> It is worth stressing that we are dealing here not with individual sadistic psycho-pathology, but with a deep cultural difference. Roman commitment to cruelty presents us with a cultural gap which it is difficult to cross.
I'm not sure that's true. Remember that Germany and Austria were centers of Western civilization, culture, arts and learning before WWII, yet look at the bloodthirsty practices they embraced. Other European countries did similar things in their overseas colonies.
We are not immune; human nature hasn't changed. We are made of the same stuff as Romans, Nazis, ISIL members, Serb ultranationalists and Rwandan Hutu nationalists. Currently it seems there's a public movement to embrace hatred as a norm, and violence, including war internationally and firearms domestically, as an acceptable solution to problems. If those become norms I worry about the next steps.
I don't think it's quite as generic as you portray. Rome was truly in a class of its own. Brutal violence characterized most ancient societies, and wars were winner-take-all affairs. Yet Rome had a top-to-bottom, win-at-any-cost militarization of society that set it apart from all but a few states like Macedon and Sparta. Romans who surrendered rather than dying in battle were often ostracized, as happened after Cannae. Roman armies were also capable of genocidal cruelty towards enemies, as demonstrated in the conquest of Gaul. The city won dominion of the Mediterranean through brutally efficient armies as well as a willingness to shrug off terrible losses. It's not surprising to see the same attitudes permeating civilian life.
The closest European parallel seems to be Prussia, especially from the time of Frederic the Great onwards. It is the most complete example of the nation in arms I can think of. Yet even they lacked the casual brutality of the Romans.
It's an amazing collection of documents on war, across history and cultures, from Homer to the US invasion of Iraq, written by everyone from participants to victims to experts to scholars to poets.
After reading it, my strong impression that was that Rome was brutal, but so has been almost everyone else.
Thanks! That's a new one. War is brutal and you are right that at some level it's hard to make clear distinctions. The Romans were certainly very good at it.
It is reassuring to know that the Romans were as bloodthirsty as ourselves as far as their fellow men and 'beasts' are concerned. They were 'good Germans' too.
Not so recently normalised behaviour was to watch the Iraq war whilst having one's teevee dinner, although televised, there was fresh killings every evening in your living room, without the inconvenience of mess or smell! TV ratings were good!!!
I also believe it is a bit rich to criticise how the Romans treated 'beasts'. Unless you are vegetarian or vegan. We are the true masters of imprisoning and torturing animals efficiently. Plus we don't have existential threats from 'beasts', in Roman times some type of bear could eat you alive on your trip back from the pub.
I'm not sure that a public celebration of murder is quite the same thing as any of those things you have mentioned. Public executions fell out of fashion in Europe some time ago. Surely we are shaped by our culture even if we are made of the same stuff. I understand the appeal of pointing out our similarities but if that isn't an example of a "deep cultural difference" I can't imagine what would be.
Public executions were hugely popular with the proletariat, the process of making them less public then ending them all together has always been driven by ""elite"" moralists. And I say that as someone who'd fall in the latter category.
Not all of us are embracing firearms; that's a particularly US-centered trait. Curiously, the other nations that are really gung-ho about civilians carrying firearms tend to be the ones that the US looks down on as being backwards and uncivilised.
The Swiss don't carry firearms. They have a government-issued firearm in their homes and government-issued ammunition. They're required to practice, but they don't carry the firearms around bragging about how many virtual crimes they've stopped by doing so, nor pose for selfies in those fake weekend-warrior poses - they're not "really gung-ho". Comparing the Swiss and the American experience of civilian firearms really only works on the absolutely shallowest level.
Israel has a little more open to civilians carrying weapons, but it's still a lot more restricted than in the US. But fine, have Israel, even though the culture there still doesn't really match up (and there's a strong strain of anti-Israel sentiment in the US anyway). I'll just point out that I said 'tend'.
In a philosophy class, the teacher explained us that the system used for the Shoah minimized the number of bloodthirsty lunatics needed (mostly the few that made the actual killing).
So perhaps, for the majority, human nature has gotten better, but, for the rest it has stayed unchanged/ gone worst?
> the teacher explained us that the system used for the Shoah minimized the number of bloodthirsty lunatics needed
I wonder about that. In Eastern Europe, they encouraged local angry mobs to kill their fellow Jewish citizens. In the concentration camps, it was an industrial process, requiring many employees to operate, guard, etc.
Most of the guards, the support personnel, all the people necessary to bring the Jews (and others) to the camps (capturing, transporting) did not have to kill anyone, but they were part of a system that is responsible for the death of +/- 7 million people. You just needed the killers to do the actual killing, but the industrialized process lowered the required number of people.
As for “local angry mobs to kill their fellow Jewish citizens”, do you have any source for it? I think it’s the first time I hear about it. Even so it would have been a limited number of people, compared to the number killed in the camps.
Our contemporary fascination with the gladiatorial games does not reflect that of the Romans - to them, the races were the peak of entertainment.
The Circus Maximus was built over 400 years before the Coliseum, and could hold over twice as many people by conservative estimates. It was only in the very late Republic to early Empire that gladiatorial combat gained widespread attention in Rome itself, having previously been limited to smaller arenas in towns throughout the empire (and a funeral ritual prior to that).
The article includes the following words of Seneca: "All the previous fighting had been merciful by comparison. Now finesse is set aside, and we have pure unadulterated murder..."
That's not the point. By calling something "murder" even though it may have been legal, we are passing moral judgment on the act as well as the law and society that tolerated it.
To act as though someone using this term is simply unaware that it was legal, and needs a lesson on Roman law, is simply to be obtuse.
Which partially explains the high quality of the piece. I wasn't expecting it and was surprised. Harder to find nowadays.
It's not a simple minded rant, and has a good lot of factual historical details, accurate as far as I can tell as someone way less expert than the author.
The perspective on the facts is also reasonable, if not fashionable (nowadays it goes more "yuck, not us.")
I'm kind of surprised this sort of spectacle no longer exists. Considering the enormous popularity of depictions of violence in mass media, sports, and video games, real gladitorial games would probably be pretty popular. You'd think at least some third world country without much concern for pesky thinks like morals, ethics, or human rights, or animal welfare would have them.
For the same reason the said games fell out of favor in the public perception. Christianity gained power. Not to say that torture and murder were not taken place under christian priests' sight if not command, but in the later the cause was always punitive in regard to or attempts to gain cooperation from victims, whereas the former were for show and entertainment alone.
> New species were gradually introduced to Roman spectators (tigers, crocodiles, giraffes, lynxes, rhinoceros, ostriches, hippopotami) and killed for their pleasure.
We still kill billions of animals each year for pleasure (Eating when the calories aren't needed)
I'm not sure that's true. Remember that Germany and Austria were centers of Western civilization, culture, arts and learning before WWII, yet look at the bloodthirsty practices they embraced. Other European countries did similar things in their overseas colonies.
We are not immune; human nature hasn't changed. We are made of the same stuff as Romans, Nazis, ISIL members, Serb ultranationalists and Rwandan Hutu nationalists. Currently it seems there's a public movement to embrace hatred as a norm, and violence, including war internationally and firearms domestically, as an acceptable solution to problems. If those become norms I worry about the next steps.