Many people consider that the Romans made great contributions to our
world. They speak of the "The Wonder That Was Greece; The Glory That Was
Rome." I believe that the second, at least, is a myth. -- a false
notion.
According to Petr Beckman, author of prize-winning novel, A History of Pi: " While Alexandria had become the world capital of thinkers, Rome was becoming the capital of thugs. Rome was not the first state of organized gangsterdom nor was it the last; but it was the only one that managed to bamboozle posterity into an almost universal admiration. Few rational men admire the Huns, the Nazis or the Soviets; but for centuries, schoolboys have been expected to read Julius Caesar's militaristic drivel. They have been led to believe that the Romans had attained an advanced level in the sciences, the arts, law, architecture, engineering and everything else.
It is my opinion that the alleged Roman achievements are largely a myth;
and I feel
it is time for this myth to be debunked a little. What the Romans excelled
in
was bullying, bludgeoning, butchering and blood bath. They enslaved
peoples whose cultural level was far above their own. They not only ruthlessly
vandalized their countries, but they also looted them, stealing their art
treasures,
abducting their scientists and copying their technical know-how, which
the
Romans' barren society was rarely able to improve on.
Then there is Roman engineering: The Roman roads, acqueducts, the Coliseums.
Warfare, alas, has always been beneficial to engineering. In a healthy
society,
engineering design gets smarter and smarter; in gangster states, it gets
bigger and
bigger.
The architecture of the Coliseums and other places of Roman entertainment
are
difficult to judge without recalling what purpose they served. It was here
that
gladiators fought to the death; that prisoners of war, convicts and Christians
were
devoured by a many as 5,000 wild beasts at a time; and that victims were
crucified
or burned alive for the entertainment of Roman civilization. When the Roman
screamed for ever more blood, artificial lakes were dug and naval battles
as many as 19,000 gladiators were staged until the water turned red with
blood. The only Roman emperors who did not throw Christians to the lions
were the Christian emperors. They (Christians) threw the pagans to the
lions with the same gusto and for the same crime -- having a different
religion.
The Romans were not primitive savages; they were gangsters -- not much different from the sophisticated killers of organized crime.
Their contribution to the sciences was mostly limited to the vicious murder of some of the world's great thinkers and mathematicians, and they ruthlessly destroyed the last traces of Phoenician civilization, not to mention many others. They burned the Library at Alexandria. Their corruption and mismanagement led directly to that miserable period of Western history called the Dark Ages. They were abysmally ignorant of many of the customs and ideas of the lands they ruled, and were led easily to believe the most outrageous nonsense, eg. Pliny tells us that in India there is a species of men without mouths who subsist on the scent of flowers.
Worst of all, "it accustomed the Western races to the idea of a world-state, and by pax romana ...." it accustomed us to the notion that peace is that which is maintained via armed outposts and repressive military regimes.
And yet most historians extol the achievements of Rome.
(Petr Beckman's A History of Pi. 55-59. Quoted in http://www.atributetohinduism.com/Trivia_II.htm
Nov. 22/01)
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