55. Captivity in antiquity: let's follow up on ransom
and oh yay, the experience of female captives
If this were AO3, we’d be tagging for “canon-typical violence” as well as sexual assault.
In my previous post on this topic, I mentioned how I'd started to investigate captivity in antiquity, and the return from it. I need to clear up something from that post first, though.
I'd discussed this line from the law code of Gortyn:
αἰ κ’ ἐδδυσ̣[άμενον] πέρα̣[νδε] ἐκς ἀλλοπολίας ὐπ’ ἀν-άνκας ἐκόμενος κελομένοˉ τις λύσεται, ἐπὶ το͂ι ἀλλυσαμέοˉι ἔˉμεˉν πρίν κ’ ἀποδο͂ι τὸ ἐπιβάλλον.
"Anyone who has been called on for aid, who ransoms out of foreign cities those who were forcibly got away abroad in order to be sold, the ransomed ones belong to him until they pay the debt." (My translation).
"If anyone, bound by necessity, should get a man gone away to a strange place set free from a foreign city at his own request, he shall be in the power of the one who ransomed him until he pay what is due." (Willetts 1967).
Then I made an error, because I was sleepy: I said, There is another passage about how if a man is ransomed but can prove it wasn't at his request, he doesn't owe anything.
This was wrong. The text in fact specifies that it's a matter for a judge to decide, what and whether the ransomee owes their ransomer.
I want to clear this up, because this passage suggests that anyone who is ransomed definitely owes something, which has a bearing on the question of status after the ransomee's return.
With that cleared up, let’s move on to new material!
The question of ransom led me to Joshua Sosin's "Ransom at Athens", a thorough discussion of a passage of one of the law court speeches of Demosthenes, who lived in Athens between 384 and 322BC, during the wars attending the rise of Philip of Macedon. The passage that concerns Sosin is 53.11 (English translation at link):
“σὺ οὖν μοι,” ἔφη, “πόρισον τὸ ἐλλεῖπον τοῦ ἀργυρίου, πρὶν τὰς τριάκονθʼ ἡμέρας παρελθεῖν, ἵνα μὴ ὅ τε ἀποδέδωκα,” ἔφη, “τὰς χιλίας δραχμάς, ἀπόληται, καὶ αὐτὸς ἀγώγιμος γένωμαι. συλλέξας δʼ,” ἔφη, “τὸν ἔρανον, ἐπειδὰν τοὺς ξένους ἀπαλλάξω, σοὶ ἀποδώσω ὃ ἄν μοι χρήσῃς. οἶσθα δʼ,” ἔφη, “ὅτι καὶ οἱ νόμοι κελεύουσιν τοῦ λυσαμένου ἐκ τῶν πολεμίων εἶναι τὸν λυθέντα, ἐὰν μὴ ἀποδιδῷ τὰ λύτρα.”
Sosin's argument hinges on the word, κελεύουσιν, in the phrase ὅτι καὶ οἱ νόμοι κελεύουσιν τοῦ λυσαμένου ἐκ τῶν πολεμίων εἶναι τὸν λυθέντα, ἐὰν μὴ ἀποδιδῷ τὰ λύτρα.
"For the laws even [bid, command, urge, exhort] that the one ransomed from the enemies belongs to the ransomer, if he should not pay the ransom."
Does this law of enslavement apply to the ransomee in this case? Sosin's argument is complex and ultimately amounts to no (he wasn't ransomed by fellow Athenians to whom the law applies, and he'd already achieved his freedom through a loan, so he's exaggerating), but in the course of it Sosin enumerates several ways that being freed from captivity shows up in the epigraphic and literary evidence, and concludes that what is in play is in fact manumission.
Sosin discusses and argues for six scenarios in which this can be seen to occur:
purchase followed by a free gift of manumission;
purchase followed by manumission, the price of the manumission lent by the purchaser to the ransomee on condition of repayment, with penalties for failure to repay coming under the laws and customs of contract for debt;
purchase followed by manumission, the price of the manumission to be repaid in labour (indenture, debt-bondage) but with the ransomee no longer a chattel slave whose status is inheritable, with penalties for default under debt laws;
purchase followed by an agreement for manumission on the payment of a sum of money: in this case the ransomee remains a chattel slave until the money is paid, and is afterwards free (though the ransomee may then owe money to someone else);
purchase followed by an agreement for manumission after a term of service: in this case again the ransomee remains a chattel slave until the term is done, though with perhaps with certain contracted freedoms. This interpretation hinges on Sosin's view of paramone, which other scholars view as a post-manumission obligation, in which failure to carry out the obligated service leads to re-enslavement. (This is a thing that occurs in later Roman slavery: but Sosin is persuasive (JSTOR link) about the Greek binary view of slave and free.1)
purchase followed by an agreement for manumission after a money payment and a term of service: again this hinges on Sosin's view of paramone, and again means that the ransomee remains a chattel slave until the term of service is complete.
