This was, however, by no means necessarily the case.

For instance, the death spoken of, death by the _stauros_, included
transfixion by a pointed stauros or stake, as well as affixion to an
unpointed stauros or stake; and the latter punishment was not always
that referred to.

It is also probable that in most of the many cases where we have no
clue as to which kind of stauros was used, the cause of the condemned
one's death was transfixion by a pointed stauros.

Moreover, even if we could prove that this very common mode of capital
punishment was in no case that referred to by the historians who lived
in bygone ages, and that death was in each instance caused by affixion
to, instead of transfixion by, a stauros, we should still have to prove
that each stauros had a cross-bar before we could correctly describe
the death caused by it as death by crucifixion.

It is also, upon the face of it, somewhat unlikely that the ancients
would in every instance in which they despatched a man by affixing him
to a post set in the ground, have gone out of their way to provide the
artistic but quite unnecessary cross-bar of our imaginations.

As it is, in any case, well known that the Romans very often despatched
those condemned to death by affixing them to a stake or post which had
no cross-bar, the question arises as to what proof we have that a
cross-bar was used in the case of Jesus.

Nor is the question an unimportant one. For, as we shall see in the
chapters to come, there was a pre-Christian cross, which was, like