It’s often said that history is “written by the victors” but the distance of time can reveal a very different story. Another theme is that history repeats itself and perhaps this should be read as a warning of what would happen if Bush’s “War on Terrorism” was lost.
The Romans kept the Barbarians at bay for as long as they could, but finally they were engulfed and the savage hordes overran the empire, destroying the cultural achievements of centuries. The light of reason and civilisation was almost snuffed out by the Barbarians, who annihilated everything that the Romans had put in place, sacking Rome itself and consigning Europe to the Dark Ages. The Barbarians brought only chaos and ignorance, until the renaissance rekindled the fires of Roman learning and art.
All the more reason your would think to make sure that they are “fought over there”. But dear reader, read on, for as the piece continues.
It is a familiar story, and it’s codswallop.
But there are other lessons from the Roman experience that are based in fact and throw light on the situation in places like Iraq. Now, as they say, for something completely different.
The article I quoted from is based on an interview with Terry Jones. Although best know as a member of the Monty Python team, Jones is a populist historian who has an extensive knowledge of the Middle Ages and earlier. He has made a number of TV series. One investigates ordinary life in his specialist period but this was in connection with his short series for the BBC on Barbarians. In it he showed how much of our current “history” is seen through some very colored Roman filters. It’s looking at how the “official” history is being changed by new research that can throw light on the present day USA.
The unique feature of Rome was not its arts or its science or its philosophical culture, not its attachment to law. The unique feature of Rome was that it had the world’s first professional army. Normal societies consisted of farmers, hunters, craftsmen and traders. When they needed to fight they relied not on training or on standardised weapons, but on psyching themselves up to acts of individual heroism.
Seen through the eyes of people who possessed trained soldiers to fight for them, they (the Barbarians) were easily portrayed as simple savages. But that was far from the truth.
Change “Rome” to “the USA” and “first” to “most costly” and you get very close to what is happening today. The story of Julius Caesar in Gaul is even more eerily reflected in the events of 2003.
Some of you may know of the book that bored generations of schoolboys learning Latin, “Caesar’s Gallic Wars”. This rather excitable commentary gives his version of events as gleaned from his own book.
Caesar’s first battles would be with the Helvetii tribe, who lived in what is now Switzerland; and a Germanic tribe, the Suevi, who had conquered part of Gaul shortly before Caesar assumed the proconsulship. One of his original reasons for pursuing a military campaign in Gaul was the threat of an invasion of territories belonging to other tribes by of the Helvetii and Celtic agitation over the conquering of some of their lands. In the year 58 BC Caesar conquered the Helvetii as well as the Suevi and their Germanic allied tribes.
Going in to rescue the poor Celts from the threat of invasion, very George H Bush. We now know though that this is all propaganda, just like the fake threats of WMD. The real reason was that the Gauls had minerals that were of some interest to Caesar in his political ambitions. Not the “black gold” of oil but the yellow stuff. Similarly his abortive attempt to invade Britain was more about getting at minerals, the considerable metalworking skills and the agricultural wealth than any ideas of simple expansionism. It’s that defeat that shows us the next lesson.
The Roman army had honed several very sophisticated techniques. In moving into new territory, its engineers very quickly threw up defensive works to protect the forces. Then they used this base to move on to the next position and so on. These same engineers were also used to throw up cordons to lay siege to cities to starve and soften up the inhabitants – a technique that was used to great effect in the Gallic Wars. In open fighting however it relied on the foot soldier. They had developed very complex (and successful) defensive and offensive techniques. The highly disciplined formations were the “shock and awe” of their day. Then they met the Celts and the British.
In Roman eyes the Celts may have lacked battle strategy, but their arms and equipment were in no way inferior to the Roman army’s. In fact the Celts had better helmets and better shields.
When the Romans got to Britain they found another technological advance: chariots. It may seem odd to those of us brought up on Ben Hur that the Romans should have been surprised by chariots on the battlefield, but that was the case.
The Romans had chariots, but the Britons made significant design improvements and, as Julius Caesar noted, had thoroughly mastered the art of using them.
So the Romans underestimated their enemy because of the unfamiliar techniques and their opponents proved able to use more flexible and adaptive tactics to harass them until, in the case of the first attempt to conquer Britain, they were forced to withdraw. Sound familiar? But it was perhaps the Roman self-assurance of the superiority of their forces that was their downfall in this case.
The lack of understanding of the other’s culture and even willful dismissal of it as valid runs through much of Roman writing. The automatic assumption of the superiority of their own values is perhaps the most telling for it still colors our view of pre-Roman life. To take a simple example, the article shows how the assumption that the Romans brought road building is false. Indeed the British were building roads a hundred years before the Romans started the Appian Way.
Jones’s series also helped show how the Romans to some extent suppressed but did not extinguish traditions and concepts that have survived through a series of different manifestations and institutions to today. The Celts had a very sophisticated social structure which placed a duty on the society to look after the elderly, sick and disabled as well as the young. This contrasts with the Romans. Claudius had a club foot and a speech impediment but was still made Caesar. That in a large part because he was treated as un-imperial. He was declared that almost as a joke by revolting soldiers who saw him as an “easy touch”. Despite four hundred years of occupation, that caring tradition continued in Britain. Now it was channeled through church and feudal structures but the idea of social justice informed many of the big events in British history like the Peasants’ Revolt and social conventions like “noblesse oblige”. Today the successor of this Celtic tradition is the social support systems like the National Health Service.
I agree these are all very different institutions but it shows the persistence of the idea that a society should look after its most vulnerable members and one that could not be wiped out by a very different but alien tradition. Here is the lesson that Gandhi taught in his response to a question “What do you think of Western Civilization”. His answer “I think it would be a good idea” is a reminder of the far longer history of the country he was representing. So let’s finish by drawing the lesson from the closing paragraph of the Sunday Times piece.
Western society’s enthusiasm since the renaissance for all things Roman has persuaded us to see much of the past through Roman eyes, even when contrary evidence stares us in the face. Once we turn the picture upside-down and look at history from a non-Roman point of view, things start to look very, very different.
If perhaps we start to view other cultures as equally valid and the “other ” as a brother, maybe we would remove our Roman blinkers.