If we disagree with Sosin's view of paramone, as some older scholarship does, and view paramone obligations as offering a conditional freedom (the person is no longer a chattel slave but is liable to re-enslavement if they fail the conditions of service, in circumstances which may well be no better than continued slavery: a half-in, half-out sort of status), then cases 5. and 6. instead afford a revocable freedom.
Either way, Sosin's argument is that the ransomee is in fact a chattel slave after their capture, at least in war (which agrees with a number of statements in the ancient sources), whatever about non-state piracy. The circumstances under which they may be set free are the same as for any chattel slave: if they are purchased by their fellow country-person, then that purchaser may impose such conditions upon their release as seems good to them.
Sosin also draws attention to the fragmentary law code from Miletos, which imposes reciprocal obligations citizens of Phaistos and Miletos who come into possession of war captives from the other city. If the citizen has asked to be purchased in order to be ransomed home, then the citizen must repay the ransom. If the citizen has not asked to be purchased, the purchaser is obliged to not purchase him (or presumably otherwise let him go, if it can be proved that he didn't ask for ransom). Sosin likewise cites a fragmentary law imposing the same reciprocal obligations on citizens of Delphi and Pelene. So allies have rules about buying each other's citizens to keep in slavery.
Nikostratos, the ransomee in the speech of Demosthenes mentioned above, returns to Athens as a free citizen man. He ends up in court on account of the debt he incurred to a fellow-citizen in the course of buying his way out of the initial ransom-debt. (As does his brother, the primary target of the speech.) He must be a free citizen, as Demosthenes never suggests otherwise and Demosthenes's speech was written for Apollodorus, the prosecutor. If he remained in some lesser status, then that would be ammunition against him. So return from captivity can and does entail a return to previous citizen status for at least some ransomed Greek citizen men.
(I am currently leaving aside prisoner exchanges and potential returns of prisoners at the end of a war, on account of I haven't yet got to grips with any material that treats of that in detail.)
The question may be more fraught for Greek women of citizen status.2
For one thing, the context in which the largest number of Greek women and girls are taken prisoner is after military defeat has resulted in the sack of a city or town, or in the course of enemy forces harrowing the countryside. Some will have be taken by pirates or brigands while travelling, as is also the case for men, or in pirate raids on coastlines for the purpose of plunder and slave-taking. But women, girls, and young boys are taken prisoner in their largest numbers in defeat, in circumstances where a great number of their adult male relatives have been killed rather than captured.
This process of capture is attended by exemplary, terroristic violence. Kathy L. Gaca discusses the violence behind the Greek word that is sometimes given as "andropodise" in English, in a paper that aims at linguistic precision ("The Andrapodizing of War Captives in Greek Historical Memory"). The unwarlike populace is rounded up by violent means -- murder either incidental or exemplary, wounding with blades, breaking bones and beating with spear hafts and other blunt instruments, literal man-handling -- and the women, girls, and young boys are separated from elders and toddlers. (In his life of Agesilaus, Xenophon praises Agesilaus for taking steps to keep alive young children discarded by slave-merchants in the wake of his armies as well as elders so that they "might not fall a prey to dogs or wolves". See 1.20-1.22, English text. This is enlightened self-interest: depopulated lands will not support an army on campaign.) Exemplary torture may take place, and the killing of adolescent boys and men of age to carry arms who have been taken prisoner is also attested.
The women, including girls too young to marry, are subject in addition to rape and other forms of sexual violence. (Gaca has another interesting paper on just this topic, again primarily investigating a commonplace phrase in discussions of war in antiquity from the linguistic angle: "Telling the Girls from the Boys and Children: Interpreting Παȋδεϛ in the Sexual Violence of Populace-Ravaging Ancient Warfare") This sexual violence can sometimes be extreme enough to result in death, presumably from wounds inflicted during it. Vaginal rape is considered normal: anal and oral rape far from unimaginable. Gaca cites Pausanias 1.23.6: the English translation takes reference in euphemism ("Her the Satyrs outraged not only in the usual way, but also in a most shocking manner"), but Pausianas is rather more specific: "The Satyrs assaulted (or "outraged," ὑβρίζειν) her not only in the established way but all over her body."3
The women and girls who survive this process are then distributed among the victors, or sold to merchants who take them to sell at larger markets. That enslaved women are subject to repeated and ongoing sexual exploitation is evident.
