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 carmen used for their horses. We find
in the third satire 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 satire,
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.”
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.”
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.”
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 ancient 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’ plays, “they shall be _Bucædæ_ (that is to
say, scourged with leather thongs) whether they will or no, before I
content to be _Restio_,” or so much as beaten with cords. 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.”
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 show, 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, relates 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 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 satires, 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.” 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 kind 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 petition 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 fall into sickness,
she may receive the communion.”