Prisons and punishments in the classical world
The Athenians put people to death by:
Hemlock was used as a poison to put people to death. Most famously, the philosopher Socrates was punished in this way in 399 BCE for corrupting the youth of Athens with radical ideas.
Instead of punishing people directly, Roman emperors often preferred to:
There are a number of examples of emperors driving people to suicide. The emperor Nero notoriously demanded that his former guardian and tutor, Seneca, kill himself because of his alleged involvement in an anti-imperial plot. According to the Roman historian Tacitus, this charge was ‘especially pleasing’ to the bloodthirsty emperor.
The Romans punished those guilty of killing their parents by:
The Romans punished parent-killers by tying them up in a sack along with a dog, a cockerel, a viper and an ape, and then throwing the whole lot into a river or the sea. This sounds extreme - and bizarre - but respect for one’s family was a key element of society in Roman times.
In Athens, cases were judged by:
There were no judges in Athens, and the jurors were volunteers who were paid a very small fee for their time. Jurors voted for whether a person was guilty or innocent by placing a pebble in an urn. Like today, the allocation of jurors to a particular case was random and remained a secret until the day of the case, in order to avoid bribery or corruption.
During a trial in Athens, defendants were given the opportunity to:
The defence speech made by an Athenian was called an 'Apology', but this was not an apology in the modern sense of the word. As part of this, they could propose a penalty if they were found guilty. The jury would vote on the penalty proposed by each side.
In Rome, slaves could be punished by their masters:
Slaves were seen as the property of their masters, to be bought and sold at will. They, therefore, had very few rights. Roman literature is full of throwaway references to punishing slaves by beating them, suggesting it was a very common practice. The poet, Martial, for example, says that he would beat his cook if his dinner wasn’t tasty enough.
The Athenians had a system of punishment known as ostracism. This involved:
When an Athenian wanted to ostracise a fellow citizen, they had to write that person’s name on a piece of broken pottery (called an ‘ostracon’). If they got enough votes, that person then had to leave Athens within ten days and couldn’t return for the next ten years. Archaeologists often dig up piles of ostracon, discarded after the fateful vote was cast.
The prison in Athens was used as:
The Athenians used their prison to hold people prior to execution - there was very little sense of imprisonment as a form of correction. Plato’s account of Socrates’ imprisonment implies that it was common for people to run away, and go into voluntary exile in another state, rather than die.