The best policed people have not felt called upon to abandon this instrument of government. If education was severe in Sparta, where children were submitted early to the most difficult exercises, it was hardly any milder at Athens, if we are to judge by this description of Greek customs. ‘Hardly had a child escaped from the tyranny of his nurse, when he fell into the hands of the teacher, the grammarian, and the musician, and these took turns at flogging him to teach him their art. As he grows up, there arrive the arithmetician, the geometer, and the riding-master. Under these masters he gets no rest, he rises early, and is often flogged. A little older, and it is the tactician and gymnastic instructor who now flog and torture him.’ And there have been philosophers to praise and poets to sing the happy results of this brutal method.
However, one voice is raised against this system—the voice of Plutarch, who considers that we should lead children to do their duty by kind words and gentle remonstrances and not by blows, for flogging is more suitable for slaves than the free. It hardens and deadens them, and the pain and shame makes them hate work. Praise and blame are more suitable for freeborn children than whips and rods.
Rome had borrowed this method of treating slaves from Greece. According to Petronius, the following notice could be seen on the fronts of certain houses: ‘Slaves who leave this house without permission will receive one hundred lashes.’
The least impatience of the mistress, or the least fault of the female-slave sufficed to get the latter hung up by the hair and lashed till the blood came. The picture which Juvenal, Sat. vi, has left of these scenes is simply revolting. This practice was so common that, in his Art of Love, Ovid recommends women not to give way to anger in the presence of the lover who is watching them at their toilet. Many of them, indeed, had the rather unhappy habit of choosing this moment for beating and biting their slaves, or sticking hairpins in their breasts. And let us not forget that these pins were seven or eight inches long. Flogging must have seemed very mild alongside such a martyrdom, and we are no longer astonished that the satirical Horace thanks his teacher Orbilius for having soundly flogged him when at school.
It was not always the pupils who lent their ... backs to the rod: the master’s turn came one day. Livy reports that a schoolmaster was condemned to be flogged for having committed treason. After he had been stripped of all his clothing and his hands tied behind him, he was handed over to the children, who flogged him heartily. The roles were indeed changed.
From time to time sensitive spirits protested against these methods of education, although the custom was quite generally received and approved. There was some merit in protesting when one was quite alone in the belief.
Quintilian wished to abolish flogging, and the only fault about his reasons was that they were addressed to barbarians who were not yet ready to understand. ‘I would like scholars not to be beaten: firstly, such treatment is degrading and used for slaves; if the victims were older they would be justified in claiming reparation. Secondly, because if a child is so stubborn that reprimands do not cure him, there is every possibility of his being made worse by blows, as are rebellious slaves; besides, such punishment would be needless if the teacher understood his work. But nowadays teachers are so careless in their corrections that, instead of compelling the scholars to do what they should, they are content to punish them when they have not done it.
Further, if we constrain a boy with stripes, how shall we treat a young man who cannot be flogged, and whose honour should be appealed to encourage him to study? Add to that, that accidents happen to those who are beaten which decency forbids us to describe, and which are caused by fear and pain. The shame felt by the victims injures them and cows them to such an extent that they fly from the light and sink under their shame. If wise and skilful teachers have not been chosen, it is impossible to say to what extremes of cruelty they may not go, and to what extent they will terrify their pupils.’ Bk. 1, iii.
Quintilian addressed the empty air. He spent his efforts in sheer waste, trying to uproot a prejudice which was to last longer than he.
The Jesuits have been charged with the invention of pedagogical flogging—they might well reply that they had many precursors. The history of monastic flagellation is an argument they would have been justified in urging in support. But they have a respondent of another opinion. Has not Solomon said: ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child?’