HELP !!! - ancient prisons

[ShadesWolf]

Im in the process of writing a fictional article for a course im doing, and wondered if anybody could help.

In ancient times, approx 280 BC, time that Pyrrhus left southern Italy to return to Greece, what type of prisons were there around.

I understand that most prisoners were either exercuted or ended up as galley slaves, but what were they held in before they met there doom?

Where these holding areas holes in the ground, where the prisoners were lowered in and out of. Or where they like cells with doors?

Any help would be appreciated.

[Fisherking]

The fact is they didn't use them much. Slavery, execution...why keep someone locked up?

[KrooK]

If we are talking about 280 BC and earlier, there were some prisons;
1) mines and stone mines (don't know english word) - famous were stone mines around Syracusae (they were probably inspiration for Platon)
2) I'm not absolutely sure but I think there were dungeons too.

Systems of prisons was much more developed into ancient Rome, Hadrian's "Reskrypt" gives us some interesting informations about at least 2 kinds of punishment called mines. Mines were kinds of prisons too.

[Furious Mental]

I know that when the Athenians were captured after the siege of Syracuse they were held in some quarries where alot of them died. That was rather earlier though.

[conon394]

I know that when the Athenians were captured after the siege of Syracuse they were held in some quarries where alot of them died. That was rather earlier though.

The Athenians did the same with some prisoners as well.

I can’t think of any good source for the Hellenistic Era but there is good data for Athens in the 5th and 4th centuries…

The Athenians provide one of the best examples of what the period (well technically a bit earlier) might have for prisons – right in agora they had at least one moderately sized building that would seem to have been a prison.

Imprisonment has a formal punishment was limited by the simple fact that it was expensive compared to exile which achieved the same ends and cost the state nothing (or the similar recourse to public humiliation in stocks). Imprisonment did eventually become an alternative punishment for prisoners who could not pay a fine they would otherwise have been administered. By the 4th century imprisonment emerged a fairly standard alternative punishment to a fine – a sort of democratic innovation since it did favor the rich as fines did.

For a good discussion of prison life in Athens (but conservative on the question of Imprisonment as a penalty) –

‘The Prison of Athens: A Comparative Perspective’ V Hunter, Phoenix 51 pp 296-326.

For a more assertive view that Prison could be a punishment in itself and some references to other Greek states and Rome –

‘Imprisonment in Classical Athens’ D. Allen CQ 47 121-135

[Paradox]

There was this prison where they tied you to a rope and left you hanging with a chair filled with spikes would be right beneath you. They once did this to a famous Atheist I think.

I don't really understand what this topic's asking, but what do you mean by "type of prisons"?

[mrdun]

Im Roman times there was the well which Jagurtha and crew were thrown down, The tarpein Rock and the prison, name escapes me, I want to say latinda but i know its not that. People could just walk out of that though unless tied.

[macsen rufus]

I'm sure imprisonment was very rare compared to the alternatives mentioned above: slavery/hard-labour, exile and execution by any one of a series of extremely grisly methods ~D

[CrazyGuy]

In Britain for a long time you were charged for you own imprisonment. Effectively creating a 'two-tier' system where the rich led a pretty cushy life as they could pay 'luxuries'. I don't know for sure, but i imagine a similar system existed in ancient times. As usual 'one rule for them, one for us...'

[ShadesWolf]

Thanks guys, for your help.

I will stick him in a hole in the ground as a holding cell, b4 the send him to a galley.