Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know if Sparta would crack the top 10 for me. The Celts, if the Roman authors are to be believed, were pretty metal. Sacrifice, impalement, hanging severed limbs or running into battle with them (naked, drenched in their blood), etc. Vikings were pretty brutal, both in their raiding/raping/pillaging/murder, and their treatment of slaves, their enemies, and people who committed crimes. Slaves [typically female…
The systematic, public aspect of the killings and the fetishization of maximal pain and suffering is the fucked up part. Few societies ever where public delight in unthinkable cruelty was so off-the-charts.
- put the person in an immobile metal suit and hang them and leave them for days so crowds can throw stuff at them and taunt them. if they didn't die from exposure they'd certainly be emotionally damaged
- put someone's feet in a metal boot, and then drive wedges into the boot to slowly break all the bones in their feet
- clamp blocks with spikes around the knee, and tighten them down until the knee is totally destroyed
- clamp a person's fingers in a vice and screw until broken. this can be done for days, weeks, as they won't die, and more torture methods still await
- waterboarding. doesn't sound bad, but being repeatedly drowned for hours is, well, not fun
- putting somebody in a sack, with a dog, a snake, and a rat, and throwing them in the water to watch what happened
- tying a person to a giant wheel, smashing their limbs until they were dead, and then hoisting the wheel up for the public to gawk at
- clamp a sort of clawed device onto a woman's breast, and tighten it down until it rips her breast off
- cutting off heads, putting them on spikes, adorning the town or a castle with them (seems quaint in comparison)
- tie a person to a rack, and literally cut all the skin off their body while they are alive. they would die from either shock or blood loss, this is a quicker death than many others
- tying someone to a rack, slowly stretching them until their bones and skin broke, and then dragging them over to the scaffold where they'd be burned alive
- make a sharp metal narrow pyramid and lower a person down on it until it penetrates their anus
- tie the person to a table, attach a cage to their chest, put a rat in the cage, and apply fire to the other end of the cage. the rat claws and gnaws its way through the body of this live person
- tie somebody to a chair made of spikes, and slowly push them towards a fire
- tie somebody upside down, legs spread, and literally saw them in half, from the anus to the head
Soooooooooooo..... yeah..... fetishization of maximal pain and suffering..... honestly, I'm gonna call it, the Aztecs were amateurs compared to us.