Talk:Scaphism

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For the record, I have scarcely heard of more disgusting tortures. However, I re-wrote the article. EventHorizon talk 06:22, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] More detailed description of scaphism from archive.org (French text)

The French book dated 1904, titled "Traité des instruments de martyre", describes scaphism very similarly to what is mentioned in Wikipedia, there is no mention of placing the victim naked between the two boats. In fact, there is mention that, consequent of the diarrhea from the victim's force feeding of milk and honey, worms and insects would penetrate from underneath the victim's clothing and eat his flesh.


For those who can read French, the "Instruments of Martyrdom, and Methods of Torture", by Antonio Galiano which is a gross-out book on torture methods used on Christian martyrs in antiquity. To download this book use the following link:

http://www.archive.org/details/torturesettourments00galluoft


The document is 12meg using DJVU reader or 29Meg in PDF. Scaphism is described in Page 32 (by your PDF or DJVU reader), the page with respect to the book is 16, if you find this book in a library. Two cases of using this method are described in this book. Mithridates, who suffered for 17 days before dying, and Plutarque, describes another case where the victim survived 14 days. He adds that while the victim is still alive, he is force-fed the same mixture of milk and honey, each day, and his hands, feet and face are smeared with the same mixture. Parysatis, whose son (Emperor of Persia) Cyrus was murdered, in a fight with another for the throne of Persia, had the murderer executed by scaphism.

Enquiring minds want to know:

Is the milk used in this method fresh, or is it sour, and well passed its expiry date?

Are the boats cleaned out before a new victim is placed in them, or does the new victime have to lie in the former victim's dried out waste?

How many of you readers would approve scaphism as an ideal punishment for spammers?

[edit] citing a deleted page is...

a non-starter. I've removed the fact pending a verifiable source: "Sair labeled the example as the Chinese box, but it appeared to be isolated instance". — Matt Crypto 01:01, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Citations?

This page is desperately in need of citations. Without cites, it has a sort of prurient-urban-legend flavor. Ethan Mitchell 16:34, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

There are lots of citations. I've added some (some taken from the Deutsche version of this article). gssq 17:46, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

There are lots of links. Two of them, though, are to dictionaries. What I'm looking for are references specific to the statements in the main body of the text. Ethan Mitchell 16:22, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

That might be what you're looking for; I'm looking for a hot blonde lesbian. All joking aside, the fact that you're not happy with the sources that have been sited doesn't change the historical fact that this practice existed. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.197.131.165 (talk) 08:37, 9 December 2006 (UTC).

If you can read French or Late Latin... Anyway the Plutarch covers most of it, IIRC. gssq 20:32, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I can read French and Latin, but that's not the point. The main body of the text has no citations, except for one note-in-passing at the end. There are links at the bottom, great. I want to know how they are connected. Which facts go with which links. That's a citation. Ethan Mitchell 01:21, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I can't read French and Latin. Maybe you can go through the French and Latin texts and place citations in the main body. gssq 13:33, 20 May 2006 (UTC)