Jerusalem: The Biography

† Crucifixion originated in the east – Darius the Great crucified Babylonian rebels – and was adopted by the Greeks. As we have seen, Alexander the Great crucified the Tyrians; Antiochus Epiphanes and the Jewish king Alexander Jannaeus crucified rebellious Jerusalemites; the Carthaginians crucified insubordinate generals. In 71 BC the Roman suppression of the Spartacus slave revolt culminated in a mass crucifixion. The wood for the cross is said to have come from the site of the fortified eleventh-century Monastery of the Cross, near today’s Israeli Knesset. The monastery was long the headquarters of the Georgian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem