Cicero\'s decapitation

[Crispvs]

The description is not detailed enough to tell us exactly why they covered their faces. It may have been to spare themselves the horrible sight of a man's neck being chopped to pieces with repeated blows, but I suspect that if they were veterans of any sort of battle in the civil wars which were still raging at the time, the sight of blood and ugly wounds would probably not be that shocking. I have worked in a military trauma ward and it really is quite shocking how fast you can get used to the sight of really quite horrific wounds. I had only been working there about six weeks before I found myself seeing gunshot wounds and not seeing them as particularly serious. I was regularly seeing much worse levels of destruction to the human body.

Thus I do not really think that in an age of hand to hand combat with bladed weapons, veteran soldiers would cover their faces at the sight of wounds being inflicted. I think that it might have been some sort of mark of respect towards a very famous man who was justifiably admired for his prosecution of the Cataline conspiracy a few years before. His more recent 'Philipic' speeches also, although directed against Anthony, had won him great admiration from many sections of the public. I am not trying to suggest that soldiers would spend their days doing the equivalent of reading the political columns in the newspaper. However, they may have tapped into a widespread feeling of admiration for the character of the man they had been order to go and kill.

I do not really think that it is important, for the historical fact of the beheading, whether it was done in one blow or several. The beheading was necessary in order to bring his head back to prove he was dead. There were no smart phones in those days!

Christian,

Your photos are most interesting. I imagine that rolled up cane matting must must have been quite tough. However it looks as if it was cleaved with a single cut.
Sometimes it is not the weight of the blow which matters so much as how it is delivered. Back in my combat re-enactment days a test of someone's ability to use the correct action in swinging a sword was to fill a plastic bottle with water (without a lid) and stand it up at about waist height. Even with a 5mm thick blunt edge (regulation for steel weapons fighting) a properly directed swing could slice cleanly through the bottle. By comparison, a poorer blow would make a ragged gash in the bottle or simply knock it over without causing damage.
Thus if Herrenius' gladius was relatively sharp and (presumably as a veteran of real combat) he used a confident, practiced action when delivering the blow, I see no reason why a single blow could not have severed the head.
The description from Livy is reminiscent of the scenes in the lower border of the Bayeaux Tapestry during the Battle of Hastings scenes, where severed heads and limbs are depicted alongside often decapitated bodies.

However, as a corollary to all that, it might also be remembered that when Anne Boleyn was executed for treason in 1536 she paid the executioner a sum of money to do the job with a single blow. Despite this the executioner (the 'Swordsman of France' i.e. the top executioner in France) took three blows to sever her head. His first blow actually went into her shoulder and it was only with his second blow that he actually killed her. It took him a third blow to actually remove her head. I don't know if that says anything about the Romans but I find it interesting nonetheless.

Crispvs