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serious-ancient-slavery · 1 month ago

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SPARTACUS SHACKLED TO THE SLAVECHAIN GOING TO ROME This morning I reblogged an ultra-short clip of a chained and blindfolded Roman slave on the blog of Volunteer1799. It's a fragment from episode 2 ('The Spartacus Revolt') of the 8-episode historical reenactment TV series 'Eight Days That Made Rome' from 2017, starring Joseph Millson in the role shown here of Spartacus, the infamous slave leader who led the wellknown slave revolt named after him in 73-71 BC after breaking out of the gladiator school of Capua, which has been filmed several times. Unfortunately, I could only find a Russian dubbed version of the entire episode online; here is the link:

youtube

I made two separate short clips of this. You can find the first one here; the second one will follow later in a separate blog. Here we see Spartacus, captured by the Romans along with other Thracian warriors, on the slavechain on their way to Rome, to be sold there on the slavemarket. The chain contains (at least) seven slaves, Spartacus is the second in line, the only one blindfolded.

The scene starts very suggestively cinematically: without yet understanding why our field of vision is so limited, we watch for some 10 seconds with Spartacus, who looks down at the ground from under his blindfold, so that he can see a little where he is walking, and does not bump painfully against a larger stone or something else hard with his feet, as he is only wearing sandals, on the uneven, pebble-strewn gravel road.

We hear the rattling of a chain, to which he is apparently attached, and which casts a shadow on the ground to the right of it. Incidentally, those feet all the time remain out of view. But we see his two hands, although out of focus, which he always holds forward with the palms facing each other. The wide, heavy strap of an iron manacle can be seen around the right wrist. The walking pace is brisk and we hear panting, and twice a thump-like sound, probably from a whip.

Then one of the guards clearly says 'halt', and the column comes to a standstill. From that moment on we no longer look through Spartacus' eyes, but at the scene from outside. First we see the middle part of his body, with his arms in front of it, very vaguely. Spartacus is naked, except for, as can be seen clearly a moment later, a large, dirty loincloth covering his limbs.

Then we also see a little more clearly both of his wrists, handcuffed, whereby those manacles are somehow attached by an ultra-short chain to another, long chain, which continues backwards, out of the frame to the right, undoubtedly to the next slave. That connecting chain also undoubtedly continues forwards, to the slave walking in front of Spartacus, but that is less visible, because the chain hangs down from Spartacus' wrists here, directly out of the frame.

Immediately after that we see Spartacus, half groping, sitting down on a stone, and the next shot shows his naked upper body and his blindfolded face, and then we look with him – now understanding the suggestive beginning of the scene – from under the blindfold at his two shackled hands, which we then also briefly see 'from outside'.

A Roman guard then walks half through the frame, whom we see completely a moment later, behind Spartacus, ordering him to stand up.

In the next shot, zoomed out, we see three slaves sitting with their heads bowed – Spartacus in the middle – between two slavedrivers. The one on the left holds a short whip, a singletail, in his hand. When he steps back, we briefly see that he holds the end of the shared slave chain in his left hand, and then that the slave in front is wearing exactly the same manacles as Spartacus.

Spartacus does not immediately respond to the order to stand up; the young slave to the right of Spartacus is then forced to lift his head with the sword against his neck. In the next long shot, we finally see that this number three is (of course) chained in exactly the same way, and to his right a fourth slave is sitting. In a later shot, we will see at least three other chained slaves sitting next to him.

Now Spartacus finally stands up, amid much rattling of chains, after which his blindfold is torn off by the Roman slaver on the right.

Long shots of Spartacus with the slavetraders alternate with shots of only his head and his chained hands. At one point, one of the slavers roughly opens his mouth in a very humiliating way, as if he were a piece of cattle at the cattle market.

At no point is it clear how the handcuffs are attached to the collective slave chain. We also never see the slaves in their full length; their feet are always kept out of view.

But besides the film itself, there are also a few photos circulating on the internet that were taken from the scene, but are not exact film stills. They show the slaves from head to toe.

