page_title: Corporal punishment
section_title: Antiquity
hierarchical_section_title: Corporal punishment / History / Antiquity
context_page_description: Corporal punishment or physical punishment is a punishment intended to cause physical pain to a person. It is most often practised on minors, especially in home and school settings. Common methods include spanking or paddling. It has also historically been used on adults, particularly on prisoners and enslaved people. Other common methods include flagellation.
  Punishment for crime by inflicting pain or injury, including flogging, branding and even mutilation, was practised in most civilizations since ancient times. However, with the growth of humanitarian ideals since the Enlightenment, such punishments were increasingly viewed as inhumane. By the late 20th century, corporal punishment had been eliminated from the legal systems of most developed countries.
  The legality in the twenty-first century of corporal punishment in various settings differs by jurisdiction. Internationally, the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries saw the application of human rights law to the question of corporal punishment in a number of contexts:
context_section_description: Corporal punishment of children has traditionally been used in the Western world by adults in authority roles. Beating one's child as a punishment was recommended as early as the c. 10th century BC book of Proverbs attributed to Solomon:
  He that spareth the rod, hateth his son; but he that loveth him, chasteneth him betimes. (Proverbs, XIII, 24)
  A fool's lips enter into contention, and his mouth calleth for strokes. (Proverbs, XVIII, 6)
  Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying. (Proverbs, XIX, 18)
  Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it from him. (Proverbs, XXII, 15)
  
  Withhold not correction from the child; for if thou beatest him with a rod, thou shalt deliver his soul from hell. (Proverbs, XXIII, 13–14)
  Robert McCole Wilson argues, "Probably this attitude comes, at least in part, from the desire in the patriarchal society for the elder to maintain his authority, where that authority was the main agent for social stability. But these are the words that not only justified the use of physical punishment on children for over a thousand years in Christian communities, but ordered it to be used. The words were accepted with but few exceptions; it is only in the last two hundred years that there has been a growing body of opinion that differed. Curiously, the gentleness of Christ towards children (Mark, X) was usually ignored".
  Corporal punishment was used in Egypt, China, Greece, and Rome for both judicial and educational discipline. Disfigured Egyptian criminals were exiled to the Sinai border at Tjaru and Rhinocorura, whose own name meant "cut-off noses". Corporal punishment was prescribed in ancient Israel, but was limited to 40 lashes. China also disfigured some criminals and tattooed others. Some states gained a reputation for using such punishments cruelly; Sparta, in particular, used them as part of a disciplinary regime designed to build willpower and physical strength. Although the Spartan example was extreme, corporal punishment was possibly the most frequent type of punishment. In the Roman Empire, the maximum penalty that a Roman citizen could receive under the law was 40 "lashes" or "strokes" with a whip applied to the back and shoulders, or with the "fasces" (similar to a birch rod, but consisting of 8–10 lengths of willow rather than birch) applied to the buttocks. Such punishments could draw blood, and were frequently inflicted in public.
  Quintilian (c. 35 – c. 100) voiced some opposition to the use of corporal punishment. According to Wilson, "probably no more lucid indictment of it has been made in the succeeding two thousand years".
  By that boys should suffer corporal punishment, though it is received by custom, and Chrysippus makes no objection to it, I by no means approve; first, because it is a disgrace, and a punishment fit for slaves, and in reality (as will be evident if you imagine the age change) an affront; secondly, because, if a boy's disposition be so abject as not to be amended by reproof, he will be hardened, like the worst of slaves, even to stripes; and lastly, because, if one who regularly exacts his tasks be with him, there will not be the need of any chastisement (Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory, 1856 edition, I, III).
  Plutarch, also in the first century, writes:
  This also I assert, that children ought to be led to honourable practices by means of encouragement and reasoning, and most certainly not by blows or ill-treatment, for it surely is agreed that these are fitting rather for slaves than for the free-born; for so they grow numb and shudder at their tasks, partly from the pain of the blows, partly from the degradation.
caption: Foot whipping an offender, Iran, 1910s
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