Today’s Spreadeagled Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
The Romans used the wheel for the punishment of slaves and to overcome the obstinacy of the Christian martyrs, and employed several different methods. In some, the wheel was mounted horizontally, in others vertically. In either position the victim would be bound to the face of the wheel or around the circumference, and the suffering could be increased by lighting a fire underneath, thereby converting the wheel into a roasting-spit. The author Josephus wrote:
Then were the Apparitors [executioners] directed to bring in the Christian prisoner and, tearing away his tunic, bound him hand and foot with thongs. Then they fixed him about a great Wheel, whereof the noble-hearted youth had all his joints dislocated and all his limbs broken. And the whole Wheel was stained with his blood, and the grate containing the burning coals was put out by reason of the drops of blood pouring down on it, while about the axle of the Wheel the gobbets of flesh were carried round and round, the parts adjoining the joints of the bones being everywhere cut to pieces.
Another was fastened to the Wheel, on which he was stretched and burned with fire; moreover they applied spits, sharpened and made red hot, to his back, and pierced his sides and inwards, searing the latter dreadfully.
Some wheels were smaller, so that once the victim had been spreadeagled on it, with his ankles and wrists extending beyond the rim, the executioner would smash the limbs, then drape them round the perimeter of the wheel.
Culled from: The Book Of Execution