by Horatius Piscinus on Sun Nov 09, 2003 1:58 am
Salvete
When a Roman army defeated an enemy army they would plunder the enemy camp for spoils of war. Plundering a city was quite another thing and was not often done. Roman Fides mandated that if an enemy surrendered unconditionally then the enemy was placed under the protection of the Roman commander. If the campaign against an enemy city proved difficult or did not result in an unconditional surrender it might prove a harsher result. The idea of a campaign being conducted under auspices meant that everything taken in a campaign belonged to the commander to distribute. A populace (or portion of it) sold into slavery meant the soldiers received a portion of the profits. A percentage was also given to gods or goddesses - Jupiter and Ceres especially, as well as any to whom the commander may have made vows. It was not exactly a free for all plunder after victory. And outright slaughter was unprofitable and rare. Sylla's slaughter of Athens, Praeneste and his order to hunt down all male Samnites (who were btw citizens of Rome by then) are notable exceptions. Another can be the sack of Locri by a subordinate of Scipio Africanus, who was then recalled by the Senate to answer for the act. The result was that the Senate order not only the stolen wealth returned, but doubled it by paying an equal amount to the temple treasuries. Such acts reflected on the person who held the auspices, whether he had ordered it or not, and then too reflected on all Rome, since the auspices were taken on Rome's behald, no the individual commander.
Caesar's slaughter of the women and children of a defeated German tribe was deliberate terrorism. Caesar tried to justify it by saying it would deter other Germans tribes from crossing the Rhine. He only came up with that excuse though after members of the Senate proposed prosecuting him for the sacrilege since this act was a breach of Roman Fides. There was more to the whole affair though. Still, by Caesar's admission, it was terrorism and not simple terror tactics.
Another act of deliberate terror was the burning of crops in the Samnite wars. It was terror since it posed the possibility of famine. It was a legitimit military target because it attacked that untangible "enemy's will to fight." Although an act of terror, I do not think you can call it an act of terrorism. The same holds in a seige of a city, you may attack food and water supplies, causing panic that destroys an enemy's will to continue fighting. Such acts raise terror among the "civilians" (a term maybe not applicable in ancient societies) to a point that it affects the decision of an enemy. This can be taken more directly if you toss infected carcass over the wall, posing disease on top of famine. But there again the terror comes more from the threat than from actually killing indiscriminately. On the other hand, Spartans did kill indiscriminately, and purposely to oppress the helots, which would be taken as institutionalized state terrorism (in much the manner that the old military regime in Guatamala use to control its civilian population.) The same is true of the Roman practice of crucifxion in that its intent was to oppress slaves from revolting, but it was not indiscriminately used.
Standards of conduct differed in ancient times from modern. You might wish to compare the Romans with other civilizations of those times. I think the point is though that Romans did have standards on the conduct of war, they did hold the acts of certain foreign armies and even some Roman commanders to have breached those standards. The Romans did employ terror tactics of a nature still used today and considered legitimit conduct of war. They seem, to me at least, to have had similar concepts as our own when it came to acts of terrorism however. The case Cicero made against Catalina was that he intended a terrorist campaign that would have slaughtered much of the elite of many of the cities of Italy, not just Rome. And the name of Sulla was always abused as that of a butcher because he was regarded o have exceeded Roman standards of conduct in every regard. Just as Tergestus tried to distinguish between legitimit warfare and terrorism I think you can distinguish out acts of (legitimit) terror from terrorism.
Vale
M Horatius Piscinus
Sapere aude!