The absolute dominion possessed by masters over the persons of their
slaves, led them to use a singular severity in the government of them.
So frequently were flagellations the lot of the latter, that
appellations and words of reproach drawn from that kind of punishment,
were, as hath been above observed, commonly used to dominate them; and
expressions of this kind occur in the politest writers: thus, we find in
the plays of Terence, an author particularly celebrated for his
politeness and strict observance of decorum, slaves frequently called by
the words, _Verberones_, _Flagriones_, or others to the same effect.
As for Plautus, who had been the servant of a baker, and who was much
acquainted with everything that related to slaves, and their
flagellations in particular, he has filled his scenes with nicknames of
slaves, drawn from this latter circumstance; and they are almost
continually called in his plays, _flagritribæ_ (a verbis, _flagrum and
terre_) _plagipatidæ_, _ulmitribæ_, _&c._, besides the appellations of
_Bucædæ_ and _Restiones_, above mentioned.
Sometimes the flagellations of slaves, or the fear they entertained of
incurring them, served Plautus as incidents for the conduct of his
plots; thus, in his _Epidicus_, a slave who is the principal character
in the play, concludes upon a certain occasion, that his master has
discovered his whole scheme, because he has spied him, in the morning,
purchasing a new scourge at the shop in which they were sold. The same
flagellations in general, have moreover been an inexhaustible fund of
pleasantry for Plautus. In one place, for instance, a slave, intending
to laugh at a fellow-slave, asks him how much he weighs, when he is
suspended naked, by his hands, to the beam, with an hundred-weight
(_centupondium_) tied to his feet; which was a precaution taken, as
commentators inform us, in order to prevent the slave who was
flagellated from kicking the man (_Virgator_) whose office it was to
perform the operation. And in another place, Plautus, alluding to the
thongs of ox-leather with which whips were commonly made, introduces a
slave engaged in deep reflection on the surprising circumstance of “dead
bullocks, that make incursions upon living men.”
_Vivos homines mortui incursant boves!_
[Illustration:
St. Edmund, Bishop of Canterbury, while studying at Paris, was
tormented by a very beautiful young woman: summoning her to his
study, he administered such a Flagellation that her body was covered
with weals.
]
But it was not always upon their slaves only that masters, among the
Romans, inflicted the punishment of flagellation: they sometimes found
means to serve in the same manner the young men of free condition, who
insinuated themselves into their houses, with a design to court their
wives. As the most favourable disguise on such occasions, was to be
dressed in slave’s clothes, because a man thus habited was enabled to
get into the house, and go up and down without being noticed, rakes
engaged in amorous pursuits, usually chose to make use of it; but when
the husband either happened to discover them, or had had previous
information of the appointment given by his faithful spouse, he feigned
to mistake the man for a runaway slave, or some strange slave who had
got into his house to commit theft, and treated him accordingly. Indeed
the opportunity was a most favourable one for revenge; and if to this
consideration we add that of the severe temper of the Romans, and the
jealous disposition that has always prevailed in that country, we shall
easily conclude that such an opportunity, when obtained, was seldom
suffered to escape, and that many a Roman spark, caught in the above
disguise, and engaged in the laudable pursuit of seducing his
neighbour’s wife, has, with a _centupondium_ to his feet, been sadly
rewarded for his ingenuity. A misfortune of that kind actually befell
Sallust the Historian. He was caught in a similar intercourse with
Faustina, wife to Milo, and daughter of the Dictator Sylla. The husband
caused him to be soundly lashed (_loris bene cæsum_;) nor did he release
him till he had made him pay a considerable sum of money. The fact is
related by Aulus Gellius, who had extracted it from Varro. To it was
very probably owing the violent part which Sallust afterwards took
against Milo, while the latter was under prosecution for slaying the
Tribune Clodius, and the tumult he raised on that occasion, which
prevented Cicero from delivering the speech he had prepared.
An allusion is made to the above practices in one of Horace’s satires.
He supposes in it, that his slave, availing himself of the opportunity
of the _Saturnalia_, to speak his mind freely to him, gives him a
lecture on the bad courses in which he thinks him engaged, and uses,
among others, the following arguments.
