nPeace
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Crucifixion is a method of punishment or capital punishment in which the victim is tied or nailed to a large wooden beam and left to hang perhaps for several days, until eventual death from exhaustion and asphyxiation.
Terminology
Ancient Greek has two verbs for crucify: ana-stauro (ἀνασταυρόω), from stauros (which in today's Greek only means "cross" but which in antiquity was used of any kind of wooden pole, pointed or blunt, bare or with attachments) and apo-tumpanizo (ἀποτυμπανίζω) "crucify on a plank", together with anaskolopizo (ἀνασκολοπίζω "impale"). In earlier pre-Roman Greek texts anastauro usually means "impale"
The English term cross derives from the Latin word crux, which classically referred to a tree or any construction of wood used to hang criminals as a form of execution. The term later came to refer specifically to a cross.
[History tells us cross was a later rendering use in modern Greek derived from Latin to describe death by crucifixion on a tree.]
Was there a crossbar attached? Perhaps in later uses, ther was, according to Josephus.
At times the gibbet was only one vertical stake, called in Latin crux simplex. This was the simplest available construction for torturing and killing the condemned. Frequently, however, there was a cross-piece attached either at the top to give the shape of a T (crux commissa) or just below the top, as in the form most familiar in Christian symbolism (crux immissa).
Archaeological evidence
Although the ancient historians Josephus and Appian refer to the crucifixion of thousands of Jews by the Romans, there is only a single archaeological discovery of a crucified body of a Jew dating back to the Roman Empire around the time of Jesus. This was discovered at Givat HaMivtar, Jerusalem in 1968.
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