Many empires made up the Persian Empire. It was ruled by a number of Imperial dynasties for almost 2,500 years starting 600 years before the Common Era. Its center was in what is now Iran. The Persian lands were controlled by five different dynasties. The first was the Achaemenid dynasty, which was led by Cyrus the Great and took over the ancient lands of the Babylonians, Lydians, and Medians. It ruled over most of the old Middle East at its peak. It was the first Persian Empire, and it reigned until Alexander the Great took over the area.
The beautiful city of Persepolis was its ceremonial capital, and its laws were made and implemented by many state governments. The first Persian Empire and the dynasties that came after it did not allow slavery in general, except for war prisoners, which was rare for the time and region. They also freed the Jews from Babylonian captivity. It and the groups that followed it made important contributions to Art and Science. Herodotus wrote in the fifth century that they taught their children to be very honest with others. Herodotus said:
“Lying was the worst thing that could be done in the Persian lands.”
Lying was often a capital crime that could lead to death. Lying was one of many crimes that could lead to death, and people were put to death in ways that caused them a lot of pain before they died, often for days. In this video, we will be covering crimes and punishment in the five individual dynasties which comprised the Persian Empire. The ancient Persian word for punishment meant “to question.” In a society where lying was a crime that could lead to death, punishment was seen as the same thing as questioning someone, so torture was both a way to get people to tell the truth and a way to kill them.
The Persians came up with a lot of horrible ways to torture people who were found guilty of crimes or suspected of crimes. Lying was just one of many crimes that could lead to death, and all of them had harsh punishments. They were also punishments for less serious crimes that left the criminal visible in a way that made him easy to find. Thieves and crooks with strong arms could have their hands cut off. People who were found guilty of following liars had their ears cut off, and their feet were cut off for other crimes. Some people went blind after having pins stuck in their eyes. Not only thieves but also beggars could have their hands cut off by decision of village judges. They were also whipped, which was known as striping, and each blow of the whip was a separate stripe. Up to 10,000 stripes were ordered as punishments, which meant they had to be given over a number of days because no human could hand that many blows at once and no one person could give them.
Some criminals were executed by being flayed alive. During the first Persian Empire, it was common for criminals to be put to death after being tortured several times. In some capital crimes, the person was first blinded, then stripped, and finally flayed living to death. Some people killed a living person by removing their skin in strips, which made the killing take longer and clearly caused unbearable pain as each strip was taken off. In other situations, the skin was taken off all at once. Modern research shows that in both cases, death was most likely caused by heart failure. In some killings, only a few strips of skin were cut off, and the person was left to die of cold or an infection from the cuts. Flaying wasn’t something new for the Persians; the Babylonians and Assyrians did it too before the Persians took over. Magistrates in all four of the far-flung states that made up the first Persian Kingdom during the Achaemenid dynasty wrote about it. In one case, a judge was put to death by flayed neck, and the skin from his body was used to cover a chair that belonged to the judge who took over the bench after him, who was the son of the judge who was killed. So every day, the new judge was reminded of what happened to his father and warned of what would happen to him if he gave in to the desire of doing illegal but profitable business in his office.
“Ashes to ashes” had a different meaning to the Persians. The Persians put thieves to death with ashes in more than one way that would be horrifying to us today. One way had the prisoner stand in a room with several feet of ash on the floor until they were too tired to stand any longer and had to collapse. The victim would breathe in ash for several days, which would finally cause them to suffocate. The victim wasn’t given any food or water, and they often died of hunger as well as suffocation from the ashes. The second way of killing someone with ashes is written about in the Bible, 2 Maccabees, and in writings by Valerius Maximus, a Roman historian who lived during the rule of Emperor Tiberius. The second way used a tower that was partly filled with ash and dropped the victim into it. Wheels outside the tower were linked to paddles that were buried in the ash. Executors turned the wheels from outside the tower. The paddles stirred the ash into the air, making the person take it in over time. They would suffocate or die of heart failure. In about 162 BCE, this is how Menelaus, the Jewish high priest in Jerusalem, was killed. Ashes were generally only used to punish people who were plotting to rebel against the government or its officials, which is what Menelaus did.
The Persians used milk and honey as a means of execution over many days. The promised land is called a “land flowing with milk and honey” in the Christian Bible, Exodus. This phrase has been taken to mean that the land the Israelites would be led to was fertile. The Persians used milk and honey in very different ways. In the past, to carry out this type of death sentence, a prisoner was first forced to drink a mixture of milk and honey. He was then put in a vat or boat with his head and limbs uncovered and covered by another vat or boat. Afterwards, the same milk and honey mixture was spread on these, and the vessel was floated into a pond or other still body of water. The milk and honey they ate gave them diarrhea, which made them thirsty, and the bugs and flies that liked their uncovered skin and limbs, biting insects, would slowly eat the victim while they were still alive. The maggots that lived in the flesh would hatch from the body parts, and the body would start to break down before death came and ended the victim’s pain. The victim’s skin was even more open to attack by parasites because it was lying in pee and feces. The victim was helpless to fight them off. This method is now known as scaphism. Some sources from the time say that this method of execution was used, but current scholars aren’t sure if it really happened. If it did happen, it would have killed the person instantly from septic shock.
