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Saturday 4 May 2019
What is a slave's worst fate? The galleys or the quarries?
Forced to toil on the grindstone until they drop from physical exhaustion. Then the whips are brought into play!
Artwork by garyRo of Chained Muscle: the text is mine.
I think we could debate for long time about the worst fate and hard labour for a slave. Certainly rowing in galleys and toiling in mines and quarries were among the worst possible fate for a slave. Probably galley-oars were even worse because slaves had not even one second of rest and they continued to push back and forward their huge oar without even ONE MOMENT of pause, for 18 or even 20 hours per day ! ………. then (most often) they were substituted by another shift of rowing slaves, so that the ship might continue to sail 24 hours a day without any interruption. This was particularly practiced on the enormous “cargo-galleys” that e.g. transported to Rome colossal loads of wheat and other cereals from Egypt and Northern Africa, huge cargo-galleys that could have even more that 500 rowing-slaves, e.g. divided into two shifts. The life of a galley slaves rarely was longer than one and half or at the upmost two years ! (from this the need, for rich merchants and traders who owned fleets of galleys, to buy every years even THOUSANDS of new muscular young slaves, for substituting the dead ones).
But of course the life, the labor and the WHIPS (!) in a mine or in a quarry were not much “better”.
Allow me to observe that, just after the toil of slaves rowing on galleys, one of the most ATROCIOUS hard-labor for slaves was to be obliged to PULL and TURN a GRINDSTONE / MILLSTONE ……. most often as a substitution for a donkey or a mule. Also this labor was extremely exhausting, lasting from dawn to sunset (or more) and always under hissing whips ! But grindstones were not only used in mines, for grinding the minerals (like the Artwork seminds). Grindstones and Millstones were much more frequently used in farms and estates for grinding cereals, olives and the like. Their size might go from relatively small “individual” grindstones, generally of cylindrical shape and rotating around their vertical axis, that could be pushed and turned by one muscular young slaves …… to enormous granite stones in the form of a wheel, that were “rolling” and moving circularly on a stone-base, moved by one or two or four horizontal poles, and that were pushed and turned by 10 or even 20 chained slaves (see e.g. the description of an “industrial” Roman mill in the “Golden Ass” by Apuleius.). Being chained to a millstone was probably one of the most exhausting, debasing BESTIAL hard-labors that misfortune could doom to a slave.
I think we could debate for long time about the worst fate and hard labour for a slave. Certainly rowing in galleys and toiling in mines and quarries were among the worst possible fate for a slave.
ReplyDeleteProbably galley-oars were even worse because slaves had not even one second of rest and they continued to push back and forward their huge oar without even ONE MOMENT of pause, for 18 or even 20 hours per day ! ………. then (most often) they were substituted by another shift of rowing slaves, so that the ship might continue to sail 24 hours a day without any interruption.
This was particularly practiced on the enormous “cargo-galleys” that e.g. transported to Rome colossal loads of wheat and other cereals from Egypt and Northern Africa, huge cargo-galleys that could have even more that 500 rowing-slaves, e.g. divided into two shifts.
The life of a galley slaves rarely was longer than one and half or at the upmost two years !
(from this the need, for rich merchants and traders who owned fleets of galleys, to buy every years even THOUSANDS of new muscular young slaves, for substituting the dead ones).
But of course the life, the labor and the WHIPS (!) in a mine or in a quarry were not much “better”.
Allow me to observe that, just after the toil of slaves rowing on galleys, one of the most ATROCIOUS hard-labor for slaves was to be obliged to PULL and TURN a GRINDSTONE / MILLSTONE ……. most often as a substitution for a donkey or a mule.
Also this labor was extremely exhausting, lasting from dawn to sunset (or more) and always under hissing whips !
But grindstones were not only used in mines, for grinding the minerals (like the Artwork seminds).
Grindstones and Millstones were much more frequently used in farms and estates for grinding cereals, olives and the like.
Their size might go from relatively small “individual” grindstones, generally of cylindrical shape and rotating around their vertical axis, that could be pushed and turned by one muscular young slaves …… to enormous granite stones in the form of a wheel, that were “rolling” and moving circularly on a stone-base, moved by one or two or four horizontal poles, and that were pushed and turned by 10 or even 20 chained slaves (see e.g. the description of an “industrial” Roman mill in the “Golden Ass” by Apuleius.).
Being chained to a millstone was probably one of the most exhausting, debasing BESTIAL hard-labors that misfortune could doom to a slave.
Karel