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6. Empire and the “Just War”
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6. Empire and the “Just War” O ne of the most famous passages in the Aeneid is Anchises’ speech to Aeneas prophesying the destiny of their descendants. After a long description of notable individuals from Roman history comes a brief prescription in explicitly national terms. Other peoples will sculpt or give speeches or measure the stars, but “You, Roman, remember to govern the peoples under your empire (these will be your arts), and impose the habit of peace, spare the conquered, and beat down the proud” (Aen. 6.851–853).1 On the one hand, it goes without saying that the Romans will be defined by war. Anchises assumes that and simply gives advice on style. On the other hand, the substance of that advice should perhaps be a little surprising for such a warrior people. In the context of their imperial destiny, the Romans are not told to fight fiercely, bravely, or even wisely, but with restraint. Vergil’s speech exemplifies complications that existed in Roman attitudes toward the moral value of war. It has been argued that De Bello Gallico contains only the slightest and most incidental justification of Caesar’s initiation and conduct of the war in Gaul, and furthermore that this is because no such justification would have been necessary for the Roman audience.2 On this theory, a successful war against barbarian tribes, as the Gallic wars would surely have been viewed at the time of the publication of De Bello Gallico, would never have needed explanation or justification; Caesar had merely to stress the scale of the victory and the extent of his responsibility for it. Although this account certainly catches the emphasis of De Bello Gallico, it neglects the serious efforts Caesar makes in places to justify his campaigns, as we shall see in this chapter. This fact naturally calls into question the notion that the war needed no explanation . There are a number of good general treatments of Roman imperialism,3 but here I concentrate on treatments of the narrower topic of the “just war.” Consideration of the narrower issues, however, will lead to certain insights into the general tenor and history of Roman imperialism. 158 caesar in gaul and rome The Theory of the Just War In seeking to establish a Roman “theory of the just war,” it is important first to explain what I mean by several of those terms. I do not restrict “theory” to fully articulated theories of the sort one expects from philosophers; rather, it will include folk theories more easily seen in the form of unexpressed presuppositions .4 Such theories need not match precisely with each other or with Cicero’s version, though there must be substantial overlap to justify the use of the term “theory.” Moreover, I do not claim the theory must be autonomous and developed specifically around the idea of war. In fact, one of my conclusions will be that Roman just war thinking was not developed specially to license the otherwise unacceptable (as, in a sense, Catholic just war theory does), but rather amounts primarily to the application of “ordinary” moral principles to interstate interactions. Finally, although I use the terms iustum bellum and “just war” (more or less interchangeably), very little is claimed to hinge on those particular words.5 A technical theory might (but might not) reify such an entity by using it as a technical term, but there is no reason to expect this in a folk theory. So, for instance, it is more telling that Cato the Elder does claim it would be wrong to make war on Rhodes (see below) than that he does not appeal to the verbal category of “just war” (or to the various subcategories postulated in formal theory). A pair of Ciceronian texts gives a sense of Roman thinking on when (potentially “always”) going to war was justified. The first is in the third book of Cicero’sRepublic(3.34 –35),firstcirculatedin51b.c.6 Thesalientportionofthe work is not preserved in our fragmentary manuscripts of the dialogue, and so we must rely on quotations and paraphrases preserved by Augustine (in City of God), the grammarian Nonius, and Isidore, the collector of etymologies. The individual fragments are all reasonably clear, and they are mutually consistent and even overlapping enough that we can be fairly sure of the sense of the discussion (or at least the single section of it that these fragments seem to represent). The second treatment...