ABSTRACT
The desire to uncover the truth of the difference between slavery and freedom constitutes part of the discourse on torture in the ancient world. Another kind of truth, what Sartre calls 'the secret of everything', is named by many Greek writers as the explicit aim of judicial torture. In the Greek legal system, the torture of slaves figured as a guarantor of truth, as a process of truth-making. Torture serves not only to exact a truth, some truth or other, which will benefit one side of the case. Torture can be enacted against free, non-Greek beings as well as slaves; all 'barbarians' are assimilated to slaves. Slaves are barbarians, barbarians are slaves; all are susceptible to torture. Another mention of basanos, where the word means torture of slaves as opposed to 'scrutiny', for example, of a citizen's testimony, comes in a poisoning case; Antiphon refers to a previous trial in which a slave was accused, tortured, and executed for murder.
