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 ancient 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 _Apothegms of Kings_, “that
Artaxerxes, son of Xerxes, surnamed 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 ancient 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_: 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.”