As good followers of the Latin phrase «Panem et circenses » (bread and circuses), the emperors tried to provide entertainment to the citizens of Rome in the Circus Maximus with chariot races or in the Colosseum (amphitheatre) with gladiatorial or animal fights (venatio ). Always trying to surpass what their predecessors had done, either because of the originality or because of the cruelty used, naval battles (naumachia) were recreated. ) and even resorted to Mythology. One of these mythological recreations was that of Orpheus (by playing his lyre he put Cerberus to sleep, the three-headed dog that protected the entrance to the underworld) in which the prisoner or the condemned who played Orpheus had to tame the wild beasts with which he had been locked in a cage with music -the result, a dismembered body -. The death of Hercules was also recreated, when he puts on the poisoned tunic, the pain is so unbearable that he asks to be burned to end that suffering.
Death of Hercules (1634) – Francisco de Zurbarán
In the recreation of the death of Hercules, the interpreter of the leading role was put on a linen tunic impregnated with an inflammable substance (possibly gasoline with some retardant to prolong the agony) that turned him into a real human torch. This type of torture and death was called «the annoying tunic «. Although it was Nero who perfected the method, when he used it on the Christians he had accused of burning Rome in 64, in the Law of the XII Tables , the legal text that contained the norms to regulate the coexistence of the Roman people, already stipulated the penalty of being burned alive (crematio or ad flammas ) for those accused of some very specific crimes, such as arsonists.
Torches of Nero (1877) – Henryk Siemiradski
Sources:Roman Execution ad Flammas, Archaeology