Victory or Genocide?

[petar]

Manlius Vulso's Galatian campaign. Military victory of genocide ?

http://balkancelts.wordpress.com/2012/07...-genocide/

[ValentinianVictrix]

Read any Roman historical works and you will find them resplendent with tales of how the Romans slaughtered every man, woman, child and even animal in villages and towns they sacked.
Normal run of things as far as I can see.

[Mark Hygate]

Joshua 10

[petar]

Joshua 10 ?

[Mark Hygate]

Yup, grab a copy of the Bible, go a few books in to Joshua and review the detail in Chapter 10.

The 'land of milk and honey' as granted to the Israelites by their God, was established (apparently as I certainly read it - and was a bit surprised) through genocide.

In short, anyone who sticks strictly to the aim of a pure military victory, with no other constraining factors, ensuring permanent elimination of the threat has that as the obvious option.

It's an option we no longer consider acceptable - and with all the ramifications of that choice. The Cold War - assured through MAD, the craziest TLA ever......

Our earliest history - Romans - Genghis Khan - and many others. The Danes/Vikings - kill everyone, but one person, whom you let live to tell the tale.

[Macedon]

"Genocide", which actually only means mass murder (or exile) of civilians of a particular ethnic, religious or other affiliation, is a recent ethical issue. It played very little role in those and much later times and judging any civilization by its ethical values is something so subjective that any discussion on it is almost surely doomed to fail, especially when juxtaposed with what an average 21st century Westerner considers moral.

[petar]

Good points. So what is acceptable in one era is 'evil' in another. Vae Victis !

[Macedon]

"Genocides" (however one could define them) and all kinds of other "immoral" acts are practically even today acceptable. Shedding tears in support of those in misery has always been deemed a "moral" thing, but that's about the limit of our global society's "goodness".

... four words in quotation marks shows how difficult it is to really discuss such topics as all these words could be differently perceived and interpreted by each reader..

[Robert]

Still, this DOES touch on a point we would often like to conveniently forget when portraying the glory of Rome. Rome was not a "nice" empire, as few empires have been in the past. It was based on ruthless conquering and enslavment of other peoples through brutal means, bleeding the subjugated for all they were worth. Genocide in our modern definition is indeed the specific targeting of a group due to ethniticity, belief or any binding feature, like the extermination of the Jews by the Nazi's. Placed in a modern context, the speech of said commander could/would indeed be viewed as a call for genocide, lumping the whole group together, painting them black and ridding the world of their very presence through violent action ..... Not new then, not new now!

[Nathan Ross]

Rome was not a "nice" empire, as few empires have been in the past.

Here's a lengthy and quite interesting discussion about this from quite a while back:

Roman Atrocities

As you say, 'genocide' is quite a recent concept, dependent on modern ideas of race, the nation state, industrial ways of killing people (and, I suspect, the invention of barbed wire).

The article linked in the original post does seem a very slanted interpretation - putting 'victory' in scare-quotes like that, as if only nice people are allowed to win battles... Vulso's actions seem reminscent of later Roman activities in Caledonia in particular, where Severus apparently vowed to wipe out the inhabitants. The actual reporting of the conflict by Livy and Polybius does not seem to celebrate the slaughter though. On the contrary, both writers seem fascinated by the barbarians, rather than condescending or demeaning of them.

Interestingly, the article points out that the Roman commander was censured for his acts - as Caesar was too, after his massacre of the Germanic migrants during the Gallic wars. Whatever their views on the virtue of killing enemies, the Romans still believed there was a right and wrong way to go about these things. Besides, widespread slaughter was just a waste of natural resources. ;-)

[Lyceum]

This thread has touched on something very, very, important to the academic side of things. Its actually a central issue. We've no real right to judge.

Basically, yes the Romans were atrocious. There's no "yes but" or anything like that. Pretty much all ancient societies were, that's why the did the things we remember them by - it was predicated on the wealth and stability that come from such actions. Such is history. For a perfect example I'll always remember what one of my Greek History professors told us as an example: The Emperor Ashoka is a canonical example of the "great king" for ancient historians, he was a Buddhist, sponsor of great learning, equality and so on. He declared all humankind to be his children and all that. Yay, lovely person. He won his throne after some ridiculously brutal campaigns.

We have to admit this stuff. We have to move beyond the encomiastic tradition. We do not, however, judge. Physicists don't judge atoms. There's no real room for moral censure. I personally even hate the horrible literary critique that goes on. You know the kind, some posh academic will tell us that Statius is a second rate poet. Well his contemporaries didn't think so!

It's basically not for us to judge. It's also not for us to be dishonest either.

[Timianus]

Very good topic. But, this was not a one-way street; it was standard operating procedure in the ancient world. Look at the mass slaughter of Roman colonists in Greece during Mithrades' uprising. Also forgotten is that many of the great "treasures" in Rome itself were literally carried off from other nations.

Rome was just as brutal in trying to keep its empire as it was in obtaining it (e.g. the mass slaughter of gothic civilians upon the death of Stilicho; Theodisius' massacre of 20,00 civies for kicking out their gothic "protectors").

One of the "lightbulb" moments for me in studying the later roman empire was that to local landowners, the "invading barbarians" may very well have treated them better than the imperial government did.

[Macedon]

it was standard operating procedure in the ancient world.

In the ancient world, in the medieval world, in the Renaissance, in the early Industrial era...even today. Brutality against the masses was, is and will be one of the most useful tools of the powerful.