Author(s):
Thür, Gerhard (Graz)
[German version] (δεσμωτήριον;
desmōtḗrion). In Athens at the market (on location [1]) there was a prison (Dem. Or. 24,208f.) that owed its name to the fetters, δεσμά (
desmá) that were put on the prisoners usually in the form of chains and shackles. The places of detention were not safe from breakouts in other cities either. The supervisory authority, in Athens the Eleven, decided the nature of custody (in chains, permission for visits). Prisoners were always held with others and imprisonment was not imposed as punishment but to secure the accused, condemned and state debtors. The
desmoterion was encountered in numerous Greek states and in the Hellenistic period also in Egypt (cf. P.Tebt. 567: δεσμευτήριον,
desmeutḗrion). Other terms for it are οἴκημα (
oíkēma, cell or cage), ἀναγκαίον (
anankaíon, house of forced detention), κέραμος (
kéramos, pot) and ─ only in Plato's state utopia ─ σωφρονιστήριον (
sophronistḗrion, ‘house of reflection’). In the field of prisons, Plato was an innovator insofar as he (Leg. 908a ff.) classified prisons using three special grades that also differed externally according to their position and description: the detention prison, the penitentiary and the reformatory [2]. Plato suggested imprisonment as physical punishment (in the same way that Dem. Or. 24,146 already had) and in Hellenistic Egypt it was also gradually put into practise [3. 74]. In individual cases prisoners in A…