[HN Gopher] Somersham headless bodies were victims of Roman exec...
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Somersham headless bodies were victims of Roman executions
Author : Thevet
Score : 30 points
Date : 2021-06-05 02:17 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| One innovation of Napoleonic era warfare was to seek out and
| destroy the opposing army, rather than checkmate them and accept
| their surrender.
|
| Related to that, there was recently a mock trial for a king in
| command of the army that won the battle where the archers
| annihilated the knights (edit: Agincourt). After the battle was
| over, he ordered his men to execute the survivors, under penalty
| of death if you refused. His men wanted to ransom the surviving
| nobles, who were worth a small fortune alive. But the survivors
| outnumbered them two to one, even after the battle, and the king
| wanted to take no chances. It was probably the correct decision,
| though he was found guilty in the mock trial.
| [deleted]
| pharmakom wrote:
| Downside of this is that the other side will never surrender!
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| This is true. Hitler discovered it during the Russian war. He
| had an opportunity that was practically unique in warfare
| history: the populations freed from Stalin's rule were eager
| to be rid of him, and would have happily joined ranks to
| fight him.
|
| But, not so much after executing some of them for ideological
| reasons. Their comrades quickly learned what the stakes were.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| Hardly an "innovation" then.
| mc32 wrote:
| Seems like perhaps the battle of Agincourt is what you are
| referring to in the last parag.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Bingo, thanks.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Interestingly, the original scientific article mentions that
| under Roman law, body of an executed criminal would be released
| by the authorities to the family for burial.
|
| That wasn't/isn't typical for modern Western criminal justice;
| executed people tended to be buried in prison yards, often in
| unmarked graves.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I wonder if the difference in this case is that the executed
| persons might have been members of the military, serving far
| away from home, and buried where they were executed because
| obviously transporting an unrefrigerated corpse any distance at
| all was not viable.
| rhacker wrote:
| 100% guess here. One major difference is, in historic times
| said executed person was probably questionably guilty - aka
| most likely not guilty - the family probably wanted the body
| for a better burial.
| lostlogin wrote:
| The Wikipedia article on capital punishment is interesting. The
| number of countries that have abolished or functionally
| abolished capital punishment is heartening, though the
| population that live in countries that still practice it is
| depressing.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment
| ALittleLight wrote:
| "Elsewhere, decapitated bodies make between 2.5% to 6% of
| burials."
|
| That seems like a really high percentage of the dead were
| executed. Is it reasonably to guess from this fact that 2-6% of
| Roman mortality was caused by execution? That seems absurdly
| high. Maybe burial in a cemetery was more common for the executed
| than the otherwise deceased?
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(page generated 2021-06-05 23:01 UTC)