Herodotus
The agony of the wheel.
I am a longtime admirer of the works of Herodotus and this one in particular has always been a favourite of mine.
As you know, a favourite theme of mine is that of the condition of a galley slave. This is equaled by my interest in millstones, grinding-stones, waterwheels, wine-presses in their many forms and these are themes I have often written about in some of my stories.
The thought of a man becoming a slave, stripped naked, placed in chains and shackled to one of these cruel contraptions for countless hours is one that fires my imagination. Countless times, I have fantasized about being in the position of the slave portrayed by Herodotus; condemned to the never-ending drudgery of a mere beast-of-burden and made to mindlessly and repetitiously plod in a a never-ending circle of mindless misery.
Apart from the punishing labour of keeping the wheel turning at the required speed, the luckless slave must suffer the sting of an impatient overseer's whip. As the slave places one plodding foot in front of the other, his mind must surely atrophy from lack of stimulus. His world is confined to a never-ending circle of hard, physical labour as he strains every muscle and sinew in his body to keep the wheel turning. Truly, his suffering is that of the galley-slave.
And let's not forget the countless slaves in ancient Rome manning these contraptions to grind the grain, press the grapes and extract the oil from olives.
Their's was a bitter slavery!
My thanks to Herodotus for this particular piece of art which has inspired some of my writing.
Beautiful and inspiring text! Great to have you back! Big hug and a good lash on your back!
ReplyDeleteHi Pote, thank you for your comments; as always, they are much appreciated. Slowly, after an unexpected prolonged illness, I am now finding my feet once again and will begin to make more posts to this blog.
ReplyDeleteSadly, my blogs at bdsmlr no longer work for some reason as I can't access or post to them. This is most frustrating as I have lost contact with all my followers and friends at bdsmlr. Despite repeated requests to the bdsmlr administrators for advice, I have not received any replies which makes me think their problems can't be fixed. So another loss along with Yahoo and tumbler. Please keep in touch. Chris
Chris,
ReplyDeleteyou are perfectly right and I want to thank you in particular for this post about MILLSTONES and the unbearable labor of slaves chained to them and obliged to push and turn them for 18 or even 20 hours per day under the restless kiss of a whip.
But allow me to add something more.
In one of his best known sentences, the noble Patrician and writer Marcus Terentius Varro – imitated later also by the haughty Senator Cicero - scornfully said that “SLAVES ARE ONLY TALKING TOOLS” …… “TALKING BEASTS” as well known by many people.
However let me say that, in the Roman sadistic society based on the cruelest and most ruthless exploitation of slaves’ labour, muscular strength and life, there were some slave-labours that were even MORE EXHAUSTING and MORE HUMILIATING / DEGRADING than most other works for slaves …… particularly exhausting and degrading labours in which the last tiny trace of some residual “human dignity” in a slave ….. i.e. the fact that ultimately he was distinguished by all other brutish animals by the fact that at least HE WAS ABLE TO SPEAK ! ……. was going completely LOST and really there was not anymore even the slightest difference between a slave and all other beasts, because the ability to speak, to talk itself, had in those labors become completely useless.
And certainly TURNING a MILLSTONE was among this particularly exhausting and even more particularly degrading hard-labors for slaves, in which there were no more even the slightest difference between slaves and all other brutes and animals ….. the only things that mattered being reduced to brutish physical strength ….. to the ability to walk and walk and push and push for countless hours, without the slightest slack or pause ….. to the ability to sweat and work until falling unconscious under the ruthless blows if whips and sticks !
There was NOTHING “human” in pushing and turning incessantly a heavy millstone or a large water-wheel !
And this particularly exhausting and “inhuman”, purely “beastly” character was shared with millstone-turning by very few other Roman labors for slaves, all of them especially horrendous and appalling.
One was certainly the ROWING OF GALLEY-SLAVES (as you rightly recall) a labor in which again the “brain” or the “ability to speak” of a slave would not make any difference compared to the brutish nature of the vilest animal.
Another comparable and extremely exhausting and degrading slaves’ hard labor of this type was also the one of LITTER – BEARERS in which slaves were really degraded to the vilest level of “transport animals” and in which again their nature of “thinking and talking animals” was again completely useless and irrelevant
Karel
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ReplyDeleteBesides the various passages of Latin authors were the atrocious labour at the millstone or at the water wheel are mentioned, starting from the famous passage in the “Golden Ass” by Apuleius where the author describes a horrible underground cave filled with many huge millstones turned by a herd of naked and almost blind slaves, spurred to work by the whips as ordered by their rich owner, a wealthy miller …… I am often been struck in visiting several archeological digs, in which the finding of millstones / grindstones of various size and shape are not at all rare, starting of course from Pompeii and Herculaneum.
I have been often “shocked” by a minor detail that most visitors most often do not even notice.
I mean: guides generally state and inform –in quite generic and broad terms – that those grinding-stones were “POWERED and TURNED by ANIMALS, like donkeys or mules, OR BY SLAVES”.
Actually, by carefully observing especially those “cylindrical” vertical grindstones, used for cereals and olives and so common in Pompeii, Herculaneum and other excavations in Italy, in Spain or in Greece …… one can notice that, for saving space, such grindstones are VERY CLOSE one to the other, in long parallel lines …… so close that actually even the “smallest” and scraggiest donkey or mule COULD HAVE NEVER PASSED in that so narrow space between two contiguous grindstones !
So it’s clear that MOST (if not ) all those grindstones –especially the cylindrical / vertical ones- were actually designed and destined specifically to “HUMAN-LIKE BEASTS” ….. to SLAVES !!!!!
Actually we know that in Rome this particularly exhausting and very degrading labour at the millstone was largely used as one of the most feared PUNISHMENTS for slaves, especially for particularly rebellious, defiant or unruly slaves.
By the way I remember in my younger years that the scenes of “slaves chained to millstones” were quite frequent in those old marvelous “Peplum” movies, so much full of sadism; and that I liked those scene always very much, finding them very exciting.
However, among all the many historical movies in which I remember particularly thrilling and sadistic “millstone-scenes”, I remember especially three scenes and movies, in which the millstone was cruelly used also as a sadistic punishment and humiliation for an unruly muscular enslaved hero.
The first scene is in the long TV movie (series) “The Adventures Of Robinson Crusoe”, produced in 1964 and starring the very handsome Robert Hoffmann in the main role. Actually in this movie the enslaved and unruly young Robinson, is obliged, by his fierce Arab Master, to substitute a camel in pushing and turning a huge water-wheel in the desert of Morocco and not a millstone …. but the concept is the same.
The second movie that I remember is the long and very sadistic / degrading (for the herculean enslaved hero) millstone-scene in the 1961 movie “THE MIGHTY URSUS”.
The third scene, and most probably the most sadistic one, is the scene of punishment at the millstone in a very rare and almost unknown / lost Peplum shot in 1989 and titled “THE HEROES OF ROME”, directed by one of the best “Maestro’s” and “geniuses” of sadism in B-series movies, i.e. the Italian director Bruno Mattei.
Karel