In Latin there is an active verb that means “to be beaten” (vapulo), a verb that occurs frequently in Plautus – being beaten is one of the most important things that literary slaves do. Listing the tasks required of a maid, Demipho in Plautus' Mercator comes up with the following:

The second line takes the maid smoothly from chopping wood to being beaten, as though she were herself absorbed into the world of things that she pounds, sweeps and generally works on, a world that takes its revenge on her in a sudden reversal that depends on the active form of vapulo. Martial displays a similarly cold humor in answer to a certain Rusticus, who has accused him of cruelty and gluttony because he beats the chef on account of a poor meal:

If the slave, in slaveholder ideology, is the being that is beaten, and the whip the primary symbol of the master's power over the slave, it is one of the most important marks of the free man that his body is immune to punishment; for a free man, to be stripped and beaten publicly is to suffer a massive blow to his honor and a total deprivation of personal dignity.