Galley slave

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A galley slave is a person who rowed on a rowing ship ( galley ). The term “ slave ” is contradictory here, since it is about free (ancient) or convicts (modern times).

The term has two different meanings:

  • It can either refer to prisoners sentenced to galley punishment ( French : forçat ) (from the late 15th to the 20th century)
  • or actual slaves, including prisoners of war forced to row.

This article deals with the latter group of people.

Antiquity

This article or section needs revision:
the sections are called “slaves” and “convicts”, although the text speaks of “free”. Furthermore, a new lemma would also make sense, since this is not about slaves (see also the discussion page ).
Please help to improve it , and then remove this flag.

slaves

The Greek and Roman navies generally preferred free people to man their galleys.

Greece

In Athens , rowing was viewed as an honorable activity that men should have some practical experience of, and seafarers were generally considered necessary to the security of the state. According to Aristotle , the common people won the sea ​​battle of Salamis (480 BC) on the row benches and thereby strengthened Attic democracy .

The peculiarities of the trireme , the 170 rowers at their own respective belts were sitting, demanded the commitment of trained outdoors because the concerted Rowing required intensive cooperation and exercise of which struggle success and life depended all on board. In addition, practical difficulties such as preventing desertions or revolts during evening camps (Trieres were pulled ashore overnight) made free labor safer and perhaps even more economical than slaves.

Athens persecuted in the 5th and 4th centuries BC In general, a naval policy in which citizens from the lower classes ( thetes ), metocs and hired foreigners were recruited. Although it was argued that slaves were part of the rowing crew in the Sicilian expedition (415-413 BC), the typical crew of an Athenian trireme in the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC) consisted of 80 citizens, 60 Metoks and 60 foreigners. When Athens came under military pressure from the Spartans at the end of the conflict , the city made a last-ditch effort to mobilize all men of armed age, including all slaves. After the victorious Battle of the Arginus Mountains (406 BC), the freed slaves were even granted Athenian citizenship, which was interpreted as a move to win them over for further rowing for Athens. On two other occasions during the war, captured opposing galley slaves were released by the victors.

In Sicily , the tyrant Dionysius (approx. 432–367 BC) once granted all the slaves of Syracuse freedom to man his galleys with freed men, but otherwise relied on citizens and foreigners as rowers.

Slaves accompanying officers and hoplites to war as personal servants are generally believed to have helped row when needed, although there is no definitive evidence of this and should not be considered normal crew members. On sea voyages in personal affairs, master and slave usually operated the oars together.

Rome and Carthage

The Romans continued the use of free rowers. Slaves were not normally used for rowing except when there was a severe shortage of people or in extreme emergency situations. It is known that in the long Second Punic War (218–201 BC) with Carthage both navies resorted to slaves: After the catastrophic battle of Cannae (216 BC), a group of Roman private persons became slaves for Titus Otacilius' Sicilian fleet trained and equipped (214 BC) while, after the capture of New Carthage (209 BC), native slaves were forced into his fleet by Scipio under the promise, those of goodwill as rowers would show to be released after the war. At the end of the war, the Carthaginians, fearing the impending invasion of Scipio, bought five thousand slaves for their galley banks (205 BC). It has been argued that the introduction of the polyreme at this time, especially the quinquereme , facilitated the use of barely trained rowers, since these warships only required a trained man to handle the oar, while the rest of the oars only to follow his lead on the oar needed.

Nonetheless, the Romans seem to have avoided the use of slaves in the wars that followed in the Hellenistic East . Titus Livius reports that the rowing teams in the war against Antiochus (192-188 BC) consisted of freedmen and colonists (191 BC), while in the Third Macedonian War (171-168 BC) the Roman garrisons were composed of allies and freedmen with Roman citizenship . In the decisive battle between Octavian and Sextus Pompeius , both opponents recruited slaves, among other things, but released them before the deployment, which shows that the prospect of freedom was considered indispensable for the motivation of the rowers.

In the Empire , free rowers from the provinces formed the mainstay of the Roman navy.

Convicts

Contrary to the popular notion of chained convicts spread through feature films like Ben Hur , there is no evidence that ancient navies ever used convicted criminals as rowers. The ancient forçat is therefore an anachronism :

Iron leg shackles, the whip, galleys that were floating concentration camps - all of these belong to the world of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries and to no earlier epoch.

Modern times

Galley slaves were used by almost all sea powers in the Mediterranean, on the ships of the Italian states of Genoa and Venice , Spain and France as well as on the ships of the Ottoman Empire .

The expansion of the Ottoman Empire resulted in a centuries-long confrontation with the Christian countries bordering the Mediterranean, as a result of which prisoners were enslaved as rowers by both sides. Galley slaves from the Ottoman Empire were bought at the slave markets in Malta , Livorno and Naples . The knights of the Order of St. John often supplied the supplies there . Christian slaves on Ottoman ships were either prisoners from the raids of the corsairs or came from the areas of the Balkans, Hungary or Romania.

