Life of the Good Thief

AMONG all the nations of antiquity highway robbery, we find, was reckoned as a capital offence. [n the penal code of the Romans its punishment was crucifixion, at once the cruelest and the most shameful of deaths: "the reason of which," according to St. Gregory of Nyssa, was this - "that the robbers thus banded together did not shrink from murder as a means to their end. They even held themselves in readiness to do it (as was proved) by their choice of arms, supplies, and places of resort. ...