Talk:Scaphism

Hmm

Wow, I thought the Uncyc article was a joke. Turns out it was an exact copy of the Persian quote. 117.226.171.104 (talk) 18:21, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

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)

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 past 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?

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)

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)

The statement that the book Papillon describes a similar torture is flagged with a note that citation is needed. However, the citation is actually given in the statement. In other words the book Papillon is being cited. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.129.148.57 (talk) 05:00, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Visual

It could have been better if someone added a picture related to this article --Infestor (talk) 19:50, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Back to Back?

From the description of the torture, it seems the boats would have been 'nested' one within the other with the victim between, rather than 'back to back'. Or possibly gunwale to gunwale. But back to back would be keel to keel and there'd be no 'inside' to be left to die in. Bagheera (talk) 22:04, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Changed it to face-to-face. Bodyservant (talk) 22:05, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Soviet methods?

A citation is needed on the practice of Scaphism in the Gulags, I have found no evidence in my research. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.205.73.61 (talk) 22:48, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

This sounds fake

There is no record here of this being repeated in modern times (meaning some hideous regime somewhere probably tried it and found it to be ineffective), and the following is all speculative, but bears consideration: a victim of this torture would die of dehydration before anything else. Your common bugs don't eat people alive as the torture seems to describe, and if you were force fed honey and/or milk, it would come out your mouth or rupture your stomach rather than travel through the entire intestinal tract and come out as anything resembling the original product.

If anyone knows a viable source that calls the whole thing out on its ridiculousness (especially one concerned with the dubious accounts of the greek historians), that would be good. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.225.48.15 (talk) 11:59, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, it is found in written history, but you don't think its true because it is "ineffective." This is what makes it the worst torture imaginable because it is almost ineffective, but the victim has to end up dying somehow, and that somehow is probably hard to diagnose.--Mapsfly (talk) 17:48, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Are there *any* sources for this not derived from the Persians' military enemies, the Greeks? If not, I think it is not appropriate that this be reported as some sort of well documented historical 'fact'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.145.32.141 (talk) 21:28, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

This may be a good point. Sadly, we wouldn't ace any archeological evidence anyway, and the only sources for much of Ancient Persian culture and history are Greek - the Persians certainly did write, but not all that much. They were literate but somewhat anti-literate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1007:B11B:32F3:EDA4:B44E:BA45:FE2D (talk) 10:43, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Second time I'm reading this article.. and it's almost certainly entirely made up, like most ancient reports of barbarians extreme cruelty. Neither milk nor honey were cheap products and the Persians didn't exactly have an excess of wood. If this occured it must have been exceptionally rare. It's like being bound with golden chains; unlikely and ineffective. 84.185.54.55 (talk) 02:41, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

fixing link; yes, it existed

It's entirely likely that people died of dehydration; the quote mentions someone lasting 17 days after repeated feeding with milk and honey. There seem to be enough references in ancient texts to suggest that something of this nature was carried out.

I'll change the link to Brewers from bootlegbooks, which doesn't resolve and in any case doesn't sound very legit :-) to words.fromoldbooks.org. The text there mentions a hollowed-out tree-trunk rather than boats. I think really the idea is of someone confined in a wooden construction until they die, with a poor diet, and with honey to attract bees or wasps or other insects to annoy them. Details beyond that may well fanciful. Barefootliam (talk) 21:47, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Needs qualification

This article needs to be qualified to make clear that the described method of death may be wholly or partly apocryphal. Ancient sources often exaggerate the barbarism of their enemies. Philafrenzy (talk) 12:15, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Then find a scholarly source that makes it clear and add it to the article. Joefromrandb (talk) 13:29, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

See the section above for the doubts that have been raised before about the accuracy of this page. It's a valid topic but needs a lot of qualification. Philafrenzy (talk) 14:09, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

I've requested administrative intervention about your trolling. Absent that, I'll follow our bizarre rule against improving an article more than 3 times a day, but make no mistake: your tags are trolling, plain and simple, and they will be removed. Joefromrandb (talk) 14:17, 7 March 2017 (UTC)