On Wednesday 29 September, the second issue of the culture and Latin language course will be on newsstands with Corriere. The volume dedicated to war themes in the Roman world
The history of Rome inseparable from history of its wars. Small town in Lazio for a long time at risk of disappearing, forced to fight sometimes with several enemies at the same time, engaged in a constant struggle for life that forged the foundations for future power, Rome came to control dominions that went from Scotland to Egypt, from the Atlantic to Mesopotamia; and this thanks to a military instrument without real defects and to great commanders who, however, were and remained above all citizens.
The Roman one considered the most effective army not only of antiquity, but of history as a whole. Although questionable, the judgment certainly applies to an organism that in seven centuries has been able to conquer an immense empire, managing to keep it for another five. During their very long commitment, the armed forces of Rome have practiced, often laying the foundations, every form of combat, from pitched battle – the just battle which, ritualized according to religion and law, was the preferred solution – siege, from fighting on the sea to urban clashes, from operations in the mountains to counter-guerrilla warfare. The Romans developed a capacity for manage sieges unsurpassed for a millennium and perhaps more effective artillery before the advent of firearms (furthermore elaborating the concept, then rediscovered only in the Renaissance, of a possible use in the open field …) and the invention of military medicine. The level of their logistics was extraordinary and they did not ignore the recourse, albeit sporadic, to embryonic forms of chemical and biological warfare. Even if we discuss the existence of a great strategy, they never lack an overview of the wars they waged.
That of Rome, therefore, certainly the history of a militia of peasants that until it dominated the world of that time; but also and above all of a body of citizens to be able from origine to absorb, transforming them into Romans, the enemies of yesterday. There in the name of an ethics and a sum of shared values at least at the level of litigation, which reflected and identified themselves in military structures never separated from the profound dimension of law. Although the current doctrine often ignores it (or pretends to ignore it, which has become almost a fashion to blame the Romans), the city, which fought an infinite number of wars, often had, in reality, peace as its ultimate aim, although not defenseless. (let him who desires peace prepare for war). Likewise, even if once they took the field they did not admit to stop without having achieved a full victory, the Romans erected numerous legal barriers and religious to avoid armed confrontation; and it the right to war it was in many respects more rigorous and formal than any other form of law.
We speak of princip, of course: but they are not such (and they too are constantly violated…) too human rights or the commandments of God? Their strength lies in having been thought and expressed; and, if one knows how to read it, the Latin lexicon, in this regard, even explicit. Faculty of leading the Romans into war, the term imperium calls for a dialogue with the gods; or with values such as that of fides, the inflexible respect (see Camillo’s speech in Tito Livio) towards rules which are sometimes independent of any convention, because they are established nature and therefore earlier human pact. Value with very remote origins, even Indo-European, fides it was already deified by Numa Pompilius; and theimperium sacredly decays ove da fides depart. Cicero, in De re publica is in the Offices, repeatedly reaffirms the dogma according to which it was also and above all due to the enemies; and if the violation of others was the only cause besides survival (either for faith or for salvation) to undertake a just war, in accordance with the law, the Roman had to observe it also in deporting and deposing, in conducting it and in ending it.
Thus, however, not only from the time of Cicero; but from the earliest formulation of the term international law, where the people they are not peoples, but the multi-family clans of the origins, who agree to share in the presence of sacral verifications similar to the ordeal (the judicial duel between leaders or champions). The aristocracies of Tyrrhenian Italy ended up recognizing themselves in this ethic, especially in armed confrontation, and were soon included in the Senate. Everything fits: the right at the basis of the unparalleled ability to merge peoples around common principles and war which, at least formally, conforms to them. Obliged by original and very solid rules finally extended with the civitas to the whole empire, to its disappearance, Rome has left nothing but rubble and regrets; and the ability to absorb and unify the other forms of thought has truly made his culture (and the Latin that expresses it) an authentic place of the spirit for the entire West.
September 27, 2021 (change September 27, 2021 | 9:08 pm)
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