The Romans on War: Part 3
Homicidia compescimus et singulas caedes; quid bella et occisarum gentium gloriosum scelus? We outlaw manslaughter and individual murders, but what about war and the slaughter of peoples? (Seneca, Moral Letters, 95. 30).
This is one of those luminous moral passages in all of Seneca where he vaults high above his age in this sweeping condemnation of war and the wholesale butchery of entire peoples. You would hardly think that such moral sensitivity could be displayed by a Roman aristocrat and government official. He continues in the same vein:
We are mad, not only individually, but nationally. We outlaw manslaughter and individual murders; but what of war and the much-vaunted crime of slaughter-ing eentire peoples? There are no limits to our greed, none to our cruelty. And as long as such crimes are committed by stealth and by individuals, they are less harmful and less portentous; but cruelties are practiced in accordance with acts of senate and popular assembly, and the public is bidden to do that which is forbidden to the individual [killing other human beings].
Deeds that would be punished by loss of life when committed in secret are praised by us because uniformed generals have carried them out. Man, naturally the gentlest class of being, is not ashamed to revel in the blood of others, to wage war, and to entrust the waging of war to his sons, when even dumb and wild beasts keep the peace with one another.
All the wars and military campaigns waged over the centuries by the Romans in Britain, Gaul, Spain, Germany, North Africa, Egypt, Greece, and Asia Minor were actually wars of aggression. Hundreds of thousands were killed not to civilize those countries but to dominate them by bringing the Pax Romana that only subjugated their peoples to the Roman yoke out of greed for plunder and territorial expansion.
If you recall the films you’ve ever seen about the Roman army conquering its enemies, especially films like Gladiator (2000) and found yourself cheering for the Romans rather than the “barbarians,” you were actually rooting for the bad guys, while the so-called “barbarians” were really the good guys, freedom fighters defending their homeland against Roman aggression. Such is the power of Hollywood to manipulate their audiences with propaganda. One immediately thinks of those laconic words of Tacitus, the author of the next quotation.
Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace (Tacitus, Agricola, 30).
Tacitus, arguably the greatest of Roman historians, was a bitter enemy of the imperial system and pined for the days of the Roman Republic. This quotation is taken from one of the better-known historical events he memorialized.
The Romans under Agricola, the father-in-law of Tacitus, had already pacified much of Britannia. He finally reaches the northern part of Scotland about 83 CE where he is to fight a decisive battle.
However, Tacitus first creates a marvelous speech which he puts into the mouth of Calgacus, the leader of the Caledonian army. Undoubtedly, this anti-Roman diatribe must also have reflected his own burning repudiation of Roman foreign policy.
The speech concludes with these words: Robbers of the world [the Romans], having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a wilderness and call it peace (ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant).
Tam nescire quaedam milites quam scire oportet. There are things a soldier should and should not know (Tacitus, Histories, 1. 83). Otho, the short-lived Roman emperor, chastises his soldiers about their rioting and boldly tells them that there are certain things that soldiers should know and others which must be kept from them for the general welfare of the army. If orders were given publicly and soldiers began questioning them, they might start to disagree and criticize them, and all obedience would break down and military discipline would be at an end.
And, of course, there is always the element of surprise in warfare. Should a soldier be captured by the enemy and under torture reveal the plan of battle, the entire legion might be defeated because of the enemy’s knowing the battle plan. It is as needful that the soldiers should be ignorant of some things as that they should know others.
Desines timere, si sperare desieris. You will cease to fear if you cease to hope (Seneca, Moral Letters, 5. 7). Beware a downtrodden and desperate enemy, who has nothing to lose, so low has he been brought by years of oppression. He has tried everything — patient diplomacy, humble negotiation, self-abasing petition, and been met at every turn with mockery and insult, so that he can fall no further.
He has lost all hope, given up, will never see justice, and, worst of all, he has now lost all fear and become your worst nightmare. “O Romans, double your sentries. Triple them even, for we are coming for you. Abandon all hope of leaving this island alive!”
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Frangit et attollit vires in milite causa. A soldier is weakened or strengthened by belief in his cause (Propertius, Elegies, 4. 6. 51). If you believe in your cause, are fighting for your Faith, and told that God is on your side, you’ll be invincible. Such strong belief is a motivational drug and if you have this belief, you are in another dimension. If you and your com-rades are convinced that you are in the right, you cannot afford to hear any doubt or criticism, for then you are weakened. And so, to prevent this from happening, what you read and hear in the media will be strictly censored.
