Did the Roman citizens ever know of the atrocities that were committed by the legions? If so, how did they react?
Susanna Viljanen, works at Aalto University
Answered Oct 15
The concept of “atrocity” is a Christian one, and stems from Judeo-Christian ethics. The Pagan Romans simply didn’t think of murder, genocide, rape and annihilation with similar ethical terms as we do. For them, they were but natural things and in natural order.
The stem word for “atrocity” is Latin ater, dark black, and it refers to a “black deed”. It refers to Judeo-Christian ethics. The Pagan Romans did not have the moral concepts we had.
They were incredibly bloodthirsty, cruel bastards by our standards; servus non persona est, a slave is no person but merely chattel on Roman law, and the Romans could never get enough of blood, carnage and death on munera and ludi - gladiatorial games. Add there also public executions, damnatio ad bestias etc, and the image of what we get on the Roman society is simply that the Romans were b*stards.
The answer is: yes, they did know of the atrocities the Legiones committed, and they did not give a damn. Why should they have? On the contrary, they were just proud of what they had done - it keeps the Barbarians at bay.
Some authors considered ill on this practise - desertum fecerunt et pacem appellaverunt - called Tacitus: “they make a desert and call it peace”, but the vast majority considered exterminating Barbarians as merely a good thing, and assimilating the rest. There was a very good reason why Jews were all the time bound to rebel.
High standards of civilization and low standards of human decency are not mutually exclusive. The Romans are perhaps the hallmark on that. |
