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Even before your post I was thinking that the Romans had a pretty cruel reputation, so I'm sure any crucifiction would have been brutal. IIRC, the final agent of death on the cross is suffication, because you your lungs collapse. Breaking the legs was a way to keep you from lifting your torso up to get air into the lungs. Something like that. Anyway, the point is they wouldn't just nail you up and leave you to die from exposure after a week. They wanted to make sure you were dead pretty quickly, so they worked you over first.

It states in the Bible that Jesus was dead before they even came to break the legs of those crucified (to get the bodies out of the way before the Passover Sabbath.) That surprised the soldiers, since people typically took a LONG time to die from crucifixion since (unless the legs were broken) they died from suffocation being too tired to hold themselves up.

Gibson certainly did a great deal of historical research about Roman torture methods before the movie was shot - that is clear to me - and everything I've yet heard about it is consistent with the whole of the Bible. I'm amazed that anybody who claims to be a religious scholar is objecting that the level of violence portrayed is not realistic.

I'm still shaking my head and asking myself why they are denying it.