Footnotes

  1. ^ Lionel Casson : Galley Slaves. In: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association. Vol. 97 (1966), pp. 35-44, here: p. 35.
  2. ^ Rachel L. Sargent: The Use of Slaves by the Athenians in Warfare. In: Classical Philology. Vol. 22, No. 3 (July, 1927), pp. 264-279, here: pp. 264f.
  3. ^ A b Rachel L. Sargent: The Use of Slaves by the Athenians in Warfare. In: Classical Philology. Vol. 22, No. 3 (July, 1927), pp. 264-279, here: p. 266.
  4. ↑ Aristotle , Polit. v. 4.8 (1304a).
  5. ^ Lionel Casson: Galley Slaves. In: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association. Vol. 97 (1966), pp. 35-44, here: p. 36.
  6. ^ Rachel L. Sargent: The Use of Slaves by the Athenians in Warfare. In: Classical Philology. Vol. 22, No. 3 (July, 1927), pp. 264-279, here: p. 273.
  7. ^ Rachel L. Sargent: The Use of Slaves by the Athenians in Warfare. In: Classical Philology. Vol. 22, No. 3 (July, 1927), pp. 264-279, here: pp. 266-268; Eberhard Ruschenbusch: On the occupation of Athenian triremes. In: Historia. Vol. 28 (1979), pp. 106-110, here: pp. 106 and 110.
  8. ↑ AJ Graham: Thucydides 7.13.2 and the crews of Athenian triremes. In: Transactions of the American Philological Association. Vol. 122 (1992), pp. 257-270, here: pp. 258-262.
  9. ↑ Eberhard Ruschenbusch: On the occupation of Athenian triremes. In: Historia. Vol. 28 (1979), pp. 106-110, here: p. 110.
  10. ↑ Xenophon , Hellenica , 1.6.24.
  11. ^ Peter Hunt: The Slaves and Generals of Arginusae. In: American Journal of Philology. Vol. 122 (2001), pp. 359-380, here: pp. 359-366.
  12. ^ Peter Hunt: The Slaves and Generals of Arginusae. In: American Journal of Philology. Vol. 122 (2001), pp. 359-380, here: p. 359.
  13. ^ Rachel L. Sargent: The Use of Slaves by the Athenians in Warfare. In: Classical Philology. Vol. 22, No. 3 (July, 1927), pp. 264-279, here: p. 277.
  14. ^ Rachel L. Sargent: The Use of Slaves by the Athenians in Warfare. In: Classical Philology. Vol. 22, No. 3 (July, 1927), pp. 264-279, here: pp. 273f.
  15. ^ A b Lionel Casson: Galley Slaves. in: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association. Vol. 97 (1966), pp. 35-44, here: pp. 36 f.
  16. ↑ AJ Graham: Thucydides 7.13.2 and the crews of Athenian triremes. In: Transactions of the American Philological Association. Vol. 122 (1992), pp. 257-270, here: 260.
  17. ^ A b Rachel L. Sargent: The Use of Slaves by the Athenians in Warfare. in: Classical Philology. Vol. 22, No. 3 (July, 1927), pp. 264-279, here: 274.
  18. ↑ Jan M. Libourel: Galley slaves in the Second Punic War. In: Classical Philology. Vol. 68, No. 2 (April 1973), pp. 116-119, here: p. 119; Josef Fischer, slavery. (Darmstadt 2018), p. 40.
  19. ↑ Jan M. Libourel: Galley slaves in the Second Punic War. In: Classical Philology. Vol. 68, No. 2 (April 1973), pp. 116-119, here: pp. 117 f.
  20. ↑ Jan M. Libourel: Galley slaves in the Second Punic War. In: Classical Philology. Vol. 68, No. 2 (April 1973), pp. 116-119, here: p. 117.
  21. ^ Lionel Casson: Galley Slaves. In: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association. Vol. 97 (1966), pp. 35-44, here: p. 38.
  22. ↑ Jan M. Libourel: Galley slaves in the Second Punic War. In: Classical Philology. Vol. 68, No. 2 (April 1973), pp. 116-119, here: p. 118.
  23. ↑ Titus Livius February 36, 2015.
  24. ↑ Livy 42.27.3, 43.12.9 and 42.31.6-7.
  25. ^ Lionel Casson: Galley Slaves. In: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association. Vol. 97 (1966), pp. 35-44, here: pp. 41f.
  26. ^ Lionel Casson: Galley Slaves. In: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association. Vol. 97 (1966), pp. 35-44, here: p. 41.
  27. ↑ Except for a possible case in Ptolemaic Egypt . Lionel Casson: Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World . Princeton University Press , Princeton 1971, pp. 325-326.
  28. ^ Lionel Casson: Galley Slaves. In: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association. Vol. 97 (1966), pp. 35-44, here p. 44.
  29. ↑ Roger Crowley: Decision in the Mediterranean. Europe's naval war against the Ottoman Empire 1521–1580. Theiss, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-8062-2285-2 .

literature

  • Lionel Casson : Galley Slaves . In: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association. 97: 35-44 (1966).
  • Lionel Casson: Ships and seamanship in the ancient world. Princeton University Press, Princeton 1971, ISBN 0-691-03536-9 , pp. 325-326.
  • Roger Crowley : Decision in the Mediterranean. Europe's naval war against the Ottoman Empire 1521–1580. Theiss, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-8062-2285-2 .
  • Josef Fischer, slavery. Scientific Book Society Darmstadt, 2018. Source reader antike. ISBN 978-3-534-26433-9 .
  • Olaf Höckmann: Ancient seafaring. Beck, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-406-30463-X , pp. 123-124.
  • Jan M. Libourel: Galley Slaves in the Second Punic War. In: Classical Philology. Vol. 68, No. 2 (April 1973), pp. 116-119.
  • Jean Marteilhe : Galley Convict under the Sun King: Memoirs. Beck, Munich 1989, ISBN 978-3-406-32979-1 (only experience report of a galley convict).
  • Eberhard Ruschenbusch : On the occupation of Athenian triremes. In: Historia . Vol. 28, pp. 106-110 (1979).
  • Rachel L. Sargent: The Use of Slaves by the Athenians in Warfare. In: Classical Philology. Vol. 22, No. 3 (July 1927), pp. 264-279.

Web links

Wiktionary: galley slave  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations