In prison his hands were tied behind his back, and he was then lifted to the ceiling by rope and pulley. At a command, he was dropped straight down until the rope stopped him with the jerk. The term for this torture was strappado. One drop was usually enough to loosen a prisoner’s tongue; four were enough to dislocate a person’s shoulders, perhaps permanently. Machiavelli endured six drops of the strappado but still refused to name names. Instead, he was left to rot in prison. “The walls were full of lice so big and fat they seemed like butterflies,” Machiavelli would remember later; the
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