The Wheel — One of History’s Cruelest Forms of Torture
A testament to the human capacity for cruelty
The wheel is known as one of the, if not the most effective inventions in human history. Almost every domain of human society was fundamentally changed — including agriculture and transportation.
But the wheel was also used for more malicious intent: executions and torture. The name for wheels used for this malicious purpose is now the “breaking wheel.”
According to Geoffrey Abbott, author of What a Way to Go, the wheel started as a method of execution under the cruel Roman emperor of Commodus, memorialized by The Gladiator. Commodus secured people on a bench, then rolled a wheel with iron spikes over the body of the executionee. An executioner would also pound the wheel into the body of the victim, rolling it up the body of a victim and causing a gruesome amount of pain to someone by doing so.
Abbott notes there were two groups of people that would usually receive the wrath of the wheel: slaves and Christians. Sometimes, the wheel would roll from someone’s ankle to their face. Other times, the wheel would roll horizontally across the body, and either way, the wheel was one of the cruelest forms of torture and execution.
