The Uses and Limits of State Terror in Classical Greece and Rome (article)

There are thousands of cliché images of violent episodes where terror tactics were employed in classical history. When I was a child, there was a fleeting tendency to congratulate our victorious civilization on having outgrown those tendencies. Unfortunately, we have mainly learned how to be more devastating on a larger scale with greater physical distance between perpetrator and victim. Any sensitive person would be appalled at the hacking, slashing, thrusting, beheading, and throat-slitting that characterized the slaughter of ancient warfare. However, we know there is no real moral difference in the consequences to human flesh from a sword used at close range and a bomb dropped from great height onto an unseen enemy.

A closer examination of two great pieces of classical war literature gives us a somewhat different impression than the movie-driven image of that blood-soaked world. Although even before embarking on any reflections on classical

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slaughter and the terror it evoked, one must concede a certain revulsion at the images of people by the hundreds, even thousands, being “put to the sword” in the methodical post-battle execution of a recently defeated and now helpless enemy. These were not even “collateral damage” victims but once-armed opponents whose continued survival was seen to be threatening, inconvenient, or impolitic. So let us agree at the outset to honor our discomfort as we look at ancient violence, but to set aside self-congratulation and present-mindedness. The two texts under consideration here are among the greatest pieces of literature from the ancient world, Thucydides’ The History of the Peloponnesian War and Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic Wars. It is worth noting that both these authors had front-line combat experience with violent warfare. As with all writing, the outlook and bias of the author may be reflected, and each work is self-promoting in its own way.

Most liberal arts students of my generation have been exposed to the soaring rhetoric of Thucydides when he puts the eloquent ideal of the Athenian society into the mouth of Pericles (the Funeral Oration). For at least the last two centuries, there has flourished this image of a noble, open, and wonderful Athens, standing up to the harsh Spartan military machine. The legends are indeed charming, and fully developed in many surviving masterpieces of literature, but there are two other speeches given by Pericles, and they have a very different tone indeed. For example, in contrast to the eloquence and lofty rhetoric of the Funeral Oration, (Book 2, 60 et seq., Walter Blanco translation), he notes that, “You must stop thinking that you are fighting about just freedom versus slavery. It is also about the loss of the empire and about the danger you are in from being hated because of that empire. You hold your empire like a tyranny by now. Taking it is thought to have been criminal; letting it go would be extremely dangerous.” Lest we miss his point, Thucy-

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dides elaborately lays out two incidents, the Melian Dialogue and the Mitylene Debate, both of which show us a harsher image of the Athenian spirit. Finally, with unmistakable clarity, Thucydides displays how even the beloved Athenians succumb to the temptations of power, and are corrupted and destroyed by it in the end. The moral of his tale could not be more clear, or stark, and demonstrates that, as E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (1951), argues in a modern classic book, the Athenians so mishandled the challenges and responsibilities of freedom as to set that cause back for two millennia.

Let us therefore take a moment to look at these other critical pieces of Thucydides’ great work. These are so often overlooked in the rush to find an ancient Athenian analogy for the open, democratic, progressive “good guys” we presume ourselves to be; locked in a life-and-death struggle with militaristic, repressive, and totalitarian “bad guys.” Currently, fanatical religious fundamentalists have assumed the bad guy mantle. In the case of Mitylene (Book 3), before long-term war-making had corrupted the outlook of the Athenians, the order was first sent out to kill all the residents in the aftermath of a revolt, but “[t]he very next morning the Athenians were seized by regrets and second thoughts. They realized that the decision to destroy a whole city rather than just the guilty parties had been sweeping and cruel” (p. 36). An extensive reconsideration pitted a hotheaded view against a moderate view, whereupon the more moderate view narrowly prevailed. A second ship was sent out, which arrived just barely in time to avert the general slaughter of the population. In the Melian Dialogue, which took place later in the slide of Athenian moral corruption, Thucydides creates an obviously artificial discussion, point by point, with the leadership of Melos (Book 5, pp. 84-116). It makes his key point, with horrifying and stark prose. The Athenians tell the people of the island Melos, “Each of us must exercise what

