ABSTRACT
Torture of Free Citizens [N the statement so often repeated by various writers that torture (qucestio) in Greece and Rome was rigidly reo stricted to slaves, we see another example of the way In which historians and others have been misled through the restriction of the term to the mode of securing coniession. In Greece, for example, although torture for the purpose of obtaining testimony or confession was never applied to free citizens, it was used as a means of punishment applicable to all classes. Aristophanes alludes to the wheel being frequently employed tor this purpose. 1 The rack, too, was in regular use. Among other free-men, Antiphon W!lS racked to death. AccordIng to Polybius, the tyrant Nabis used an infamous instrument of torture shaped like a woman (anticipating the " Virgin Mary" of the Spanish Inquisition and the Jungfernkuss of media:val Germany) in which the victims were clutched until they paid tribute in money. (See Chapter XXII.)
In Rome the free-man was not, in any ordinary circumstances, liable to torture as a means of extorting confession. The exception to this rule was in the case of anyone accused of treason. The subjection to torture of those suspected or accused of this particular crime was first justified by Arcadias Charisius. Gibbon implies that the extension of legal torture to cases of treason virtually annulled the principle by which the free-man was supposed to be exempt from the qutestio except in these supposedly rare cases of treason, because it was a comparatively easy matter to bring a variety of offences into this somewhat elusive category. Treason, says Gibbon, "included any offence that the subtlety of lawyers could derive from an hostile intention." The rank of the accused individual did
not save him, for it was contended that in regard to treason all were on an equal footing. This same waiving of all rights to exception on account of official position or noble birth' applied in the case of anyone accused of sorcery or witchcraft.
