A reference, for instance, to the writings of Livy, will show that in
his time the word crux, whatever else it may have meant, signified a
single piece of wood or timber; he using it in that sense.[6]

This however is a curious rather than an important point, for even the
assumption that the word _crux_ always and invariably meant something
cross-shaped, would not affect the demonstration already made that the
word _stauros_ did not.

As our Scriptures were written in Greek and were written in the first
century A.C., the vital question is what the word stauros then meant,
when used, as in the New Testament, without any qualifying expression
or hint that other than an ordinary stauros was signified. What the
Fathers chose to consider the meaning of that word to be, or chose to
give as its Latin translation, would, even if they had written the same
century, in no wise affect that issue. And, as a matter of fact, even
the earliest of the Fathers whose undisputed works have come down to
us, did not write till the middle of the second century.

Granting, however, as all must, that most if not all of the earlier of
the Fathers, and certainly all the later ones, rightly or wrongly
interpreted the word stauros as meaning something cross-shaped, let us,
remembering that this does not dispose of the question whether they
rightly or wrongly so interpreted it, in this and the next two chapters
pass in review the references to the cross made by the Fathers who
lived before Constantine's march upon Rome at the head of his Gaulish
army.

Commencing, on account of its importance, with the evidence of Minucius