The Persians may have used burial of living persons as a means of execution. Herodotus said that during Xerxes’ war in Greece, people were buried alive with their heads down in the ground. 19 Greek boys and girls were sent to the town of Thace to be buried by Persian doctors. It was clear that the killings were done for religious reasons rather than to punish criminals. Herodotus also wrote that King Cambyses had the same thing happen to a dozen Persian noblemen. Herodotus says in his story of the execution that it was ordered for no clear reason. This is thought to be because the king was said to be insane, which was backed up by other stories. Herodotus also wrote that living people were buried alive as part of a religious event that was ordered by queens, such as Queen Amestris, who was married to Xerxes. As a way to thank the gods of the earth for giving her a long life, Amestris had 14 children of Persian royalty buried head down while they were still alive. Herodotus was the only person who wrote about hiding the living as a way to kill them, and his stories are the only ones that support this idea. Since Herodotus didn’t give any sources, experts aren’t sure if the events he wrote about really happened, even though many people say they did.
Molten metal was used as a device for punishment. Lying people were said to have had molten metal put into their ears and on their eyes by Queen Parysatis. Ancient Zoroastrian texts talked a lot about molten metal as a way to test how pure someone’s soul was. If someone’s soul was pure, it could be put on their body and not hurt them. But if they were guilty of lying and believing other people’s lies, it would hurt their health. Most likely, the story about Queen Parysatis using molten metal is not true; however, many people think that the Persians did use molten metal, including gold, as a way to punish criminals in their kingdom.
There is a story that the Persian king Shapur I caught the Roman Emperor Valerian and used him as a servant. This is where the myth that the Persians poured molten metals into the bodies of their victims probably got its start. After being held captive for a few months, Shapur is said to have killed his Roman counterpart by pouring melted gold down his throat. The body was then stuffed and put on show. Roman writers who didn’t like the Persians made up the story of being executed by gold. Valerian and his troops were actually held for a while so they could help with engineering projects near the city of Bishapur. One of these projects was building Caesar’s Dam. They were let go when the dam was finished.
Using trees to kill convicted thieves is often reported as a Persian practice. A British magazine was the first to report that the Persians would hang thieves from trees, but there wasn’t much evidence to back it up other than stories. The magazine British Register, Volume 34, said that the Persian king ordered all of these killings and that he never let crooks go free. In reality, Persian law said that robbers should be punished by having their hands cut off. The British Register says that thieves were killed by pulling the trunks of two trees together and then tying them together with ropes. The thief was then tied to two trees with one arm and leg tied to each tree. The ropes that held the trees together were then suddenly cut, and the trees snapped back into place, slicing the poor thief in half as they did so. The body parts were hung from trees that were usually found along the empire’s roads. This made the trees a good deterrent for thieves who might have been thinking about robbing passengers on the road. Many people have told the story that the Persians used this way of execution and punishment, but there isn’t much proof of it. The story started with British diplomat James Morier, who wrote about it in the British Register in 1808 after meeting with the Persian king.
Stoning was a common form of execution in ancient Persia. Many ancient books, including the Old and New Testaments, the writings of Josephus, Herodotus, and others, talk about stoning as a way to kill someone. It is still done today. The biblical accounts say that the person is killed by being hit with stones. Heavy stones were also used in other ways to kill people in Persia, both as part of questioning and after someone was found guilty of a crime. In one method, heavy stones were put on the victim’s torso and more weight was added over time until the pressure was too great for the body’s muscles to resist. The victim’s breath was literally sucked out. A similar method was used in colonial America against people who were thought to be witches. Another way was to just hit people over the head with big stones, which was a method only used for the lowest social classes. Servants and the poor were most likely to be stoned to death, and servants of nobles could be stoned for both their own crimes and the crimes of their bosses. It was risky to go after nobles for crimes because many of them were connected by blood or marriage, which could make other family members angry. Persian justice was harsh in these situations, and it even went as far as punishing the King’s family in more than one case.
