This chapter looks at the early recorded history of torture, and argues that torture as a technique of interrogation in ancient Rome must be seen in the context of the degree of physical suffering that was deemed appropriate to the status of a person accused of a crime. Under Roman law, slaves could be tortured to extract evidence and confessions of guilt. At various times in ancient Rome, these sanctions were also applied to free persons, in particular when they lost their status in the wake of committing capital crimes. Roman jurists frequently questioned the efficacy of torture as a means of extracting the truth, whether from free persons or from slaves. At the same time, after the virtually universal grant of citizenship to all free persons in 212 CE, judicial savagery increased. Ultimately, the use of torture as both a means of interrogation and an instrument of punishment coalesced in the treatment of the late antique Christian martyrs, who undermined the entire purpose of torture by enduring it, thereby paradoxically demonstrating their innocence in the process of proving their guilt.