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4 Torture and Enhanced Interrogation of torture has been with us since almost the beginning of re- corded history, at least in the context of Western Europe and the United States. Ulpian, whose clinical description of judicial torture began this chapter, wasn’t a brutal centurion who recognized no law other than force but one of the most prominent Roman jurists active in the third century ce and who today is considered by some scholars to have been an early advocate for human rights (Honoré 1982: ix). From ancient Greece to Guantanamo Bay, torture has more often been the norm rather than the exception. Indeed, when seen over the perspective of the last several thousand years, it wasn’t the presence of torture in society that is the anomaly but its general absence in Western Europe from about the end of the nineteenth century through the end of World War I (Peters 1985: 77), as we’ll discuss in greater detail in the following pages. Ancient Greece From the eighth to the fi fth centuries bce, the early Greeks slowly discarded their system of what we’d consider to be justice-by-feud ( agon ) and moved toward what we’d recognize as a rudimentary system of litigation (Peters 1985: 12). Since only citizens had the privilege of being able to testify in these proceedings, the Greeks needed a means through which the evidence of noncitizens, such as slaves or those considered dishonorable, could be brought before the tribunal (Peters 1985: 14). Th is posed a complicated problem. While citizens who lied under oath could be degraded in a variety of ways if caught, this deterrent to dishonesty seemed not to apply to slaves and certain unfortunate foreigners (Peters 1985: 14), who arguably had little to lose given their already marginalized status. As a re- sult, the Greeks came up with basanos , or torture, as one of the fi ve “proofs” Aristotle held were available to litigants to prove their case (Peters 1985: 14). 4148-1156f-Printer Pdf-001-r01.indd 4 4148-1156f-Printer Pdf-001-r01.indd 4 12/24/2019 11:33:54 AM 12/24/2019 11:33:54 AM