Greek and Roman Slaveries. Eftychia Bathrellou
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Bind this man! Are you still standing there? Untie first the rope from the bucket. Fast! – If I don’t make an example of you to the whole country with my beatings, don’t count me a woman. – Isn’t he, rather, like the proverbial Phrygian, who is the better for a beating? – I am the one responsible for this, Gastron, I, who set you up among men. But if I erred back then, you won’t find Bitinna a fool now, as you think – not anymore. – Come, you, by yourself! Take his cloak off and bind him.
Gastron: No, no, Bitinna, I beseech you as your suppliant.
Bitinna: Take it off, I say. You must realize that you are a slave and that I put down three minae for you. I wish the day that brought you here had never dawned. – Pyrrhias, you’ll be sorry. I see you doing everything but binding him. Tie his elbows together tightly; saw them off with the rope.
Gastron: Bitinna, let me off this error. I’m human. I erred. But if you catch me again doing something not to your liking, have me tattooed.
Bitinna: Don’t try to make up to me like this. Do it to Amphytaia, with whom you roll about and […].21
Pyrrhias: I’ve bound him fast for you.
Bitinna: See to it that he doesn’t untie himself without your noticing. Take him to the executioner’s, to Hermon, and tell him to strike a thousand blows into his back and a thousand to his belly.
Gastron: Will you have me killed, Bitinna, without first examining whether this is true or false?
Bitinna: When you yourself just said, with your own tongue, “Bitinna, let me off this error?”
Gastron: I wanted to cool off your anger.
Bitinna: You, are you still standing staring? Aren’t you taking him where I’m telling you to? – Kydilla, crush the snout of this rogue. – And you, Drechon, do me the favor and follow wherever this man here might lead you. – Slave girl, give a rug to this cursed fellow, to cover his unmentionable … tail, so that he won’t become a spectacle walking naked through the market-place. – For the second time, Pyrrhias, I’m telling you once more: you are to tell Hermon to inflict a thousand here and a thousand there. Have you heard? If you stray from what I say by one iota, you yourself will pay both the principal and the interest. Go on now. And don’t take him by Mikkale’s but by the direct road. – Just as well I remembered: Slave girl, call them, run and call them, before they get far.
Kydilla: Pyrrhias! You wretch! You deaf one! She’s calling you. Ah! But you look as if it is a grave-robber you pull to pieces – not your fellow-slave. Look how violently you are now dragging him to be tortured! Ah, Pyrrhias! It is you whom Kydilla will see, with these very two eyes, in five days, at Antidoros’, rubbing your ankles with those Achaean chains that you recently shed.
Bitinna: Hey, you. Come back here, keeping this man bound exactly as when you were taking him away. Call me Kosis the tatooer and ask him to come here, bringing needles and ink. – In one go, you must turn … colorful. – Gag him and hang him, like the … honorable Daos!
Kydilla: No, mummy. Let him off now. I beg you. As your Batyllis may live, and you may see her entering her husband’s house and take her children in your arms. This one error….
Bitinna: Kydilla, don’t give me grief, or I will run out of the house. Shall I let him off? This seventh-generation slave? And which woman won’t justly spit on my face when she sees me? No, by the Lady Tyrant, our goddess! But since he, although human, does not know himself, he will now find out, with this inscription on his forehead.
Kydilla: But it is the twentieth, and the Gerenia festival is in four days.
Bitinna: I’ll let you off the hook now. And be grateful to this girl here, whom I cherish no less than Batyllis, as I reared her in my own arms. But when we have poured our honeyless libations to the dead, you will then celebrate a second “honeyless” festival.
What is the relationship between Gastron and Bitinna? Why does Bitinna want to punish Gastron?
How does Gastron attempt to avoid punishment?
How does Kydilla try to get Gastron off the hook? What does her strategy tell us about master–slave relations?
How are relationships among slaves depicted in this passage?
What is the relationship between Kydilla and Bitinna? How do both sides use their relationship to present their arguments and achieve their aims?
To which genre does the passage belong? What is the point of presenting a mistress that has sexual relationships with her slave?
Can we use this passage to understand slavery as an asymmetrical negotiation between masters and slaves?
1.20 Galen, How to Detect Malingerers (Quomodo simulantes morbus deprehendi), pp. 114,14–115,14 Deighgräber and Kudlien22 (XIX.4–5 Kühn): Greek Medical Treatise (Late Second/Early Third Century CE)
Literature: Schlange-Schöningen 2003: 255–90, 2006.
I must now recall what has already been said, namely that experience together with resourcefulness can detect those who make false claims, including those who pretend to be suffering from severe pain. When another man claimed that he had extremely severe pain in his knee – this man was a slave, one of these who run beside their master in his journeys – I noticed that his pain was a sham. What made me suspicious was both the fact that his master would set out that day and the character of the lad; he was the kind who are capable of shamming in such things. I also asked one of his fellow-slaves who disliked him whether the lad had a liaison with some woman, which would naturally make him wish to stay put when the master set off on a longer journey, into the country, away from home. And this was indeed the case. These things I found out using common resourcefulness. However, there was a huge swelling on the lad’s knee, who would astound a lay man but would be obvious to one with specialist experience as caused by thapsia.23 This is the result of medical experience, not something that a layperson can resolve with his resourcefulness. Another result of medical experience was the discovery that the lad had not previously suffered or done anything that was capable of suddenly causing such a swelling. For he had not run more than normal, nor had he been wounded by someone else, nor had he got hurt by leaping over a ditch. Moreover, there were no signs of blood excess in his body, nor had his earlier regimen included excessive consumption of food and drink or a sedentary lifestyle. On top, when we asked him what type of pain he felt, he was slow to respond, did not give a straight answer and contradicted himself. So, when his master went out, I put a drag on his knee, which does not at all extinguish pain but is capable of cooling the heat produced by thapsia. After one hour, I had him admitting that he felt no pain at all.
What is the job of the malingering slave? Are you surprised that the master calls a famous doctor like Galen for such a slave?
Why does Galen suspect that the slave is lying?
What does he suspect the reason to be?
How does he try to find out the truth? Does he ask the master?
What can we learn about slave life and relations among slaves from this passage?
Are the slaves mere instruments for the purposes of their masters?
How does acknowledging slave agency change our understanding of slavery?
1.21 Galen, The Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato (De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis), V.7.64–66, pp. 352,20–354,2 De Lacy24 (V.497–98 Kühn): Greek Medical Treatise (Late Second/Early Third Century CE)