The evidence from manumission inscriptions at Delphi includes one woman, Laodika, whose path towards freedom includes τ[ὰ] λύτρα ἐκ τῶν πολεμίων, “ransom from enemies,” but who is required to remain with one of her owners, Timandros, for the length of Timandros's life. (Link to Greek text.) (I don't think it's an interpretative stretch to see Laodika as Timandros's παλλακίς, his concubine.)
Women are taken captive en masse in circumstances where ransom may be less likely, simply on account of who survives to be able to ransom them and of what resources remain to the survivors. And given the male Greek concern in antiquity with the sexual fidelity and chastity of women, it may be possible (I have no evidence either way, at least not yet) that ransoming one's enslaved and sexually exploited wife, if one survives a military defeat that resulted in her capture, is perhaps less pressing than seeking one's other relatives.
There are several mentions of cities that have been sacked, polities that have been wiped out, and then had some part of their population brought back out of slavery and resettled in their original territory, but given the bias of our sources it's difficult (impossible in all cases? or just most? I haven't tracked all mentions yet) to say whether the freeing and resettling was done relatively randomly across men, women, and children, previously rich or previously poor, or whether some part of the enslaved population was prioritised for restoration. I can make some guesses, but so far that's it.
I have encountered so far two specific mentions of individual women in the literary sources who are restored from the status of war-captive to free woman -- women who were captured and enslaved, as opposed to given or taken as hostages. They are both women of aristocratic status, and neither are Greek. (Or Roman, for that matter.)
The first, a Persian noblewoman, does not even appear in a Greek text, but in Q. Curtius Rufus's Latin History of Alexander. A mopey Alexander has "captive women singing" at his entertainments after he's taken Susa and Persepolis.
"Among these women the king himself [Alexander] noticed one more sad than the others, who modestly resisted those who would lead her forward. She was of surpassing beauty and her modesty enhanced her beauty; with downcast eyes and with her face covered so far as she was allowed, she aroused in the king a suspicion that she was of too high birth to be exhibited amid entertainments at a banquet. On being accordingly asked who she was, she replied that she was the granddaughter of Ochus4, who had lately been king of the Persians, being the daughter of his son, and that she had been the wife of Hystaspes5. He had been a kinsman of Darius and himself the commander of a great army. There still lingered in the king's mind slight remains of his former disposition; and so, respecting the ill-fortune of a lady born of royal stock, and so famous a name as that of Ochus, he not only gave orders that the captive should be set free, but also that her property should be returned to her; likewise that her husband should be looked for, in order that when he had been found, he might restore his wife to him. Moreover, on the following day he ordered Hephaestion to cause all the prisoners to be brought to the palace. There, having inquired into the rank of each one, he separated from the common herd those who were of high birth. There were a thousand of these; among them was Oxathres, brother of Darius."6 (6.2.6-10)7
I think, even if this interlude is an invention of Quintus Curtius Rufus, several things are important to note explicitly here:
Entertainers, even free entertainers, are frequently considered sexually available in the ancient Greek world.
The unnamed noblewoman here is a war captive and has not been separated from other captive women. In keeping with the common operations of captive-taking and the assumptions of the ancient sources, we may take as given that she was repeatedly raped at the start of her captivity, very possibly by multiple men, and is subject to ongoing sexual violence.
The text -- either Rufus or his sources -- is at pains to establish that this noblewoman is striving to keep her modesty. (Her pudor, her sense of shame and/or honour.)
This sense of shame/honour is inextricably linked to her birth status as the granddaughter of the most elevated person in the kingdom, a king: it is the mechanism by which her high birth status and thus the inappropriateness of a good/just/generous king (the "former disposition" of Alexander) allowing her to remain in a state of chattel slavery.
Her restoration to freedom and therefore to sexual respectability goes hand in hand with her prospective restoration to her husband, if he can be found.
The other incident where a female war-captive is restored to freedom is recounted in Livy (writing a century after the event) and in Plutarch (writing some two centuries after), and apparently in a lost text of Polybius, who was contemporary enough to actually meet the woman in question.
"It came to pass that Chiomara, the wife of Ortiagon, was made a prisoner of war along with the rest of the women at the time when the Romans under Gnaeus overcame in battle the Galatians in Asia.8 The officer who obtained possession of her used his good fortune as soldiers do, and dishonoured her9. He was, naturally, an ignorant man with no self-control when it came to either pleasure or money. He fell a victim, however, to his love of money, and when a very large sum in gold had been mutually agreed upon as the price for the woman, he brought her to exchange for the ransom to a place where a river, flowing between, formed a boundary. When the Galatians had crossed and given him the money and received Chiomara, she, by a nod, indicated to one man that he should smite the Roman as he was affectionately taking leave of her. And when the man obediently struck off the Roman's head, she picked it up and, wrapping it in the folds of her garment, departed. When she came to her husband and threw the head down before him, he said in amazement, ‘A noble thing, dear wife, is fidelity.’ ‘Yes.’ said she, ‘but it is a nobler thing that only one man be alive who has been intimate with me.’
