Ethnic Cleansing - Roman Style

[Guest spartacus]

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With respect, I am entitled to my opinion, if that opinion casts a shadow over Caesar as you put it then so be it!

[Moonlapse]

Spartacus, would you say that society, culture, politics and media are the same now as they were 2000 years ago?

[Guest spartacus]

Moonlapse

 

You know how to stir it up you really do!

 

so, I will begin and before ANYONE posts a nasty reply or fires accusations, remember it is only one mans opinion, right or wrong, which in a democratic existence I am entitled to give!

 

I will answer the post in its entirety with a true story, which I will entitle Morals!

 

In ancient times in battle, you more often than not were given no quarter, in other words if you slipped up you were killed, end of story, no compassion showed!

So I reckon Life and Death lies with the individual, for example I served a long time in the Marines, without boring the reader with details I was in a position of judgement! I was stood over a seriously wounded enemy soldier, his breathing was short and heavy, his eyes glassy, I was stood over him with the barrel of my rifle touching his face, I could have fired, no questions asked, it was in battle so no repercussions!

I slung my rifle, dragged him up and passed him to our medics!

Was I right or was I wrong!

I like to think I was right!

So Moonlapse asked for a comparison, I would say yes if the individual soldier was ALLOWED an option, which in most cases he was not, kill at all costs was the driving motto, but I firmly believe that given the option most soldiers would take prisoners as opposed to killing their adversery!

Maybe its me!

I have a deep belief that no man is totally evil, we can all be capable of evil acts but deep down we would not commit the most evil act of taking life, only in extordinary circumstances, granted

Society was different then to a degree, life was cheap, kill at all costs, etc but this was down to pressure from the peers of the time, but you pull any one of those front-line troops to one side and they would not care to kill a fellow human being, but they were forced to!

As for polictics, then it was a case of every man for themselves, a game of one up-manship!

A lot of back stabbing( sorry julius) but there was no thought for the common good only what you could achieve for yourself!

So nothing changes, then as now boils down to ego, pure and simple!

 

Regards

 

Spartacus

[Guest Scanderbeg]

I'm beginning to sense an anti-Caesarian in Spartacus, or anti-populares!  If you could go back would you be an Optimate?  Would you ally yourself with Cato?

 

It's hard to say. Carthage was still a big power even if it lacked the military strength. They were an energetic people and a possible recovery was deeply feared by the Romans. Remember, these guys have had 2 wars with them. The last one costing over a hundred thousand deaths, destruction of Roman cities, money gone into the thin air. If Carthage recovered, the Romans feared another possible war. Both wars had cost the Romans deeply. The first punic war nearly drained their economy. The second vanished it and Rome had to recover. Luckily for Rome, recovery came from a new piece of land.

Pros

-Destruction of Carthage would enable Rome to become the main city of the meditteranean(Athens had long since passed its time)

-Allowed Rome to expand into Africa

-Removal of a feared enemy.

 

Con

-HUGE MORAL QUESTION. Even for the "dirty" Romans destoying Carthage came as a big question of their morality. They had already sunk Carthage into nothing. No matter what the Romans told the Carthagenians to do, the Carthagenians obeyed. Removal of ships, weapons, soldiers, defenses. Whatever it was, they listened. It took Cato over a year and heated "disputes" between Numidia and Carthage over land to get the Romans going. You could say the Romans planted the whole thing using their puppet Massinissa as means of being able to "spark" war with Carthage once again. Then (just a view) planted the whole "Get out of your land while we destroy it." arguement to get themselves concientiously ready for such a thing(remember destoying Carthage was no small thing. Then Carthage was a massive city with over 750,000 inhabitents and multiple story houses. It's splendor surpassed the Republican Roma.).

-(Romans used this arguement against the razing of the city. Its not mine though just posting it for the hell of it) If the Romans destory Carthage, they will grow weak from lack of powerful enemies.

 

Being me, a very concientous fellow, this would come as a very hard choice. But if I was a Roman then, I can't really say for sure.

 

In the end Rome did destroy the city. In all fairness, one could say Rome did what it did to assert itself. It was still rather young and had to compete with strong powers in the east, the north, just about all around her. Enemies that were now noticing it. Even if it was too late.

