Free The Big Book of Pain: Torture & Punishment through History by Mark P Donnelly, Daniel Diehl

Although his successor, Claudius, strove to return Rome to some semblance of sanity, his efforts were doomed. When his wife poisoned him in 54 AD, after a reign of thirteen years, she installed as emperor her son by a previous marriage – Nero.
    Fat, stupid, spoiled and vain, Nero may not have been as psychotically murderous as either Tiberius or Caligula, but the results were much the same. In mid-July, 64 AD, while Nero was holidaying in the country, a fire swept through Rome, nearly destroying the city. Contrary to legend there is no evidence linking Nero to the disaster, but people love to gossip, particularly about their government. When rumours of his possible involvement reached Nero he knew he had to find a scapegoat. There didn’t seem to be any Jews handy, so he picked on the equally troublesome Christians and instituted one of the most brutally public purges in recorded history. Hundreds of Christians were tortured into confessing to arson and thousands more were rounded up on suspicion of complicity.
    For months, Christian victims were sacrificed in the Coliseum. Dozens of new and cruel ways were thought up to kill Rome’s ‘enemies’ and delight the bloodthirsty crowd. They were dressed in the skins of animals and set upon by packs of dogs; they were sent unarmed against trained gladiators; they were hung by their thumbs and roasted over a slow fire, beaten to death or skinned alive. Some were crushed in wine presses; shoved into suits of chain mail that had been heated to red-hot; impaled on stakes or had their stomachs ripped open only to have their entrails eaten by wild animals while they were still alive. According to chronicler Magentus Rabanus Maurus:

     
In this image we can see how two early Christian martyrs met their deaths by boiling oil. It shows how they were not only forced to suffer a bath of boiling oil but were also showered with it simultaneously adding to their unimaginable torment.
     

        Some were slain with swords; some burnt with fire; some scourged with whips; some stabbed with [tridents]; some fastened to the cross; some drowned in the sea; some flayed alive; some had their tongues cut out; some were stoned to death; some had their hands cut off or were otherwise dismembered.

    Some were even roasted in great frying pans – much like Darius had used to fry the Hebrew boy centuries earlier. A description of this particular torture comes down to us from the chronicler Gallonio, who wrote:

        The frying pan … was filled with oil, pitch or resin, and then set over a fire; and when it began to boil and bubble, then were the Christians of either sex thrown into it, such as had persisted steadfastly and boldly in the profession of Christ’s faith, to the end that they might be roasted and fried like fishes …

    When these brutal games were held at night, Christians were tied to stakes, doused with oil and lighted, serving as human torches to illuminate the playing field. Even the Roman historian, Tacitus, who was no particular friend of the Christians, wrote: ‘they were put to death, not for the public good, but to satisfy the lustful rage of an individual’. Possibly for the first time in human history torture was being carried out specifically for the purpose of public sport.
    And thus it went until the final, ignoble collapse of Rome during the fifth century, but the fact is, none of these ancient people understood how to use torture effectively. Brutal tortures and bloody executions were carried out without the least thought to the psychological aspect of pain. What the ancients failed to realise is that the anticipation of torture can be just as devastating, and produce far more confessions, than the immediate and uncontrolled application of brute force ever can. Torture a man for a little while, give him a few days in a filthy cell to think it over, and he is far more likely to confess the next time he is dragged into the dungeon than if he is simply torn to