Polybius says that he had a conversation with this woman in Sardis, and that he admired her good sense and intelligence." [Bravery of Women, 22.]
Livy's account does not differ by much, though it offers more details.10 The English text is here.
In this case, we may note that the aristocratic woman in question can arrange for her own ransom, per Livy, through a messenger (previously one of her own slaves) released for the purpose. Livy is at pains to suggest the officer is an outlier in his willingness to take advantage of aristocratic female captives. Do we believe Livy in this? I'm not sure we should.
(The officer might be an outlier in his greedy stupidity, though.)
Things to take away from this incident:
Chiomara is the wife of a Galatian chieftain, a noblewoman of the highest order in her own society.
She arranges for her own ransom through a prisoner, a former slave, released as a messenger.
The ransom arrangements appear to be fairly ad-hoc, and not as official as the Roman officer's commander would have preferred them to be: the only participants in the exchange are two Galatians, the Roman officer (a centurion according to Livy) and the prisoner herself. More, the officer's own troops are kept in the dark, possibly to keep them from agitating for a share of the ransom money.
Chiomara arranges to have her capture and rape immediately avenged by the two Galatians who come to ransom her.
It is this immediate revenge, as much as her status or her return to freedom and her husband, that leads to this incident being sufficiently memorable as to be acknowledged in several ancient historians: she shows up in Valerius Maximus (6.1, "On Chastity") and in Florus's Epitome11 as well.
The two incidents offer two very different paths to release from captivity, though both of them rely on the captive's high pre-captivity status.12 In neither case do we know much of anything about what became of these women later, though Plutarch says that Polybius met Chiomara in Sardis, which is outside the region ruled by the Galatian people even after their defeat and reduction to a client state by Rome. We can tentatively assume that she remained of high status, since Polybius (and thus Plutarch) would likely have mentioned a significant change in her circumstances.
I'm not touching abduction-captivity-sexual-assault in the Greek novel yet. Sticking with not-wholly-fiction so far, I have arrived at a couple of conclusions:
The status of men returning from captivity can vary depending on how they managed their return, including who paid for it.
Aristocratic women in aristocratic societies may return from captivity to recognition of their prior free, aristocratic status, especially if they display appropriate shame-honour behaviours during captivity or if they appropriately avenge the insult to their honour represented by rape.
However, the experience of women as war-captives is defined by sexual violence in a way that men's experience is not (or at least, is not in nearly so visibly a way).
There's a bit in either Polybius or Livy (which I read two days ago and forgot to note down, so citation pending) set during the Punic Wars, in which the Iberian peoples give hostages to the Carthaginians, and the Roman general explains that when those hostages fell into his hands instead, he found them being treated like "slaves and war-captives" (if I'm remembering it right, it was only in translation) rather than hostages. (Was there something about dishonour?) This potentially implies that the dividing line between "hostage" and "slave/war-captive" rests in the degree of explicit sexual violence to which the (female) prisoner is subject.
Going back to the questions with which I started, I don't think we've got anything like close to good answers yet.13 But the outline of how difficult it is to get to grips with the evidence is becoming a lot clearer.
1I like his argument, it simplifies things for me. That's no reason to take it at face value, though.
2Greek women as a rule didn't have the ability to participate publicly in political affairs as men did, except in certain aristocratic contexts. A woman does not have the same rights of citizenship as a man, and while a man can often pass on his citizen status to his children with a non-citizen woman (the best-known exception to this is at Athens, after Pericle's citizenship law around 450BC), the vast majority of the time a woman cannot pass on her citizen status to her children with a non-citizen man. (There may be exceptions: I do not know of them.) So it's not really accurate to talk about "citizen women," I think, but "women of citizen status" is perhaps an awkward workaround that implies the matter is more complicated.
3This is a mythological anecdote, but it offers evidence for the extent of Greek imagination of sexual violence.
4Otherwise known to history as Darius II, reigned 423BCE-405/4BCE.
5Hystaspes is a name that shows up several times in the family of the kings of Persia.
6The text doesn't say anything about setting the other prisoners of high birth free, apart from the king's granddaughter and her husband, we should be careful to note, though it is quite possible that they enjoyed something closer to hostageship than slavery thereafter.