 

Also, here is Polybius accounts of the destruction:

 

Then came new scenes of horror. The fire spread and carried everything down, and the soldiers did not wait to destroy the buildings little by little, but pulled them all down together. So the crashing grew louder, and many fell with the stones into the midst of the dead. Others were seen still living, especially old men, women and young children who had hidden in the inmost nooks of the houses, some of them wounded, some more or less burned, and uttering horrible cries. Still others, thrust out and falling from such a height with the stones, timbers, and fire, were torn asunder into all kinds of horrible shapes, crushed and mangled.

 

Nor was this the end of their miseries, for the street cleaners who were removing the rubbish with axes, mattocks, and boathooks, and making the roads passable, tossed with these instruments the dead and living together into holes in the ground, sweeping them along like sticks and stones or turning them over with their iron tools, and man was used for filling up a ditch. . . . Horses ran over them, crushing their faces and skulls, not purposely on the part of the riders, but in their headlong haste . . . all together made everybody frantic and heedless of the spectacle before their eyes.

 

Six days and nights were consumed in this kind of turmoil, the soldiers being changed so that they might not be worn out with toil, slaughter, want of sleep, and these horrid sights.

 

Thanks to the ultimate source for the Punic Wars and anything to do with Carthage: http://www.barca.fsnet.co.uk/

[Guest spartacus]

Polybius descripition is quite graphic, and one can sense the horror unfolding, it must have been awful to be there!

[Guest Malacitanus]

I am very sad that most conversations about Roma have particular interest in mind. Whether religious, ethnic, or other the conversations usually tend to be a judgement of Roma on present beliefs or opinions. I believe we should look the particular actions - Roman or other - within their own historical context to be able to learn something. Caesar wanted to exercised the ancient Roman principle of national interest by extending the national borders to the barbarian front while enhancing its own dignitas.

Not very different from the Athenians, or Macedonians before, or the barbarians Angles, Saxons, and Franks later.

National interest was a principle, in ancient times, of survival not of ethnic advancement.

[Ursus]

I agree with your views, Mal. And welcome to the community.

[Quintus Artemis Sertorius]

Well, looks like I came a little late to this thread but what the heck. With all due respect to PP, I don't think mass-murder can be justified by the name put on it. One person's "ethnic-cleansing" is another person's "killing of resistance". Whatever you call it, the outcome is the same: massive amounts of people being killed. Was Ceasar right in his actions? I personaly don't know, it is hard to judge with 2000 years of changing morals, cultures, and societies. What I do know, however, is that the act of sparing the enemy out of moral reasons is a very new phenomenon to the human race. Since the very first days of humanity, we as a species have been the most destructive to walk on the earth. There is a very good pile of evidence that we may have hunted our evolutionary cousins the Neanderthals to extinction. We as Americans are the progeny of a mass murder here on our own continent. What can you define the killing of Indians as? Not really sure, in that some where killed to stop ressitance, while some were killed in order to just get rid of them. In almost every instance that a more modern, more advanced society suddenly met a more primitive culture, the former quickly replaced the later, usually through force and some method of mass murder. If such an action is so common in history, one might wonder if it is in fact human nature. Perhaps it is the natural conclusion to survival of the fitest. Was Ceasar truly wrong, or was he just carrying out the goal which evolution led him to?

one man's "ethnic cleansing" is another man's "killing of resistance", but are both just nature's "natural selection"?

[Ursus]

I'm not going to get into the evolutionary destiny of human nature, because I'm not sure if such a thing can really be proven one way or another (as I understand evolution, it has no specific goal in mind, it's merely a reponse to random external stimuli ... but regardless, I'm not going to view geopolitics through an anthropological or biological perspective).

 

Caesar's conquest just wasn't about building more social capital. Romans have long memories, and the near destruction of Rome by Gallic tribes three hundred years before was still very fresh in everyone's minds. Romans always lived in fear of the ever burgeoning tribal populations to the north that had a penchant for settling in their backyard. To subdue the barbarians and make them citizens and subjects of the empire rather than the destroyers and overlords of the Roman Empire .... that was the charge of the warlords. The "mass murder" of Roman imperialism seems to be mild compared to the depredations and chaos of the later collapse of the empire, and it certainly seems mild compared to how later empires would go about their foreign policy ....including the European settlers on the North American continent.