First, this photo. The slavecoffle is walking in the sun along a path strewn with stones between a number of primitive houses. The slavedriver-with-the-whip is walking in front. Over his left shoulder, in his left hand, he has the heavy slave chain to which all the slaves are attached, clamped in front of his chest. The chain is quite tight, he walks briskly. He is fully dressed, but all the slaves, apart from their sandals and manacles, are wearing only a loincloth. The first slave, with his hands apart, follows at a relatively short distance; the distance from this first slave to Spartacus (the only one blindfolded) is a lot greater; he holds his hands together. Behind them, still largely hidden behind the preceding one, one sees three slaves in the sun, and then a few more vaguely in the shadows.

In this second photo Spartacus stands upright, together with the other slavedriver, who has just removed his blindfold. Although in his shadow, Spartacus's dirty loincloth, wrapped around his waist in the usual manner, is clearly visible. A very wide flap hangs down at the front, covering his genital zone, to just above his knees. There will undoubtedly exist also a similar flap at the back, covering his anal zone.

In front of Spartacus's groin, the heavy slavechain to which his manacles are attached is visible. To the front (to the left) it hangs down to the ground, where it is attached out of the picture to the slave in front. To the back (to the right), we also see a small piece of the chain hanging down, where it leads between the left leg of Spartacus and the slavetrader to the manacles of the third slave, who is sitting behind the latter on the same stone; his left leg and shackled hand are just visible, the rest of his slavebody being hidden.

How exactly the handcuffs are attached to the main chain can best be seen in the third photo, of a seated Spartacus without a blindfold. Both manacles hinged around the wrists (the hinge is clearly visible on the right hand) are connected to each other by a short chain of approximately seven links, as can be seen in the previous photo. Close to the left wrist cuff, clearly asymmetrical, this chain is attached to a link of the main chain consisting of much heavier links.

At first glance, it seems as if there is a separate link connecting the handcuff chain and the large slave chain, but if you look closely, you will see that the links of the main chain that are at the bottom of that one connecting link are not attached to each other, but both only to the one in question. Because Spartacus raises his arms, those two links have both slid to the same end of that connecting link, and are now lying against each other.

The way the slaves are chained together in the Spartacus-clip is one of the two common methods for a slavecoffle: with manacles connected to a common chain. This runs here to the left of the slaves from slave to slave, which probably explains why the handcuffs are attached to it asymmetrically. The chain forces the slaves to hold their hands slightly to the left, to prevent the chain, which continues to the left of their waist to the back, from constantly rubbing against their slavebodies. If the chain is tight, as in this photo above (a detail of a formerly presented one) then this is difficult to avoid.

We see the same method here in this comic version of the novel Ben Hur, which shows Ben Hur together with other slaves condemned to the galleys on his journey through the desert. This time, the alaves are barefoot, and the connecting slave chain runs to the right of the rear four slaves, but to the left in the case of the front ones. The rear four indeed hold their hands more to the right. In those pics, the main chain is not tight, but hangs down in flexible arcs. Unlike Spartacus, it is clearly attached to the middle of the manacles-chain, which in that respect is symmetrically attached to the common slavechain.

Here are two other pics from this comic, showing the future galleyslaves on their way to the harbour, with their Roman guards.

The alternative, which would become almost standard in the Transatlantic slave trade, was that the slaves all got a heavy iron collar locked around their necks, which were then connected to each other by separate chains. In this case, the connecting slave chain does not run along the left or right of the slaves, with the 'individual' shackles always attached to it on the side, but the slavecollars and slavechain form a continuous alternating whole.

At the front of the collar is the chain fixed that is directly attached to the back of the collar of the previous slave, at the back is the chain fixed that is directly attached to the front of that of the next slave.

Hands can then optionally be cuffed behind the back (as in this next comic version of Ben Hur), but if the connecting chain between two collars is kept quite short, this will lead to a situation for each collared slave of the coffle, where he has to endure constant painful jerking on the chain at the front or back of his slavecollar, so that he will mainly use his hands to hold his collar to prevent this jerking, as can be seen very clearly in this photo, where this is done by the second slave.

Finally, sometimes you find collars and manacles both. In case of the 2010-version of Ben Hur the hero on his way to the galleys is wearing a rusty collar, that is connected by an inverted T-shaped construction of three chains to manacles. The whole triangle halfway is attached to the slave-chain, that strings the slaves together at his left side.

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