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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.
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. |
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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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