[Quintus Artemis Sertorius]

I think the Romans did practice a limited kind of genocide in Gaul. Genocide is any kind of killing due to the victims membership in a group. There have been a couple of genocides in history with the object not of killing off a group, but eliminating that groups ability to resist the new power. initially, the spaniards weren't intent on killing off all the Amerindians they found. they wanted to break the power of the Aztecs and Incas, but they wanted to save the population to use as a labor base. the same goes for the Khemer Rouge in the late 70's. they didn't want to kill everyone in their country, just those that would not bow down. i think the romans had much the same idea.

[Ursus]

I point out that no matter the violence inflicted on Gaul by Caesar (and the number of killed and captured may very well be exaggerated), within two generations of Gaul's conquest there were many Gaullish elites serving as Equestrians and Senators in Rome .... many naming themselves after Julius Caesar.

 

Genocidal, racist cultures generally aren't so accomodating. *shrugs* It seems the Roman way was to use whatever violence was necessary to subdue the enemy, but once pacified to admit the enemy as allies and citizens. I really don't see the problem here ... ruthless in war, generous in peace. It kept the empire together for centuries.

[Ursus]

Mod's note: the half of this thread that evolved off topic has been removed to the after hours forums, where it may be debated there.

 

Please keep this thread confined to Rome. Thanks.

[Skarr]

It is always disturbing to read accounts of mass slaughter, written casually by historians with numbers that were probably broad estimates of the dead. Many of the dead may not have, indeed died but may have survived. However, none of these historians were ever on the field themselves and relied on some Roman to give them an account of the battle, the numbers involved and how many died.

 

Needless to say, it is my opinion, that given such a scenario, the brave Roman who was 'there' would of course, exaggerate the number of the enemy when they were facing defeat and would also exaggerate the count when they were victorious as more dead meant that you were really victorious over the enemy.

 

You have to realize one thing that although the Roman legionaries and even the horsemen were pretty tough, pursuing a fleeing enemy and killing them to the last man serves no purpose. I'm sure many a barbarian chief has laughed at the dispatches seized from a Roman courier to the senate, describing a glorious battle and a victory over 100,000 barbarians and killing untold numbers when they probably vanquished a tribe of a few thousand with a few hundred killed and the rest fleeing in all directions.

 

It's always important to read between the lines when you read historical accounts and not take everything at face value. It's one thing to say Caesar stood with x number of men vs Pompey's y number of men as they definitely knew how many legions were there but at the same time, how many Gallic were really killed is the real question. I do know that there were some horrific sieges and that probably the entire population involved perished (maybe due to famine, disease and other reasons) but the actual battles always seem to me a little embellished on the side of the Romans.

 

This is just a general opinion from my side and I'm using some of the numbers for purely illustrative purposes and am not talking about a specific battle or account from Caesar's Gallic commentaries. Many of them were Caesar's own accounts as reported to him by the centurions and others he spoke to as the Roman army would be spread out over a vast area. I think Caesar did some of the numbers in his head and extrapolated the rest.

[Dream]

So P.Clodius, what you are saying is romans were no better than Nazis?

 

If so, should they be treated with the same contempt!

 

 

 

name me a country/empire/race/faith that hasnt tourchered or butchered or punished a weaker race? sofar i can think of the swiss...

 

germany under hitler was a powerful properus country that made mortorways cars trucks tanks and people in a quality that wasnt matched by any country at the time, they made ships that scared the english fleets (england had a fleet larger then any two other nations combined) germany alone went to war with every other country around it including america and russian and for the most part won, they were disaplined loyal troops, masterfuly made equpiment and a growing industry, not unlike the romans, except rome never went to war against all its enamys at the same time.

 

jews are bombing people and distroying homes and towns... they deserve no more pitty then any other faith or race, i think the only reason they get it is they complain and pour about the past rather then get over it and carry on like every other race has done, notice, the only jewish state is one that was given to them, while other faiths and races fought and made there own.

 

also spartacus, i think rome delt with those that resisted the same every army has done from long before rome, and until this presant day, it is accepted by the west, and from what i have read and believe, by the east to. it is simply the means to an ends, kill a town of 10,000 50,000 100,000 now, and you end the truble there, at least for awhile - take the upriseing im sure youv watched the movie to, after every slave that resisted was exicuted... there wasnt a rebelus slave problem anymore, the same with carthage after its anilalation, there were no more punic wars... you have to kill those that are a threat or youll just keep fighting. (not