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BASTINADO

Volume 4 · 136 words · 1860 Edition

or BASTINADE, the punishment of beating or drubbing a criminal with a stick. The word is formed from the French *baston*, a stick, staff, or cudgel. The bastinado was a punishment used among the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Jews, and still obtains among the Turks. The Romans called it *fustigatio, fustium, admonitio, fustibus cedi*; which differed from the *flagellatio* in being done with a stick instead of a rod or scourge. Fustigation was a lighter punishment, and inflicted on freemen; flagellation a severer, and reserved for slaves. This was also called *typanum*, because the patient was beaten with sticks like a drum. The punishment of the bastinado is much in use in the East at this day; and it is chiefly administered on the soles of the feet, which are sometimes beaten almost to a jelly.