Rebellious subjects were often gradually executed by the populace. Rebellious people in the Persian Empire were marked so that they could be easily identified by their masters, and then they were put in a place where they would be shamed and hurt in public while they slowly died. They were marked by cutting off either their nose or their ears or both. Some of them were also disabled. Following this, they were led through the streets of the city where they lived and chained to the gates that led to the home of the judge or other government official who ran the city. Some very bad criminals were sent to the king where they met the same fate; they were tortured and killed while chained to the gates. People who were loyal to the king were expected to show their love by making the chained prisoners’ lives even worse, both physically and mentally. Often this meant giving the prisoners food and water, since being fed would make them suffer longer for their crimes. Then the person in the crowd who had given them water would make their pain worse by kicking them, cutting their skin, or hitting them with fists or sticks. The victims were tortured until they finally gave up and died. Those who were chained to the gates rarely got a second chance, and they chose how long they would suffer. Some people who looked like they were about to die were let go and cared for until they were better; then the process would start all over again.
The Persians practiced crucifixion as a means of execution. Many old cultures used crucifixion as a way to kill people, but the Romans were the most famous. When someone was put to death, they were rarely nailed to a cross; instead, they were usually tied to a crossbeam and hung from it where they would die slowly and painfully from choking. In Persia, people who were put to death on a cross often had both hands connected to the upright pole instead of being spread out on a crossbeam. Crucifixion was the most painful and shameful way to die. The word “excruciating” comes from the Latin phrase “out of the cross.” The victim could be held captive for several days before he died. Persians often let the shame continue after someone died by hanging the body from a pole or cross so that it would be seen by everyone while it rotted and was attacked by animals and the weather. The Persians, the Mesopotamians, the Greeks, the Assyrians, the Israelites, the Carthaginians, the Romans, and many other groups all put people to death by crucifixion for very bad acts. People who were thieves or rebels and were killed in other ways were sometimes crucified instead of being buried or burned. Some people’s bodies were put on display in public. For example, Polycrates of Samos was put to death and his body was then put on show by crucifixion until nature took care of it.
The Persians tried to execute criminals more than once. As one of the first mythologies to do so, Persian folklore had very detailed and vivid descriptions of the afterlife, including the end of the world as it was written. Getting to heaven was like having to cross a bridge. People who lived good lives crossed a wide, easy bridge. People who lived bad lives crossed a narrow bridge that looked like the edge of a very sharp blade, from which the wicked would fall into hell below. Persian executions were sometimes planned so that the wicked would not only die a horrible death on earth but also die another terrible death in the future where they would be unable to live in peace forever. In Persian mythology, death was taken care of by gods and stories here on earth. The Persians made sure that some of their torture victims were almost killed before the torture stopped and the victim was either brought back to health or given enough time to get strong enough that the torture could continue for a while. This meant that Persian executioners had to be very skilled. If an executioner’s victim died too soon in the eyes of the judge who ordered the execution, he could be tortured and killed himself.
Impalement was a method of Persian torture and execution. Putting a criminal on a sharp stick and driving it through the ground was a way of killing people in the ancient world and in some Western European countries well into the 16th century and even later. Herodotus wrote that when Darius, King of Persia, took over Babylon, he put more than 3,000 prisoners on spikes. Records of Darius himself support this. The Bible isn’t clear on whether Haman, a Persian minister, and his 10 sons were put to death by hanging or being put to death by being hung. There is some confusion because of the many translations and changes, but it is well known that the Persians used impalement as a way to kill people. Many crimes, including stealing from customers by lying during business deals, which was considered theft and was a deadly crime, and other crimes that might not seem very serious, could lead to execution by impalement. It was up to the person being impaled to choose which method to use. How long the witnesses and judge wanted the criminal to suffer before letting him die was one of the things that went into choosing the method of impalement. All kinds of impalement were done in public, which made the victim feel even worse because he was in a lot of physical pain and was waiting to die, which could take 2 days or more.
Longitudinal impalement was favored for longer torments. A criminal who had been sentenced to longitudinal impalement was put face down on a slab and a cut was made in his body near the anus. The cut was then sealed with a greasy paste to stop the flow of blood and help with the next step. After putting the pale into the wound, it was driven toward the head while the body was held in place by executioners who hit it home with a heavy hammer. Most of the time, the executioners stopped before the tip of the stake got to the heart. People said the top of the stick was about the size of a man’s arm. Even though the entry was very painful, the real pain of being impaled had not yet begun. The pale was then raised up and care was taken to make sure that the victim’s weight wouldn’t push the stake deeper into his body and kill him too soon. Stays were used to keep the subject in place and to hold up the stake, which was sometimes put in a gibbet like the ones used for hangings. Because there were stays, the victim didn’t have to fight his pain too hard, and the grease kept the blood loss under control. If the victim didn’t die quickly, the judge might have pity and order that his position be changed so that the pale’s tip came out of his chest. This would let the victim die quickly. Others just left them to die in the end.
Transversal impalement was used to ensure a quicker death. Transversal impalement, in which the stake or pale was driven through the body from front to back or back to front, could kill almost right away or take longer and be more painful based on where in the torso the stake was put in. In Persian culture, horizontal impalement was seen as a more humane way to carry out the death penalty because the victims usually died quickly. People have said that the Persians also impaled people by hanging them from meat hooks or using other ways, but there isn’t much proof that they did these things. They did use horrible ways to impale people, so they don’t need to be made more horrific.