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power he really thinks he can. Those who have power use it, while the weak make compromises. You would benefit by surrendering before you experience the worst of consequences, and we would benefit by not having you dead.” The Athenians declare “this isn’t a contest about manly virtue between equals, or about bringing disgrace on yourself. You are deliberating about your very existence, about standing up against a power far greater than yours.” They go on to say that Gods and men “both are always forced by the law of nature to dominate everyone they can. Don’t you see that expediency is safe, and that doing the right and honorable thing is dangerous?” Thucydides reports that after a siege “they agreed to terms whereby the Athenians could do with them as they liked. The Athenians thereupon killed all the males of fighting age they could capture and sold the women and children into slavery.”

By this brutal conclusion to the negotiations with the Melians, the Athenians demonstrated that they had entirely abandoned their original policy of enlightened openness in favor of terror and total repression. The first great historical democracy punished those who stood in its way and sought to spread terror among others who might be tempted to do so.

When we turn to Julius Caesar, we have to look past the images supplied by Shakespeare, in order to get back to the real man in his actual times. He was physically brave, even reckless, highly visible to his men on the field of battle, rushing to points of danger or even swimming through dangerous waters to rally and lead his troops in person. Therefore, we absolutely must concede that he knew about bloodshed first-hand, but he also knew well how to restrain the use of terror and violence.

In Julius Caesar’s early life he heard about and witnessed the carnage of The Social War against the longtime allies of the Romans. Originally, these non-Roman Italians

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had revolted in order to gain full Roman citizenship rights, but they were harshly opposed and put down with great bloodshed. Ironically, at the end, the rebellious former allies were forced, as a condition of their surrender, to accept full citizenship rights. In retrospect, it is hard to imagine a more futile or stupid use of military violence. Perhaps having learned from this horror, in Gaul against a dedicated and resourceful foe Caesar indeed won out, but imposed a peace upon the conquered that was beneficent enough that Gaul became a key bastion of Roman rule and order for centuries thereafter.

There is a remarkable moment during Caesar’s pursuit of his rival Pompey across Greece when city after city closed its gates to his troops (thus depriving them of critical supplies such as food and water). Further, he had just lost a skirmish or two, his army was starving, and his fortune seemed to be in decline. If he stopped too long to plunder supplies in a foray, the enemy he was pursuing would get away, regroup, set traps, and thus win out against him. So he created an exemplary assault. He took an otherwise militarily insignificant city and turned it over to plunder (as was the custom) and violent repression of the population. As a consequence, Caesar found eager cooperation from other terrorized city dwellers and their leaders as he continued onward to Metropolis and beyond into Thessaly in his pursuit of Pompey. “Not a single state in all Thessaly subsequently refused adhesion to Caesar or compliance with his demands” (F. P. Long translation of The Civil War, pp. 163-164). He was fully intending to win regardless of what got in his way. His use of terror tactics in this instance was relatively restrained, and definitely purposeful rather than merely irrational and habitual as has often been the case in history.

Indeed, one could argue thus: the tranquilizing restraint and pacifying openness famously and successfully shown by his successor Octavian (Augustus) had already

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been exemplified for him by his uncle Julius Caesar. Violence and terror were tools to him as they were to Julius, definitely to be used as a last resort and only to be used with restraint and for highly specific purposes. They might be seen as analogous to a lever; one might choose to push on the terror end but only for very specific goals, and for a limited time. Indeed, under Octavian, exile was frequently preferred to physical punishment. The humane conduct of that most inhumane activity of our species, warfare, is critical to the establishment of lasting peace. Restraint, precision, and respect for the humanity of the foe are key elements that lead to long-lasting hegemony for Rome or to a short-lived golden realm for Athens that frittered away its glorious promise at great and ongoing cost to whole civilizations and their millions.

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