CHAP. IV.
The use of Flagellations was known among the ancient Heathens. Several facts and observations on that subject.
IT is not to be doubted, that flagellations had been invented, and were become, in early times, a common method of punishment in the Pagan world. Even before the foundation of Rome, we meet with instances which prove that it was the usual punishment inflicted on Slaves. Justin, in his Epitome of Trogus Pompeius, relates that the Scythians more easily overcame their rebellious Slaves with scourges and whips, than with their swords. ‘The Scythians being returned (says Justin) from their third expedition in Asia, after having been absent eight years from their Wives and Children, found they now had a war to wage at home against their own Slaves. For, their Wives, tired with such long fruitless expectation of their Husbands, and concluding that they were no longer detained by war, but had been destroyed, married the Slaves who had been left to take care of the cattle; which latter attempted to use their Masters, who returned victorious, like Strangers, and hinder them, by force of arms, from entering the Country. The war having been supported, for a while, with success pretty nearly equal on both sides, the Scythians were advised to change their manner of carrying it on, remembering that it was not with enemies, but with their own Slaves, that they had to fight; that they were to conquer by dint, not of arms, but of their right as Masters; that instead of weapons, they ought to bring lashes into the field, and, setting iron aside, to supply themselves with rods, scourges, and such like instruments of slavish fear. Having approved this counsel, the Scythians armed themselves as they were advised to do; and had no sooner come up with their enemies, than they exhibited on a sudden their new weapons, and thereby struck such a terror into their minds, that those who could not be conquered by arms, were subdued by the dread of the stripes, and betook themselves to flight, not like a vanquished enemy, but like fugitive slaves.’
Among the antient Persians, the punishment of whipping was also in use: it was even frequently inflicted on the Grandees of the Kingdom by order of the King, as we find in Stobæus, who moreover relates in his forty-second Discourse, ‘That when one of them had been flagellated by order of the King, it was an established custom, that he should give him thanks as for an excellent favour he had received, and a token that the King remembered him.’ This custom of the Persians was however in subsequent times altered: they began to set some more value on the skin of Men; and we find in Plutarch’s Apophthegms of Kings, ‘That Artaxerxes, son of Xerxes, sirnamed the Longhanded, was the first who ordered that the Grandees of his kingdom should no longer be exposed to the former method of punishment; but that, when they should have been guilty of some offence, instead of their backs, only their clothes should be whipped, after they had been stripped of them.’
We also find, that it was a custom in antient times, for Generals and Conquerors, to flog the Captives they had taken in war; and that they moreover took delight in inflicting that punishment with their own hands on the most considerable of those Captives. We meet, among others, with a very remarkable proof of this practice, in the Tragedy of Sophocles, called Ajax Scourgebearer (Μαστιγοφόρος): in a Scene of this Tragedy Ajax is introduced as having the following conversation with Minerva.
Minerva.
‘What kind of severity do you prepare for that miserable man?’
Ajax.
‘I propose to lash his back with a scourge till he dies.’
Minerva.
‘Nay, do not whip the poor Wretch so cruelly.’
Ajax.
‘Give me leave, Minerva, to gratify, on this occasion, my own fancy; he shall have it, I do assure you, and I prepare no other punishment for him.’
The punishment of flagellation was also much in vogue among the Romans; and it was the common chastisement which Judges inflicted upon Offenders, especially upon those of a servile condition. Surrounded by an apparatus of whips, scourges, and leather-straps, they terrified Offenders, and brought them to a sense of their duty.
Judges, among the Romans, as has been just now mentioned, used a great variety of instruments for inflicting the punishment of whipping. Some consisted of a flat strap of leather, and were called Ferulæ; and to be lashed with these Ferulæ, was considered as the mildest degree of punishment. Others were made of a number of cords of twisted parchment, and were called Scuticæ. These Scuticæ were considered as being a degree higher in point of severity than the ferulæ, but were much inferior, in that respect, to that kind of scourge which was called Flagellum, and sometimes the terrible Flagellum, which was made of thongs of ox-leather, the same as those which Carmen used for their Horses. We find in the third Satyr of the first Book of Horace, a clear and pretty singular account of the gradation in point of severity that obtained between the above-mentioned instruments of whipping. In this Satyr, Horace lays down the rules which he thinks a Judge ought to follow in the discharge of his office; and he addressed himself, somewhat ironically, to certain persons who, adopting the principles of the Stoics, affected much severity in their opinions, and pretended that all crimes whatever being equal, ought to be punished in the same manner. ‘Make such a rule of conduct to yourself (says Horace) that you may always proportion the chastisement you inflict to the magnitude of the offence; and when the Offender only deserves to be chastised with the whip of twisted parchment, do not expose him to the lash of the horrid leather scourge; for, that you should only inflict the punishment of the flat strap on him who deserves a more severe lashing, is what I am by no means afraid of[17].’
