Editing Prisoner of war (section)

==Ancient times==
[[File:Abu-Simbel temple3.jpg|thumb|Engraving of [[Nubia]]n prisoners, [[Abu Simbel]], Egypt, 13th century BC]]

For a large part of human history, prisoners of war would most often be either slaughtered or enslaved.<ref>Wickham, Jason (2014) The Enslavement of War Captives by the Romans up to 146 BC, University of Liverpool PhD Dissertation. {{cite web |url= http://repository.liv.ac.uk/17893/1/WickhamJ_May2014_17893.pdf |title=The Enslavement of War Captives by the Romans to 146 BC|access-date =24 May 2015 |url-status= dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20150524213405/http://repository.liv.ac.uk/17893/1/WickhamJ_May2014_17893.pdf |archive-date= 24 May 2015 |df= dmy-all }} Wickham 2014 notes that for Roman warfare the outcome of capture could lead to release, ransom, execution or enslavement.</ref> Early Roman [[gladiator]]s could be prisoners of war, categorised according to their ethnic roots as [[Samnites]], [[Thracians]], and [[Gauls]] (''Galli'').<ref>[http://penelope.uchicago.edu/%7Egrout/encyclopaedia_romana/gladiators/gladiators.html "The Roman Gladiator"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200126174158/http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/gladiators/gladiators.html |date=26 January 2020 }}, The University of Chicago – "Originally, captured soldiers had been made to fight with their own weapons and in their particular style of combat. It was from these conscripted prisoners of war that the gladiators acquired their exotic appearance, a distinction being made between the weapons imagined to be used by defeated enemies and those of their Roman conquerors. The Samnites (a tribe from Campania which the Romans had fought in the fourth and third centuries BC) were the prototype for Rome's professional gladiators, and it was their equipment that first was used and later adopted for the arena. [...] Two other gladiatorial categories also took their name from defeated tribes, the Galli (Gauls) and Thraeces (Thracians)."</ref> Homer's ''[[Iliad]]'' describes Trojan and Greek soldiers offering rewards of wealth to opposing forces who have defeated them on the battlefield in exchange for mercy, but their offers are not always accepted; see [[Lycaon of Troy|Lycaon]] for example.

Typically, victors made little distinction between enemy combatants and enemy civilians, although they were more likely to spare women and children. Sometimes the purpose of a battle, if not of a war, was to capture women, a practice known as ''[[raptio]]''; the [[Rape of the Sabines]] involved, according to tradition, a large mass-abduction by the founders of Rome. Typically women had no [[women's rights|rights]], and were held legally as [[Personal property|chattel]]s.<ref>{{Cite web|url= http://www.nwhp.org/resources/womens-rights-movement/history-of-the-womens-rights-movement/|title= History of the Women's Rights Movement|last1= Eisenberg|first1= Bonnie|last2= Ruthsdotter|first2= Mary|date= 1998|website= www.nwhp.org|language= en-US|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20180712154817/http://www.nwhp.org/resources/womens-rights-movement/history-of-the-womens-rights-movement/|archive-date= 12 July 2018|url-status= dead}}</ref>

In the fourth century AD, Bishop [[Acacius of Amida]], touched by the plight of Persian prisoners captured in a recent war with the [[Roman Empire]], who were held in his town under appalling conditions and destined for a life of slavery, took the initiative in ransoming them by selling his church's precious gold and silver vessels and letting them return to their country. For this he was eventually [[canonised]].<ref>
{{Cite web
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 |url = http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/26017.htm
 |website = www.newadvent.org |access-date = 19 October 2015
|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20230511051435/https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/26017.htm
 |archive-date= 11 May 2023
}}
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