Death penalties in the provinces used to be registered in the records of the Roman administrator and the execution was, when the circumstances demanded it, reported to Rome either by special message or as an item in the reports on major events which were submitted at regular intervals. These were the acts of official notification. Different from this were the means of informing the general public. The oldest sources, sources not later than the New Testament, mention a tabula which was to be carried by the condemned man (or by someone else walking in front of him) on his way to the place of execution, which indicated the αἰτíα. The fixing of a tablet with an inscription on the cross is less well testified; possibly because one mention of the tabula was considered sufficient by those who described a crucifixion. In any case, the showing of a tabula either on the last journey of the delinquent or on the spot where he was publicly put to death was not indispensable, not a constitutive part of the procedure, and therefore not laid down in detail. If an execution was meant to serve as a dreadful warning and if, in fact, elements of mockery were not absent from what even lawyers call Volksfesthinrichtungen, we cannot expect similar intentions to be foreign to the phrasing of a titulus. Even examples of a pedagogical nature are known. And the rhetorical element in the formulation is obvious.

It results from this that evidence of the first or second type, if its authenticity is indisputable, is superior to that of the third or fourth kind.