789, and Bastille Day (14th of July) is still a national holiday in France.

The chaos following the French revolution and the social upheaval of the next few centuries did change the balance of power and the role of imprisonment within society; it was the punishment of choice for many crimes, the old days of hacking a thief’s hand off gone, and execution was now the reserve of the kind of people who the public felt deserved it. However, right up until the Second World War, the justice system was brutal in a lot of countries; dungeons were generally small, packed with poorly-fed prisoners and infested with disease or rats, and many countries still operated forced labour camps and penal colonies. There were two reasons for this; firstly, prisoners were still expensive to maintain and were not seen as worth expending any great effort for, so any way the state could get some use out of them was seen as all well and good. The other reason concerned the role that prison had to play. Imprisonment was in those days (as today) to prevent criminals from committing more crimes, to punish them for the crimes they had committed and to scare others into not performing the scare crimes; but what wouldn’t come along until much later was the idea of rehabilitation. Our modern justice system is such that almost every criminal, regardless of their crime, will return to the outside world one day, and we can all agree that it would be preferable for everyone if, upon said return, they didn’t commit any more crimes. Trouble is, prison does not do that role any favours; by simply throwing someone in a grotty cell for several years, all you are likely to build in them is resentment against you and the system, and since human beings are remarkably stubborn people, this is likely to lead to re-offending. We have also come to realise that prison on its own is frequently ineffective as a deterrent for serial criminals, who are generally less sorrowful about committing their crimes as they are about getting caught. Once released, they are most likely to just go right on with their old life, the life that was exciting and (in some cases) profitable to them before the law caught up with them. And then, of course, there’s the problem posed by a criminal record, making people far less able to find work and often forcing them back to crime just to keep their head above water. This has given rise to the fourth role played by the modern prison and justice system; that of rehabilitation.

I am no legal expert, nor have I ever spent time in prison, so I am undoubtedly underqualified to talk at length about how comfortable prisons ‘should’ be, the correct way to treat prisoners, how to correctly implement the role of rehabilitation, etc. But I think we can all accept that the role of the justice system nowadays is, primarily, to reduce the amount of crime in this world, and unfortunately, bars and guards ain’t gonna cut it on their own. And we must also remember that, whatever they may have done, prisoners are people too. They still have rights, they still deserve at least some respect; many are victims of circumstance as much as anything else. And in any case, there’s a reason that we don’t hang prisoners any more; because our moral code must be stronger than that of a murderer, because we must show at least a modicum of love to those who would give us none, because we must be better, nobler people than they.

The back, the tits and the showy bits

OK, time for part 3 of my current series on working out without the need for a gym. For all my general hints and tips, check out my last post- today I’m going to be listing techniques and exercises for working the muscle groups of the upper body, starting with…

PECTORALS (PECS) & TRICEPS
Where: The chest- or ‘boobs’ as one guy I work out with sometimes insists on referring to them. The chest is the muscle group most associated with posturing and aesthetic effect, and as such is one of the most worked by gym goers. Whilst most people tend to have a rather underdeveloped chest, it is a very useful group once they are built as they are able to take the work off other parts of the arm and shoulder. Triceps are found on the back of the upper arm, and are used purely to straighten the arm (pivoting mostly around the elbow).
Exercise: The chest is used as a way of levering the arms around the shoulder joint, pulling them from out to in and straightening them. Thus, most chest exercises are based around the straightening of the arm, and are often adapted forms of exercises designed to work the triceps. One of the best, if done properly, are press-ups (or push-ups).
Press-ups are much-maligned as an exercise, usually because they are done improperly. However, because they can vary so much in difficulty depending on your technique, they can get harder and harder as you get stronger and stronger so that you keep on progressing. Everyone knows the basic motion of press-ups; you lie face down on the ground, arms by your sides, and lift yourself upwards by extending your arms whilst keeping your body straight (this is especially important). This then gets repeated several times, your chest ideally going down to a height of about the width of a fist off the ground (if it’s really too hard for you to begin with then you can go down less far, but you should really try not to).  However, the variability comes from your arm position. The easiest position to do, and what you should start with if you find press-ups difficult, is with your hands as wide by your sides as is comfortable- this is quite an easy, short range of motion that uses all your muscles, so is nice and easy. Once you feel comfortable with those (if you can do 20 of them in a single set without a break, that’s usually a good indicator that it’s time to move on), start trying them with your hands getting steadily further inwards, until they are directly below your shoulders. To work your chest from this position, move your hands down a little so that they are around your rib area, and do press-ups with your arms bending outwards- after a set you should feel your pectorals pulling at your sternum (breastbone). To work the triceps more, bend and extend your arms so they stay parallel to the direction of your body (warning- this is very difficult the first time you try it). If this ever gets too easy (which is kinda unlikely), then try putting your hands in a triangle directly below your chest, or even trying them one-handed (which is easier with your legs spread wide for stability). If they ever get too easy for working your chest, then try  moving your hands lower or loading a backpack up with weight. There are some even more athletic alternatives, but I could talk about this forever. 45 second rests over 3 sets of whatever you can do should be all that’s needed.

