The Cultural Context

Decrying the lack of interest in the painstaking studies of those who enlighten us about the moon and other heavenly lights, Pliny complains that “through a flaw in the human mentality, we delight in recording blood and slaughter in our history books, so that people who are ignorant about the universe itself may know about the crimes of humanity” (Historia Naturalis 2.43). Despite this complaint, warfare will inevitably loom large in the cultural background to the course, since Rome was for so long a military state. The phrase domi militiaeque “at home and on military service” reflects a long-established Roman perspective: the only reason for leaving home was to fight wars. Augustus was proud of his establishment of peace throughout the empire:

“Our ancestors decreed that the doors of the temple of Janus Quirinus should be closed whenever peace, secured by victory by land and sea, prevailed through the whole empire. There are only two recorded instances of this before my birth since the founding of the city [in the (semi-legendary) reign of Numa Pompilius, the second king, and in 235 BC, after the first Punic War, more than 500 years after the founding of the city], but the Senate has ordered them to be closed three times during my Principate [after the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, after Augustus’ campaigning in Spain in 25 BC; nothing is known about the third closure]” (The Deeds of the God Augustus 13).

Warfare was not, however, always regarded in a negative light: Livy records that the consuls of 303 BC campaigned in Umbria so that their year in office would not go by without any war. They will have wished to escape the obscurity accorded to the consuls of 429 BC, of whom Livy says simply that “nothing worth recording happened during their consulship”.

At the start of Book 6, Livy frets that his readers will be tired of his accounts of the constant wars, but he is rather more assertive when he asks in Book 10 “What sort of person could be irritated with writing or reading about all these long wars, when they did not exhaust those who actually fought them?” (Some classical scholars, however, might admit to finding Livy’s record [Books 31ff.] of the wars in Greece in the 2nd century BC rather uninspiring.)

The Greek historian Cassius Dio has Caesar say when about to fight the German chieftain Ariovistus at Vesontium (Besançon) in 58 BC: “Anyone who says we should not make war might as well say that we should not acquire wealth, rule others, be free, be Romans”. In Sallust’s Histories, a letter purporting to be addressed by Mithridates of Pontus to the king of Armenia says: “The Romans have weapons directed at everyone, and the sharpest are turned against those whose subjugation will bring the greatest plunder; they have become powerful through audacity, through deceit, through sowing war after war”.

Even during the pax Romana “the Roman peace”, established by Augustus and conventionally considered to have lasted till the death of Marcus Aurelius in AD 180, maintaining the army for frontier wars required more than half of the imperial budget.

The Romans’ focus on warfare is perhaps more understandable if we bar in mind how close they came to annihilation in the aftermath of Cannae in 216 BC:

Hannibal's officers all surrounded him and congratulated him on his victory, and urged that after such a magnificent victory he should allow himself and his exhausted men to rest for the remainder of the day and the following night. Maharbal, however, the leader of the cavalry, thought that they should not waste any time. He said to Hannibal “To give you an idea of what has been gained by this battle, I prophesy that in five days you will be feasting victoriously on the Capitol. Follow me; I will go in advance with the cavalry; the citizens of Rome will know that you have come before they know that you are coming”. To Hannibal the victory seemed too great and too joyous for him to appreciate its scale all at once. He told Maharbal that he commended his enthusiasm, but that he needed time to think out his plans. Maharbal replied “The gods have not given all their gifts to one man. Hannibal, you know how to be victorious, but you do not know how to take advantage of your victory” [vincere scis, Hannibal, victoria uti nescis.] The delay of that one day is plausibly thought to have saved our city and our empire (Livy, History of Rome 22.51).

To put Roman militarism in perspective, they were scarcely the only war-minded power. Livy uses exactly the same phrase as Mithridates applies to the Romans, “sowing war after war”, in referring to Hannibal. Strabo, a Greek geographer of the Augustan period, recounts how, when members of a Spanish tribe, the Vettonians, visited a Roman camp for the first time, and saw some officers strolling around just for the pleasure of doing so, they thought they must be insane, and escorted them back to their tents, on the supposition that they should either be sitting quietly or fighting.

Northern peoples, especially the Germanic tribes, were considered to be notoriously warlike. “When their own community is wallowing in unwelcome peacetime idleness, noble young German warriors go off to some other tribe that is waging war” (Tacitus, Germania 14).

The Latin word hostis most often means “foreign enemy”, but its primary sense is simply “stranger”. The same is true of the Greek ξένoς (xenos), and both hostis and ξένoς are cognate with the English words host, hospitable, hostile and guest.

The elder Pliny says that Julius Caesar killed more people than anyone else ever, but he was not the only commander to adopt a policy of genocide: in 150 BC, a direct ancestor of Galba, emperor in AD 68-69, systematically massacred men, women and children in an attempt to exterminate the Lusitanians (in modern Portugal).