Annual Fall Lecture 2024

Roman Graffiti as evidence for crucifixion and its depiction in late antiquity

by Dr. Felicity Harley-McGowan, Yale Divinity School

Join us for a discussion that explores Roman crucifixion and its development into religious iconography.

Crucifixion played an important role in the Roman criminal justice system, with large numbers of people executed in this way during uprisings and otherwise. Literary sources offer no clarity about how these executions were carried out, archaeological evidence is rare, and pictorial evidence almost absent. This lecture discusses one of only two images of a crucified victim to survive from the Roman world: a graffito from the 2nd century AD, excavated in Southern Italy in 1959. The image preserves important evidence both of the practice of crucifixion by the Romans in the first centuries AD and for the graduation development of an iconography of crucifixion in Roman, and subsequently Christian, art.

Light refreshments will be served. Please share the flyer.