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Compare the grotesque crucifix traced at Rome on a wall of Mount Palatine. Jesus tasted these horrors in all their atrocity. A burning thirst, one of the tortures of crucifixion, devoured him, and he asked to drink. There stood near, a cup of the ordinary drink of the Roman soldiers, a mixture of vinegar and water, called posca.
"You are over sober to-night," said Antonius, when this scarcely elaborate meal was nearly finished. "Perpol!" replied Drusus, "have I been as a rule drunken of late? My throat hardly knows the feeling of good Falernian, it is so long since I have tasted any." "I doubt if there is so much as a draught of posca in the army," said Antonius, yawning.
Probably a few hours before, the cry would have only provoked a roar of frantic mockery; but now the lookers-on were reduced by awe to a readier humanity. Near the cross there lay on the ground the large earthen vessel containing the posca, which was the ordinary drink of the Roman soldiers. The mouth of it was filled with a piece of sponge, which served as a cork.
His master, some time after, caught him at Puteoli, selling a liquor called Posca , and put him in chains, but soon released him, and retained him in his former capacity.
Or, if you wait till the impedimenta come up, you may draw your ration of Posca' What was posca? It was, in fact, acidulated water; three parts of superfine water to one part of the very best vinegar. Nothing stronger did Rome, that awful mother, allow to her dearest children, i. e., her legions.
Instantly some one we know not whether he was friend or enemy, or merely one who was there out of idle curiosity took out the sponge and dipped it in the posca to give it to Jesus.
Or, if you wait till the impedimenta come up, you may draw your ration of Posca' What was posca? It was, in fact, acidulated water; three parts of superfine water to one part of the very best vinegar. Nothing stronger did Rome, that awful mother, allow to her dearest children, i. e., her legions.
He ate the ordinary rations of cheese, bacon, &c.; he used no other drink than that composition of vinegar and water, known by the name of posca, which formed the sole beverage allowed in the Roman camps.
Stegas, catching the refrain the mob repeated, turned his eyes from the soldiery to the adjacent cross. “If you are as they say,” he cried, “save yourself and us.” As a taunt to Caiaphas, Calcol echoed, “Behold your king!” and raising a stalk of hyssop, on which was a sponge that he had dipped in the posca, the thin wine the soldiers drink, he offered it to the Christ.
The soldiers had to carry with them their posca on all their expeditions, of which an execution was considered one. A soldier dipped a sponge in this drink, put it at the end of a reed, and raised it to the lips of Jesus, who sucked it. The two robbers were crucified, one on each side.
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