11. The Persians tried to execute criminals more than once
Persian mythology included descriptions of the afterlife which were vivid and exact, including a description of the end of the world, one of the earliest mythological systems to do so. In it, the journey to heaven was described as being forced to cross a bridge. Souls of the good encountered a wide and comfortable bridge, those who lived lives of trespass encountered a narrow bridge, an edge of a razor-sharp blade from which the wicked would tumble into hell below. Persian executions were sometimes calculated to ensure that the wicked not only died a terrible death on earth, but was ensured to die another death in the afterlife, denied eternal peace.
Persian gods and legends took care of death in the afterlife. On earth, the Persians took steps to ensure some of their victims were brought to the very point of death before the torture they were enduring ceased and the victim was brought back to health, or at least allowed to gain enough strength that the torture would be allowed to continue for some time. This meant a certain level of skills were required of Persian executioners, and if an executioner was so unfortunate as to have his victim die too soon in the eyes of the magistrate who ordered the execution he could well find himself subject to tortures and death himself.