I once heard German Army veterans of World War II discussing their 1939 invasion of Poland forty years after the war had ended, and they still believed that Poland had been the aggressor. The German censors had done their job well. Morale had to be maintained at all costs, even if it meant round-the-clock propaganda.
Is this what happens with every form of closed-mindedness? Is one so riddled with self-doubt that even hearing the other side of a question weakens belief? One fears role-play, sensing that if one begins to sympathize with another view, one may cease believing in one’s own.
So, one keeps busy, never slowing down to reflect because a reflective soldier is an ineffective soldier on the battlefield. Discipline, structure, moving forwards, always onwards, never questioning; never looking at anything in a new way, never saying, “Let’s look at this from another perspective,” because there’s only one way, our way, and if we don’t weaken, we’ll be okay!
The evening before a battle, Pericles, Athenian statesman and military commander-in-chief, and his second-in-command fall into a literary discussion about the appropriateness of certain color-adjectives in describing an object, whereupon they cite various poets whose quotations illustrate their respective viewpoints. The next day they are victorious in battle. Edith Hamilton, author of The Greek Way, mentions that such a sophisticated discussion about literary criticism between two military men before battle would be unimaginable in any other age or culture.
How would you explain these Athenian generals conversing about such aesthetic nuances more suitable to a graduate school seminar room between two doctoral students? What larger point might she be making about Athenian society and the importance of leisure for cultivating the mind?
Perhaps a more telling example not mentioned by Hamilton is found in two passages from Thucydides (VII.87) and Plutarch (Life of Nicias 29.1–3) regarding Athenian captives sentenced to death working in the stone quarries of Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War. So fond were the Syracusans of Euripides’ dramas that those prisoners who could recite lines from them were set free.
Plutarch (Life of Nicias 29, 1–3)
Most of the Athenians perished in the stone quarries of disease and evil fare, their daily rations being a pint of barley meal and a half-pint of water; but not a few were stolen away and sold into slavery, or succeeded in passing themselves off for serving men. These, when they were sold, were branded in the forehead with the mark of a horse, — yes, there were some freemen who actually suffered this indignity in addition to their servitude.
[2]But even these were helped by their restrained and decorous bearing; some were speedily set free, and some remained with their masters in positions of honor. Some also were saved for the sake of Euripides. For the Sicilians, it would seem, more than any other Hellenes outside the homeland, had a yearning fondness for his poetry. They were forever learning by heart the little specimens and morsels of it which visitors brought them from time to time, and imparting them to one another with fond delight.
[3] In the present case, at any rate, they say that many Athenians who reached home in safety greeted Euripides with affectionate hearts, and recounted to him, some that they had been set free from slavery for rehearsing what they remembered of his works; and some that when they were roaming about after the final battle they had received food and drink for singing some of his choral hymns. Surely, then, one need not wonder at the story that the Caunians, when a vessel of theirs would have put in at the harbor of Syracuse to escape pursuit by pirates, were not admitted at first, but kept outside, until, on being asked if they knew any songs of Euripides, they declared that they did indeed, and were for this reason suffered to bring their vessel safely in.
How would you explain the power of poetry among the Greeks that could so move the Syracusans that they freed these captives? What was it about the power of poetry that so transfixed them? What has happened in the intervening centuries that would make this kind of reaction impossible today? What does this say about the Greeks as a people and culture?
Nihil tam incertum nec tam inaestimabile est quam animi multitudinis. Nothing is so uncertain or unpredictable as the reaction of a crowd (Livy, History of Rome, 31. 34. 3). What follows is one of many gripping stories that continually enliven Livy’s History of Rome. This one has to do with King Philip of Macedon who had just sent out a squadron of cavalry to engage the Romans and then planned to bring back the slain to camp to instill courage in his fellow Greeks to die on his behalf.
[King]Philip, thinking that he would do something to secure the affection of his people and increase their readiness to encounter danger on his behalf if he undertook the burial of the cavalrymen who had fallen on the expedition, ordered their bodies brought into camp, that the funeral honor might be seen by all.
Nothing is so uncertain or unpredictable as the reaction of a crowd. What he thought would make them more ready to enter any conflict caused, instead, reluctance and fear; for men who had seen the wounds dealt by javelins and arrows and occasionally by lances, since they were used to fighting with the Greeks and Illyrians, when they had seen bodies chopped to pieces by the Spanish sword (used by the Romans), arms torn away, shoulders and all, or heads separated from bodies, with the necks completely severed, or vitals laid open, and the other fearful wounds, realized in a general panic with what weapons and what men they had to fight. Fear seized the king as well, who had never met the Romans in ordered combat.
Frank Breslin is a retired high-school teacher in the New Jersey public school system.
