Galley slave
Galley slave
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A galley slave was a slave rowing in a galley. The ｅxpression has two distinct meanings: it can refer either to a convicted criminal sentenced to work at the oar (French: forçat), or to a kind of human chattel, often a prisoner of war, assigned to his duty of rowing.[1]
Antiquity
Convicts
Contrary to the popular image of the chained convict, conveyed by movies such as Ben Hur, there is no evidence that ancient navies ever made use of condemned criminals as oarsmen.[2] The ancient forçat is an anachronism:
Leg irons, the whip, galleys that were floating concentration camps - all this belongs to the world of the sixteenth to the eighteenth century and to no earlier age.[3]
Slaves
Greek and Roman navies generally preferred to rely on freemen to man their galleys. Several instances though are recorded when slaves were put at the oars, mostly under conditions of emergency. In some cases, these people were given freedom thereafter, while in others they began their service aboard as freedman.
Greece
In Athens, rowing was regarded as an honorable profession of which men should possess some practical knowledge,[4] and sailors were viewed as instrumental in safeguarding the state.[5] According to Aristotle, the common people on the rowing benches won the Battle of Salamis, thereby strengthening the Athenian democracy.[6]
The special characteristics of the Trireme, with each of its 170 oars being handled by its own oarsman, demanded the commitment of skilled freemen as rowing required teamwork and training on which combat success and the lifes of all aboard depended.[7] Also, practical difficulties such as the prevention of desertion or revolt when bivouacking (triremes used to be hauled on land at night) made free labour more secure and perhaps even more economical than slaves.[8]
Athens generally followed in the 5th and 4th century a naval policy of enrolling citizens from the lower classes (Thetes), metics and hired foreigners.[9] [10] Although it has been argued that slaves formed part of the rowing crew in the Sicilian Expedition,[11] a typical Athenian trireme crew during the Peloponnesian War consisted of 80 citizens, 60 metics and 60 foreign hands.[12]
However, when put under military pressure by the Spartans in the final stages of the conflict, Athens mobilized in an all-out effort all men of military age, including all slaves.[13] After the victorious Battle of Arginusae the freed slaves were even given Athenian citizenship,[14] in a move interpreted as an attempt to keep them motivated rowing for Athens.[15] on two other occasions during the war captured enemy galley slaves were given freedom by the victors.[5]
In Sicily, the tyrant Dionysios (ca. 432–367 BC) once set all slaves of Syracuse free to man his galleys, employing thus freedmen, but otherwise relied on citizens and foreigners as oarsmen.[16]
Slaves accompanying officers and hoplite marines as personal attendants into war are assumed by modern scholars to have also assisted in the rowing when need arose,[17] [18] [19] but there is no definite proof on this point,[20] and they should not be regarded as regular members of the crew.[18] When travelling over the sea on personal matters, it was a common thing that both master and slave pulled the oar.[20]
Rome
In Roman times, reliance on rowers of free status continued and slaves were usually not put at the oars except in times of pressing manpower demands or extreme emergency.[21]
Thus, in the drawn-out Second Punic War with Carthage, both navies are known to have resorted to slave labour: In the aftermath of Cannae, a levy of slaves was equipped and trained by private Roman individuals for Titus Otacilius’ squadron in Sicily (214 BC), while after the capture of New Carthage (209 BC) local slaves were impressed by Scipio in his fleet on the promise of freedom after the war to those who showed good will as rowers.[22] At the end of the war, Carthage, alarmed over the impending invasion by Scipio, bought five thousand slaves to row its fleet (205 BC).[23] It has been suggested that the introduction of polyremes at the time, particularly of the quinquereme, facilitated the use of little-trained labour, as these warships only needed a skilled man for the position nearest the loom, while the remaining rowers at the oar followed his lead.[24] [25]
Nonetheless, the Romans seemed to avoid the use of slave rowers in their subsequent wars with the Hellenistic east. Livy records that naval levies in the War against Antiochos consisted of freedmen and colonists (191 BC),[26] while in the Third Macedonian War (171 BC - 168 BC) Rome’s fleet was manned by freedmen with Roman citizenship and allies.[27] In the final showdown of the civil war between Octavian and Sextus Pompey, the adversaries enlisted among others slaves, but set them free before putting them to the oars,[28] indicating that the prospect of freedom was judged instrumental in keeping the rowers motivated. In Imperial times, provincials which were free men became the mainstay of the Roman rowing force.[29]