BICEPS & BACK
Where: Biceps are at the front of the upper arms, the opposite side of the bones to the triceps. They are used for bending the arm about the elbow, and for flexing in front of mirrors and the easily-impressed. The part of the back I am interested is the upper part, between the shoulders and covering the trapezius (below the neck), latissimus dorsi (across the back below the shoulder blades, and the underarms, pulling the arm in to rotate around the shoulder) and a myriad of others that I can’t name or identify.
Exercise: I stick by my principle and say that you won’t need any gym equipment for this- however, you will need a backpack and a tree. Said tree does not have to be huge, but has to have a limb going horizontally with some space beneath it that you can reach, hang from and get off from without too much difficulty (this is a really good excuse for finding any good climbing trees around where you live), because here we’re going to be talking about pull-ups. (It doesn’t have to be a tree, but they’re probably the most accessible, free solution) For all of this, 3 sets of whatever you can manage (but keep it regular), separated by minute rests, will do.
The majority of the population probably lack the strength to complete a single pull-up, and to be honest I don’t blame you- until 2 years ago I couldn’t either. So your backpack will once again come in useful- load it up with weight and do some bicep curls with it to start off with. Holding the bag in both hands (or do one hand each if that’s too easy and your bag won’t take more), let your arms hang by your sides and, ensuring that you do not lean back, twist your body or move your elbows (they should be around the hip area), raise the bag up, rotating around the elbow, up to your chest (or until your elbows form a 90 degree angle if you can’t do that too easily). Do 2 sets to destruction (as man as you can), separated by a minute’s rest. After a few weeks (or whatever) of that, you should feel some improvement in your arm strength, so it’s time to move on to pull-ups. To start with, stick to chin-ups, as these will use your (by now quite strong) biceps mainly and work a few other muscles more gently to prepare them for some heavier exercises. Hang from your tree limb with your arms straight and hands in a ‘palms towards you’ grip, and pull yourself up so that your chin clears the limb. Then, lower yourself down a little, at least until your forehead is below the limb, and then raise once more. Some people like to leave their legs straight, others tuck them behind them crossed together, but don’t whatever you do use them to swing yourself up. As you get more proficient, extend the length of your pulls- start by going down so that your elbows form a 90 degree angle, and eventually progress to ‘full arm’ (extending your arms back to straight before pulling up). As a general rule with pull-ups of all sorts, if you can do 12 with relative ease in one way then it’s time to vamp up the difficulty. If you can do full-arm chin-ups, then start mixing them up with narrow pronated pull-ups; these are exactly the same as chin-ups except with your hands in a pronated grip (palms facing away from you). This works your biceps less and your back, especially your trapezius, more. Another thing- if you’re finding that the last inch or so of the pull-up is really tough, then it probably means that your lats are weak (which is not unusual). To work those specifically, try to touch your chest to the tree limb when doing your exercise- you can also try leaning backwards, endeavouring to keep your back straight, in a dead hang position (just hanging with straight arms).
If you are able to do around 8 of both narrow pronated and chin-ups (full-arm) without a break, then firstly well-done; if you’re doing your technique right and are not a dwarf stick insect then you should have built an impressive set of biceps by now. However, to work your upper back more (an underappreciated, useful and rather impressive muscle group), then it’s time to move on to wider pull-ups. These will require a slightly thicker tree limb that is able to support a wider grip without wobbling. If you can find one, then hang with your arms slightly wider than shoulder’s width apart and pull up with the same motion. If your back is weak (which it probably will be- everyone’s is) then these should be harder, but persevere and you should see definite improvements. Sternum pull-ups are slightly harder variations of these in which you lean back a little as you lift yourself and try to bring the top of your sternum (leaning back), close to the tree limb- if you really want to challenge yourself, on the way down try to push yourself out away from the limb a little and feel the burn as you descend slowly and controlledly!
Finally, for more work on the back itself (especially the V-shape of the shoulder blades), try wide-grip pull-ups which (you guessed it) are the same but with a wider grip. And, if you really want to give your biceps a killing, try the odd one-arm pull-up to mix things up a bit- if you can do one of those with a set of horizontal shoulders, every gym-goer on the planet will salute you.

OK… ah. 1500 words. Sorry about that- there was a lot to get through. Ah well, no matter, I’ll just have to do another one! Monday’s post will feature a bit on forearm work, and a full-body exercise that even a seasoned gym-goer probably won’t have heard of, as well as a little more general advice. See you then.