“When you have stripped off the marks of your dignity, your equestrian
ring, and your whole Roman dress, and from a man invested with the
office of judge, shew yourself at once under the appearance of the slave
Dama; disgraced as you are, and hiding your perfumed head under your
cloak, you are not the man whom you feign to be: you are at least
introduced full of terror, and your whole frame shakes through the
struggles of two opposite passions. In fact, what advantage is it to
you, whether you are cut to pieces with rods, or slaughtered with iron
weapons?”
The above uncontrolled power of inflicting punishments on their slaves,
enjoyed by masters in Rome, was at last abused by them to the greatest
degree. The smallest faults committed in their families by slaves, such
as breaking glasses, seasoning dishes too much, or the like, exposed
them to grievous punishments; and it even was no unusual thing for
masters (as we may judge from the description of _Trimalcion’s_
entertainment in the satire of Petronius) to order such of their slaves
as had been guilty of faults of the above kind, to be stripped, and
whipped in the presence of their guests, when they happened to entertain
any at their houses.
Women in particular seemed to have abused this power of flagellation in
a strange manner; which caused express provisions to be made, at
different times, in order to restrain them; of which the canon above
quoted is an instance. It was often sufficient, to induce the Roman
ladies to cause their slaves to be whipped, that they were dissatisfied
with the present state of their own charms; or, as Juvenal expresses it,
that their nose displeased them: and when they happened to fancy
themselves neglected by their husbands, then indeed their slaves fared
badly. This latter observation of Juvenal, Dryden, in his translation of
that author’s satires, has expressed by the following lines:
“For if over night the husband has been slack,
Or counterfeited sleep, or turn’d his back,
Next day, be sure, the servants go to wrack.”
Here follows the literal transaction of the passage of Juvenal, in which
he describes in a very lively manner, the havoc which an incensed woman
usually made on the above occasion. “If her husband has, the night
before, turned his back on her, woe to her waiting woman; the dressing
maids lay down their tunics; the errand slave is charged with having
returned too late; the straps break on the back of some; others redden
under the lash of the leather scourge, and others, of the twisted
parchment.”
The wantonness of power was carried still farther by the Roman ladies,
if we may credit the same Juvenal. It was a customary thing with several
among them, when they proposed to have their hair dressed both with
nicety and expedition, to have the dressing maid who was charged with
that care, stripped naked to the waist, ready for flagellation, in case
she became guilty of any fault or mistake, in performing her task. The
following is the passage in Juvenal on that subject. “For, if she has
determined to be dressed more nicely than usual, and is in haste, being
expected in the public gardens, the unfortunate Psechas then dresses her
head, with her own hair in the utmost disorder, and her shoulders and
breasts bare. Why is that ringlet too high? The leather thongs instantly
punish the crime of a hair, and an ill-shaped curl.”
These abuses which masters, in Rome, made of the power they possessed
over their slaves, were at last carried to such a pitch, either by
making them wantonly suffer death, or torturing them in numberless
different ways, that, in the beginning of the reign of the Emperors, it
was found necessary to restrain their license.
Under the reign of Claudius (for it is not clear whether any provision
to that effect was made under Augustus) it was ordained, that masters
who forsook their slaves when sick, should lose all right over them, in
case they recovered; and that those who deliberately put them to death,
should be banished from Rome.
Under the Emperor Adrian, the cruelties exercised by Umbricia, a Roman
lady, over her female slaves, caused new laws to be made on that
subject, as well as the former ones to be put in force, and Umbricia
was, by a rescript of the Emperor, banished for five years.
New laws to the same ends were likewise made under the following
Emperors, among which civilians make particular mention of a
constitution of Antoninus Pius (_Divus Pius_); and in subsequent times,
the church also employed its authority to prevent the like excesses, as
we may see from the canon above recited (_Si quæ domina, &c._) which was
framed in the Council held at Elvira, a small town in Spain, that has
been since destroyed. But the disorder was of such a nature as was not
to be cured so long as the custom itself of slavery was allowed to
subsist; and it has been remedied at last, only by the thorough
abolition of an usage which was a continual insult on humanity: an
advantage which (to be, once at least, very serious in the course of
this learned and useful work) we are indebted for, to the establishment
of Christianity, whatever other evils certain writers may reproach it
with having occasioned.