The choice between these different kinds of instruments, was, as we may conclude from the above passage, left to the Judge, who ordered that to be used which he was pleased to name; and the number of blows was likewise left to his discretion; which sometimes were as many as the Executioner could give. ‘He (says Horace in one of his Odes) who has been lashed by order of the Triumvirs, till the Executioner was spent[18].’
Besides this extensive power of whipping exercised by Judges among the Romans, over persons of a servile condition, over Aliens, and those who were the subjects of the Republic, Masters were possessed of an unbounded one with regard to their Slaves, over whose life and death they had moreover an absolute power. Hence a great number of instruments of flagellation, besides those above-mentioned, were successively brought into use for punishing Slaves. Among those were particular kinds of cords manufactured in Spain, as we learn from a passage in an Ode of Horace, the same that has just been quoted, and was addressed to one Menas, a freed-man, who had found means to acquire a great fortune, and was grown very insolent. ‘Thou (says Horace) whose sides are still discoloured (or burnt) with the stripes of the Spanish cords[19].’
A number of other instances of this practice of whipping Slaves, as well as other different names of instruments used for that purpose, may be found in the antient Latin Writers, such as Plautus, Terence, Horace, Martial, &c. So prevalent had the above practice become, that Slaves were frequently denominated from that particular kind of flagellation which they were most commonly made to undergo. Some were called Restiones, because they were used to be lashed with cords; others were called Bucædæ, because they were usually lashed with thongs of ox-leather; and it is in consequence of this custom, that a Man is made to say in one of Plautus’s Plays, ‘They shall be Bucædæ (that is to say, scourged with leather-thongs) whether they will or no, before I consent to be Restio,’ or so much as beaten with cords[20]. And Tertullian, meaning in one of his Writings to express Slaves in general, uses words which simply signify ‘those who are used to be beaten, or to be discoloured with blows[21].’
Nay, so generally were whipping and lashing considered among the Romans, as being the lot of Slaves, that a whip, or a scourge, was become among them the emblem of their condition. Of this we have an instance in the singular custom mentioned by Camerarius, which prevailed among them, of placing in the triumphal car, behind the Triumpher, a man with a whip in his hand; the meaning of which was to shew, that it was no impossible thing for a Man to fall from the highest pitch of glory into the most abject condition, even into that of a Slave.
Suetonius also relates a fact which affords another remarkable instance of this notion of the Romans, of looking upon a whip as a characteristic mark of dominion on the one hand, and of slavery on the other. ‘Cicero (says Suetonius, in the life of Augustus) having accompanied Cæsar to the Capitol, related to a few friends whom he met there, a dream which he had had the night before. It seemed to him, he said, that a graceful Boy came down from Heaven, suspended by a golden chain; that he stopped before the gate of the Capitol, and that Jupiter gave him a whip (flagellum). Having afterwards suddenly seen Augustus, whom (as he was still personally unknown to several of his near relations) Cæsar had sent for and brought along with him to be present at the ceremony, he assured his friends that he was the very person whose figure he had seen during his sleep.’ Juvenal likewise, in one of his Satyrs, has spoken of Augustus conformably to the above notion of the Romans. ‘The same (says he) who, after conquering the Romans, has subjected them to his whip[22].’
But, besides all those instruments of flagellation used for punishing Slaves, which have been mentioned above, and as if the terrible flagellum had not been of itself sufficiently so, new contrivances were used to make the latter a still more cruel weapon; and the thongs with which that kind of scourge was made, were frequently armed with nails, or small hard bones. They also would sometimes fasten to those thongs small leaden weights: hence scourges were sometimes called Astragala, as Hesychius relates, from the name of those kinds of weights which the Ancients used to wear hanging about their shoes. Under the tortures which those different instruments inflicted, it was no wonder that Slaves should die: indeed this was a frequent case; and the cruelty, especially of Mistresses towards their female Slaves, grew at last to such a pitch, that a provision was made in the Council of Elvira to restrain it; and it was ordained, that if any Mistress should cause her Slave to be whipped with so much cruelty as that she should die, the Mistress should be suspended from Communion for a certain number of years. The following are the terms of the above Ordinance, in the fifth Canon. “If a Mistress, in a fit of anger and madness, shall lash her female Slave, or cause her to be lashed, in such a manner that she expires before the third day, by reason of the torture she has undergone; inasmuch as it is doubtful whether it has designedly happened, or by chance; if it has designedly happened, the Mistress shall be excommunicated for seven years; if by chance, she shall be excommunicated for five years only; though, if she shall fall into sickness, she may receive the Communion[23].”
