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Historia vitae magistra

History is the teacher of life   ...   is it?

Terrorism is not something new; nor is the failure to do something about it reasonably, suitably and on time.

history is the teacher of life : mediterranean pirates & 9/11

When the Roman general Pompey was granted extraordinary powers to manage the pirates' crisis, a precedent was set of special military commands and the suspension of liberties, later applied to the whole Constitution.

"The pirates' raid on Ostia was a kind of 9/11", says author Robert Harris.

In the autumn of 68 BC the world’s only military superpower was dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on its very heart. Rome’s port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular war fleet destroyed, and two prominent senators, together with their bodyguards and staff, kidnap-ped. The incident, dramatic though it was, has not attracted much attention from modern historians. But history is mutable. An event that was merely a footnote five years ago has now, in our post-9/11 world, assumed a fresh and ominous significance. For in the panicky aftermath of the attack, the Roman people made decisions that set them on the path to the destruction of their Constitution, their democracy and their liberty. One cannot help wondering if history is repeating itself.

Consider the parallels. The perpetrators of this spectacular assault were not in the pay of any foreign power: no nation would have dared to attack Rome so provocatively. They were, rather, the disaffected of the earth: "The ruined men of all nations", in the words of the great 19th-century German historian Theodor Mommsen. Like Al Qaeda, these pirates were loosely organized, but able to spread a disproportionate amount of fear among citizens who had believed themselves immune from attack.

What was to be done? Over the preceding centuries, the Constitution of ancient Rome had developed an intricate series of checks and balances intended to prevent the concentration of power in the hands of a single individual. The consulship, elected annually, was jointly held by two men. Military commands were of limited duration and subject to regular renewal. Ordinary citizens were accustomed to a remarkable degree of liberty: the cry of "Civis Romanus sum" — "I am a Roman citizen" — was a guarantee of safety throughout the world.

But such was the panic that ensued after Ostia that the people were willing to compromise these rights. The greatest soldier in Rome, the 38-year-old Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (better known to posterity as Pompey the Great) arranged for a lieutenant of his, the tribune Aulus Gabinius, to rise in the Roman Forum and propose an astonishing new law. "Pompey was to be given not only the supreme naval command but what amounted in fact to an absolute authority and uncontrolled power over everyone", the Greek historian Plutarch wrote. "There were not many places in the Roman world that were not included within these limits." Such an accumulation of power was unprecedented, and there was literally a riot in the Senate when the bill was debated. Nevertheless, at a tumultuous mass meeting in the center of Rome, Pompey’s opponents were cowed into submission, the Lex Gabinia passed (illegally), and he was given his power. By the oldest trick in the political book — the whipping up of a panic, in which any dissenting voice could be dismissed as "soft" or even "traitorous" — powers had been ceded by the people that would never be returned.

Those of us who are not Americans can only look on in wonder at the similar ease with which the ancient rights and liberties of the individual are being surrendered in the United States in the wake of 9/11.The vote by the Senate on Thursday [...] represents an historic shift in the balance of power between the citizen and the executive. An intelligent, skeptical American would no doubt scoff at the thought that what has happened since 9/11 could presage the destruction of a centuries-old constitution; but then, I suppose, an intelligent, skeptical Roman in 68 BC might well have done the same.

R. Harris: Pirates of the Mediterranean, The NY Times, Oct 1, 2006.

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