Eculeus
or, less correctly,
Equuleus. An instrument of
torture commonly used at Rome in extracting evidence from slaves. It was a wooden horse, as
the name implies, on which the sufferer was mounted and then stretched or racked with weights
or pulleys (
Plin. Ep. 67.3). Rich (s. v.)
thinks that the infliction consisted in being seated on a sharp point, as in
impalement—a form of
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Supposed form of Eculeus. (Rich.)
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cruelty not unknown in recent times, of which he gives a specimen. Very little is
really known about this and the other engines of torture among the Greeks and Romans. Cicero
says that slaves accused of murder might expect the eculeus at the trial, the
crux on conviction (
Pro Mil. 21.57; 22.60). Seneca mentions
as the usual modes of torture,
fidiculae, talaria, eculeus, and
ignis (
De Ira, iii. 19.1). Rich supposes the criminal to have
been made to sit upon a sharp point with weights attached to his arms and legs, as shown in
the illustration here given, representing an instrument of torture formerly used at Mirandola
in Italy and, curiously enough, called “the colt” (
il
cavaletto). See
Crux;
Fidicula; Flagellum;
Tormentum.