7Inter quas unam rex ipse conspexit maestiorem quam ceteras et producentibus eam verecunde reluctantem . Excellens erat forma, et formam pudor honestabat; deiectis in terram oculis et, quantum licebat , ore velato , suspicionem praebuit regi nobiliorem esse, quam ut inter convivales ludos deberet ostendi. I feel that Rolfe's English translation is potentially understating the level of implicit violence and humiliation here. My Latin is fairly bad, so I'm not terribly confident, but I think you could translate the first sentence as: "Among them the king himself observed one more dejected than the others, and who ashamedly struggled against those who led her forward." The Latin supports "ashamedly" just as well as "modestly," and "struggled against" as well as "resisted," but the English of each implies a different emotional reading of the scene.
8189 BCE.
9 ὁ δὲ λαβών αὐτὴν ταξίαρχος ἐχρήσατο τῇ τύχῃ στρατιωτικῶς καὶ κατῄσχυνεν. We should note again the way in which translation choices can emphasise or downplay violence: λαμβάνω, here in participle form as λαβών, is a word that can be translated "take" or "receive," but it can also be translated as "seize," "take by violence," "carry off" (as of plunder), and "capture." So "The officer, the one who seized her violently, proclaimed his good luck soldier-fashion and dishonoured her." Likewise τὸν Ῥωμαῖον ἀσπαζόμενον αὐτὴν καὶ φιλοφρονούμενον, rendered "the Roman [as he was] affectionately taking leave of her" by our 1931 translator, can also be translated as "the Roman [as he was] clinging to her embrace," or perhaps more plausibly, "[as he was] kissing/caressing her in farewell." Or more colloquially and with absolutely zero charity towards the Roman in question, "having a last grope goodbye."
10 supererat bellum integrum cum Tectosagis. ad eos profectus consul tertiis castris Ancyram, nobilem in illis locis urbem, pervenit, unde hostes paulo plus decem milia aberant. ubi cum stativa essent, facinus memorabile a captiva factum est. Orgiagontis reguli uxor forma eximia custodiebatur inter plures captivas; cui custodiae centurio praeerat et libidinis et avaritiae militaris. is primo animum temptavit; quem cum abhorrentem a voluntario videret stupro, corpori, quod servum fortuna erat, vim fecit. deinde ad leniendam indignitatem iniuriae spem reditus ad suos mulieri facit, et ne eam quidem, ut amans, gratuitam. certo auri pondere pactus, ne quem suorum conscium haberet, ipsi permittit, ut, quem vellet, unum ex captivis nuntium ad suos mitteret. locum prope flumen constituit, quo duo ne plus necessarii captivae cum auro venirent nocte insequenti ad eam 1 accipiendam. forte ipsius mulieris servus inter captivos eiusdem custodiae erat. hunc nuntium primis tenebris extra stationes centurio educit. nocte insequenti et duo necessarii mulieris ad constitutum locum et centurio cum captiva venit. ubi cum aurum ostenderent, quod summam talenti Attici — tanti enim pepigerat — expleret, mulier lingua sua, stringerent ferrum et centurionem pensantem aurum occiderent, imperavit. iugulati praecisum caput ipsa involutum veste ferens ad virum Orgiagontem, qui ab Olympo domum refugerat, pervenit; quem priusquam complecteretur, caput centurionis ante pedes eius abiecit, mirantique, cuiusnam id caput hominis aut quod id facinus haudquaquam muliebre esset, et iniuriam corporis et ultionem violatae per vim pudicitiae confessa viro est, aliaque, ut traditur, sanctitate et gravitate vitae huius matronalis facinoris decus ad ultimum conservavit. [Livy 38.24]
11The identity of the Florus behind the Epitome of Roman History is much discussed. The Epitome itself is probably 2nd century CE.
12Both of them imply or state outright the sexual violence to which the captives are subject, and Livy is explicit about the captives' reduction to slavery (Livy, quod servum fortuna erat, which my terrible Latin works out as: "because a slave was her condition") though Q. Curtius Rufus does not say it outright, using only the word "captive" (non dimitti modo captivam, not only to release the captive).
13Those questions being:
- the status and treatment of prisoners in practice: captivity, slavery, hostageship, ransom, release, and whether there were patterns in who was liable to what;
- change in patterns over time and between Greece and Rome;
- whether return to one's home city (or territory) after capture and enslavement resulted in a return to one's previous status in terms of rights and freedoms, or whether permanent or temporary disabilities applied, and how this differed between Greece and Rome;
- how fragmentary is the evidence.