A third way of impalement that is thought to have been used by the Persians was called anal impalement. In this method, the stake wasn’t made sharp but was left round on purpose. The victim was held up with ropes so that he couldn’t slide further down the pale and die too soon. The pole was entered far enough so that the victim could stand on his toes. Depending on how long the subject had been on the pale, the stays could be taken away, letting him push himself down and kill himself. People who were put to death by anal impalement suffered longer than people who were put to death by other ways. The Persians switched from impalement to hanging, which made impalement less popular as a way to kill someone.
The Persian legal system was extensive and protected the rights of the accused. The government of ancient Persia had a political body that made sure the king didn’t violate the rights of the empire’s free people through oppressive actions. Throughout the history of the five dynasties, many kings tried to abuse their power. Judges and magistrates heard cases of people who were accused of crimes. They looked over the charges, made sure that the police hadn’t gone beyond their authority when they arrested people, and looked at both the accuser’s proof and the accused’s defense. The testimony was given under oath, and because Persians don’t like it when people lie, perjury was punished severely. The Persians even had bail set by the courts for some cases that were still being heard. In situations where physical or capital punishment wasn’t necessary, defendants had the right to a lawyer, but they had to pay for one. If their lawyer was present, they could be absent. In addition to criminal courts, there were also ecclesiastical courts that dealt with family and religion issues, and the military had its own courts that had power over its own members. In spite of the fact that the Persians’ punishments were often very harsh, people who were found guilty of small crimes were usually only fined or sent to jail for a short time. There were clear rules about what each family member had to do for each other and for Persian society that were written down in Persian law.
Was Persian cruelty as bad as believed by many? A lot of what has been said about ancient Persia as in fact, over the hundreds of years since the empire ended, came from sources that experts started to doubt more and more in the late 20th century. This is especially true of some of the abuse stories that have been told here and elsewhere. They were first written about in the West by Herodotus and a writer named Ctesias, who shows up a lot in Herodotus’s writing. There were 23 volumes of Ctesias’s history of Persia, which he called Persica. The volumes are the first to go into depth about the horrible punishments the Persians gave. Persica was written with Greeks in mind. It compares what Ctesias saw as a cruel and unjust system to the order and growth of the Greek city-states, especially Athens. A lot of what he said didn’t match up with other records, like the clay records of the Assyrians. A famous humorist from Syria named Lucian called Ctesias’s work “mendacious history” in his piece about sensationalist writers who make up stories called “A True Story.” In 1984, a more modern writer talked about how wrong Ctesias was and how Herodotus’s work was a model of reliability in comparison.
It’s true that people in the past were sometimes very cruel, but some stories may have been exaggerated, and many current scholars agree. Striping or whipping as a punishment: when a judge found someone guilty of a crime, they could use a variety of physical punishments, such as cutting them up, blinding them, silencing them by going through the eardrums, or whipping them at the stake, which the Persians called striping. In this way, they were pretty much the same as people from every other group in the world. In the West, whipping criminals went on well into the 18th century, and the number of blows that judges would allow was often shocking, both literally and metaphorically. In the Royal Navy in the 18th century, 1,000 lashes were not uncommon. This was done by flogging people all over the ship. 100 or 500 stripes were the most common penalty in Persian for beating a dog or otherwise hurting an animal. Stealing a dog could even lead to death, as we have seen. The punishments were not given all at once. There was time for healing between each round of punishment. Rich people and members of royal families could send their servants to get punished instead of themselves. This saved their backs and the time they would have spent doing nothing while recovering from the whippings. This kind of punishment was still allowed in the British Royal Navy until 1879 when it was taken away.
The Persians were no worse than the rest of the ancient world. People say that the Persians executed people in horrible, sometimes unbelievably horrible ways, but they weren’t the only ones who thought of creative ways to make people suffer the most. Even though they didn’t write down how they tortured people, the ancient Greeks were violent, though most of the time it was against other Greeks. There are many stories in the Bible about whole towns being destroyed, their people being killed with swords, and their leaders being killed in different ways. The story of how King Herod ordered the killing of all Jewish boys younger than 2 years old is in the New Testament. The world of the past was very cruel. People who broke the law in Roman times were punished by being crucified, beheaded, stoned, dragged through the water, torn apart by wild animals in front of cheering crowds, and many other cruel and unusual ways. In colonial America, the native people tortured and killed each other in rituals and sometimes ate each other. In order to enforce the law, the English invaders beat people with whips and pressed them to death with heavy stones. The cruel things the Persians did—both the ones that were really bad and the ones that were made up by smart but biased people—are not that different from what people do today, as most people would like to believe.
