Tattooing, the supreme humiliation of Antiquity

In the Greco-Roman world, stigma was a tattoo that signaled guilt, defeat, or submission. According to Herodotus, it was thanks to the Persians that the Greeks discovered the “art” of needle tattooing in the 6th ^century BC. It was then used to mark prisoners of war, slaves, and criminals.

One of the most famous examples of a war tattoo is the one that the victorious Athenians placed on the foreheads of their defeated adversaries, the Samians, in the ^5th century BC: it was the image of an owl, the emblem of Athens. However, the Samians were quick to pay back when, triumphing over the Athenians, they decided to tattoo their prisoners with the image of a samaina, the rowing boat of their island of Samos.

The Greek philosopher Plutarch also recounts that during the siege of Syracuse (during the Peloponnesian War) – which ended with the defeat of the Athenians in 413 BC – nearly 7,000 prisoners of war were “tattooed on their foreheads with the symbol of Syracuse, a horse, before being sold into slavery.”

These tattoos were not only a mark of dominance, they were also the “expression of victory.” Until the end of their days, the tattooed person thus constituted a kind of living conquest. For the Greeks, being tattooed after a battle was the irrevocable mark of defeat. In their minds, only the weak would agree to be tattooed. A “real” man would prefer to commit suicide. For the families of the vanquished, it was therefore essential to ensure that their sons remained “immaculate.”

This is what a stele from the city of Megara reminds us. On the tomb erected in honor of a