Vito wrote:
You're right Doug.

Well, thanks. I try.

.... I should have said that common criminals didn't go to
prison. Just heretics and political prisoners. I thot that'd be implicit in
the rest of my statement, but obviously not.

Well, that's still not quite right. "Common criminals" still went to
prison fairly often. Remember that courts were often controlled by the
local aristocracy, but a close reading of actual history shows that
their justice was recognizably similar to ours. Usually, prison was a
holding area for people condemned to be executed, or people who had been
convicted & fined and were trying to extort the fine money from their
relatives. But it was not uncommon for people to simply locked up for
long periods of time. For example, check out the history of the Tower of
London (punch "Tower London" into Google, find your own links, you don't
seem to like mine).

You also dismiss other common punishments, such as being put in the
stock. This meant being handcuffed to a bench in the public square for a
defined period... usually 3 days or less. This was a more horrible
punishment than it sounds, in fact it was often fatal. Need I explain
why? I don't want to go into it right before lunch.

DSK