What is "crux simplex"

n. 1 A single beam or pole without a cross bar. 2 The style of pole (simple) that common criminals were impaled on, typically including a block for the feet, thus using only one nail through the hands (below the palm), and reducing the cost of materials involved, and hastening death by asphyxia most often following the breaking of the legs.

The crux simplex is an instrument of torture and execution recognized by modern authors as one of the types of crosses that existed in the ancient world. In the sixteenth century the scholar Justus Lipsius (1547–1606) qualified itself in his book De cruce libri tres. Most recently as archaeologists and historians like Joe Zias, (Antiquities Museum Jerusalem) and Frederick T. Zugibe have recognized that the crux simplex, consisting of only a vertical beam without crossbar, "in fact is a kind of crucifixion". This type of cross"was the easiest available way to torture and kill criminals". Indeed it isthe most common form of crosses used by the Persians, Assyrians, Seleucids and Phoenicians.