Prisoner of War - Ancient Times

Ancient Times

For most of human history, depending on the culture of the victors, combatants on the losing side in a battle could expect to be either slaughtered or enslaved. The first Roman gladiators were prisoners of war and were named according to their ethnic roots such as Samnite, Thracian and the Gaul (Gallus). Homer's Iliad describes Greek and Trojan soldiers offering rewards of wealth to enemies who have defeated them on the battlefield in exchange for mercy, but their offers are not always accepted; see Lycaon for example.

Typically, little distinction was made between combatants and civilians, although women and children were more likely to be spared. Sometimes the purpose of a battle, if not a war, was to capture women, a practice known as raptio; the Rape of the Sabines was a large mass abduction by the founders of Rome. Typically women had no rights, and were held legally as chattel.

Herodotus discusses numerous incidents involving POWs in Histories: their execution, appropriation as slaves, conditions for ransom etc. In The History of the Peloponesian War, Thucydities discusses numerous massacres war captives and their use as slaves and political bargaining chips.

In the fourth century AD, the Bishop Acacius of Amida, touched by the plight of Persian prisoners captured in a recent war with the Roman Empire—who were held in his town under appalling conditions and destined for a life of slavery, took the initiative of ransoming them, by selling his church's precious gold and silver vessels, and letting them return to their country. For this he was eventually canonized—which testifies to his act being exceptional.

Early historical narratives of captured colonial Europeans, including perspectives of literate Protestant women captured by the indigenous peoples of North America, exist in some number. The writings of Mary Rowlandson captured in the brutal fighting of King Phillip's War are a fine example. Such narratives enjoyed some popularity, spawning a genre of the captivity narrative, and had lasting influence on the body of early American literature, most notably through the legacy of James Fenimore Cooper's Last of the Mohicans. Some Native Americans continued to capture Europeans and use them as both as laborers and bargaining chips into the 19th century; see for example John R. Jewitt, an Englishman who wrote a memoir about his years as a captive of the Nootka people on the Pacific Northwest Coast from 1802–1805.