242 HAUPT— GOLGOTHA. 



round and skull-like contours of the place. The eminence above the 

 Grotto of Jeremiah, not far from the Damascus Gate in the north, 

 has a strong resemblance to a skull. Others believed that the site 

 of the Crucifixion received this name because it was full of skulls. 

 The Jews did not crucify persons alive, and even when they gibbeted 

 criminals after their execution, they interred them by nightfall, so 

 that there could be no accumulation of skulls and dead bones ; but 

 the Romans allowed the bodies of crucified malefactors to decay on 

 the cross. Horace {Ep. i, i6, 48) says: Non pasces in criice 

 corvos; cf. Byron's rcz/£'«jfon^ = German Rabenstein (stein = roc]<., 

 eminence, hill). Golgotha may be the prototype of our gallows 

 (AS gealga, OHG galgo, Goth, galga) which denotes originally the 

 cross on which Christ was crucified, so that Mount Golgotha cor- 

 responds in some respects to our Gallows Hill (German Galgen- 

 bcrg). The cross was the Roman gallows. Galloivs is generally 

 identified with Lithuanian saiga, pole, Lat. pertica. The gallows at 

 Montfaucon near Paris had pits beneath, into which the bodies fell 

 after disarticulation by exposure to the weather (EB^^ 11, 422). 

 After the massacre of St. Bartholomew on August 24, 1572, the 

 beheaded body of Coligny was gibbeted for several days at Mont- 

 faucon (RE^ 4, 227, i). The bodies suspended on gibbets were 

 often smeared with pitch to prevent too rapid decomposition. 



After the fall of Jerusalem in 70 a.d. Titus is said to have 

 crucified so many Jews that there was neither timber for the crosses 

 nor place to set them up (DB i, 528^). The upright stake of the 

 cross was firmly planted in the ground and remained there as a 

 permanent fixture (RE^ 11, 91, 38). The condemned criminal 

 carried only the crosspiece or transverse beam (Lat. patibuliim) to 

 the place of execution (RE^ 11, 91, 31 ; DB i, 528''). The upright 

 stake was not more than nine feet high ; the feet of the crucified 

 malefactor were but slightly elevated above the ground {Pur. 6, 

 24; BL 102, *). The Romans may have called the accumulation 

 of potsherds and other rubbish, which was used as a place of 

 execution, Mons Testaceus, and this may afterwards have been 

 interpreted to mean Mound of Skulls, because Lat. testa means both 

 potsherd and skull, so that Golgotha (=Aram. giilgultd) instead of 

 the original qilqitd would represent a popular etymology which was 



