Prisoners condemned to death by crucifixion were normally required to carry the horizontal bar of the cross to the place of execution, where the vertical bar was a post permanently positioned in the ground. But Mark tells us that the soldiers compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, to carry Jesus’s cross. Though Mark does not say why, presumably it was not an act of kindness toward Jesus, but because Jesus had become too weak to carry the wooden beam himself.
