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five The Judicial Torture of Slaves Chorus: He would be iron-minded and made of stone, indeed, Prometheus, who did not sympathize with your sufferings. I would not have chosen to see them, and now that I see, my heart is pained. Prometheus: Yes, to my friends I am pitiable to see. — aeschylus[?] Prometheus Bound 242–246 (trans. Grene) The immortal Prometheus stands shackled to towering rocks in desolate Scythia, exposed to the bright blaze of the sun. An adamantine wedge pierces his chest and pins him to the spot. He is there because Zeus is punishing him for giving to mankind the gift of fire. For the duration of Prometheus Bound, every character that enters the stage must respond somehow to the spectacle of his suffering. Hephaestus, compelled to inflict pain upon kin and companion (39), expresses anguish. Kinsman and friend Oceanus (288–297) grieves with Prometheus and wants to intercede; the daughters of Oceanus feel tearful sympathy that springs from their philia (128). But Kratos, or Might, is pitiless. The mortal Io, who suffers torments of her own, barely notices Prometheus’ pain, whereas Hermes, whom Prometheus scorns as a servant of the gods (954, 983), calls him sick and obstinate for refusing to divulge the fate of Zeus. Prometheus himself observes that it is friends who find him pitiable to look upon (246): kai mēn philois eleinos eisoran egō. He expects his enemies to deride him (159).1 Only a limited parallel can be drawn between the mythological torture of Prometheus and the actual torture of slaves in classical Athens. Prometheus the judicial torture of slaves 147 is a god, not a slave. He enjoys divine stature and a kind of willful autonomy evenwhenboundtoacraggyrock.SotheattitudeofHephaestus,whofixesthe shackles and the wedge, cannot resemble the attitude of real torturers, whose task it was to rack or whip the most wretched members of Athenian society. Yet Prometheus Bound explores the brute application of force, and it is important to note that the original goal of Zeus, which was to punish Prometheus, becomes superimposed with a new goal: to extract knowledge from him. Turning to prose sources, not a single detailed scene of penal or judicial torture exists, but reported instances of it are listed in Table 5.2 Earlier chapters have explored how a good person was expected to behave when confronted with a sick friend or relative, a neighbor in need of ransom money, a street crime in progress, or a debilitated war comrade unable to keep up with the ranks. Such situations tested individual mettle in ways we cannot know, but they also tested societal ties of kinship, friendship, and shared citizenship. The citizens of Athens enjoyed certain rights and privileges, among them the right to have families and develop friendships. They were bound together by intricate connections and therefore owed one another a certain level of concern or care. This chapter is different from the rest in that it offers a powerful counter-example to philia. It starkly confronts the plight of the slave, who, by definition, lacks such rights and privileges—who cannot marry, who cannot have legitimate children, who cannot enjoy socially sanctioned bonds of friendship. A comprehensive analysis of emotional responses and moral attitudes toward slaves in ancient Athens would require a separate book, and the present chapter looks at the treatment of slaves in only a single and extreme situation: judicial slave torture. This situation, this type of suffering, is fundamentally different from those considered up until this point: Athenians obviously were expected not to intervene in the judicial torture of slaves. To the contrary, they were sometimes called upon to witness it. Slavery itself was an indispensable feature of Athenian society, and slave torture was intrinsic to the Athenian legal system. Yet questions remain. How did slave torture fit into the moral universe of the Athenians? How did they justify the practice? Were they ever troubled by it? How did they reconcile the cruelty and injustice of this practice with their civic ideology of kindness and fairness? Did pity or empathy have any place in this sphere of everyday life, or were slaves faced with torture inexorably shut off from humane sentiment? This chapter, then, scrutinizes the line between freedom and slavery in Athens. It reviews the practice of judicial torture and slave torture, and the rhetoric surrounding it, and it offers a close reading of two remarkable [18.117.196.184] Project MUSE (2024-04-24 04:25...

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