Admiral:
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When Alexander the Great reached Persepolis in 330 BC, he was approached by a large body of released Greek captives. All of which had been mutilated. This sparked a debate, where the maimed ones won out and had their wish granted to be given land in Persia to settle, instead of schocking their beloved ones at home by the sight of their pitiful forms.
“about eight hundred in number, most of them elderly. All had been mutilated EkrOtEriasmenoi de pantes], some lacking hands, some feet, and some ears and noses. They were persons who had acquired skills or crafts and had made good progress in their instruction; then their other extremities had been amputated and they were left only those which were vital to their profession” auta de mona ta synergounta pros tas epistEmas apeleleipto]. (Diodorus, 1983 tr. Welles, 1983, VIII: 315, 317).
Diodorus
“Some had their feet cut off, some their hands and ears. They had been branded with letters from the Persian alphabet by their captors, who had kept them to amuse themselves over a long period by humiliating them. … They looked more like outlandish phantoms inuisitata simulacra] than men, with no recognizable human characteristic apart from their voices.” (Curtius, tr. Yardley, 1984, p. 103)The grotesque spectacle of amputees created out of these prisoners of war at the hand of human cruelty was by far not an isolated event in history:
Curtius
However, the sanction of mutilating punishments, and instances of its implementation on both men and women, are soberly documented from archaeological and textual sources within ancient and medieval Mesopotamia and Persia (e.g. Adamson, 1978; Dhalla, 1911; Driver & Miles, 1935, passim; Gelb, 1973; Pahlavi Texts, Part IV, tr. West, 1892, pp. 68, 74-75; Pritchard, 1969, pp. 175-77, 540), as well as the neighbouring empire of Byzantium (Lascaratos & Dalla-Vorgia, 1997). Sometimes the extreme penalty was probably replaced by a heavy fine. Yet more recent claims to have witnessed mutilating punishments cannot credibly be dismissed without showing contrary evidence. A youthful British witness, Henry Pottinger (1816/1972, p. 214), reported with corroborating detail, from a palace in Eastern Persia where he was a guest, that on 15 May 1810,Useful reference for Chaos Dwarf conversions of unfortunate slaves and defeated rivals kept around as grotesque trophies (see Drazhoath). Oftentimes even when it would be sounder economically to keep a valuable slave bodily intact for better work performance, cruelty wins out over rational greed. This is not a terribly uncommon phenomenon among slave owners throughout history, and indeed it may be a vicious show of ostentation to waste expensive slave flesh for the sake of one’s own cruel appetites. At other times, the thinking may run along the lines of:
Those mutilated had been convicted of murdering a royal servant, so the severest punishment was predictable. Presumably most of them died within days from shock and haemorrhage, if all help was withheld.
“About three in the afternoon, the Prince pronounced sentences on those convicted; some were blinded of both eyes, had their ears, noses and lips cut off, their tongues slit, and one or both hands lopped off. Others were deprived of their manhood, their fingers and toes chopped off, and all were turned out into the streets with a warning to the inhabitants not to assist or hold any intercourse with them.”
Independent Living
“Damn pest! He only needs one arm to turn that crank…”