Reactionary

It tore in with a snowstorm: March. It should be a “like a god” since it’s named after the Roman god of death and destruction, war. Mars. Martius. And a lion, while being one of nature’s more formidable animals, doesn’t hunt or kill without need. The only animal that does is the human one. In like a lion, out like a lamb. Sheep are among nature’s stupidest animals. It may be no accident that humans are often compared to them in the Gospels. They’re so good at getting themselves killed.

Rome was the power of the ancient world. Modern day scholars, especially when teaching the history of the forgotten, the losers in the various conquests like to gloat over the brutal Roman way of bringing Europe to heel. There’s been an effort lately by scholars to try to persuade everyone that the Germanic tribes etc were less primitive, less barbaric than their Roman masters would have us believe. Is that fair? Is it fair to praise one thing while slagging another? Have you read Caesar’s “Gallic War”? It’s from his and other Romans’ writings that we know what we do about the illiterate Celts (I’m not comparing Celts with Germans; I’m not entirely stupid). True, the information may be more inferred, biased opinion and observations rather than scientific study, but it’s something in a time when humanism etc hadn’t really caught on. That guy from Galilee hadn’t really gone to work yet.

The true legacy of war along with studied, deliberate extermination of other cultures by mere fact of their being an OTHER culture is actually a gift from the Great White North. Why is it our word for war is from the German? Is it because English is Germanic? Really? French “guerre”; Spanish “guerra”; Italian “guerra”. Why is it Rome’s own linguistic children use the Germanic word for war? What happened to the Roman word, the word being “bellum”? When the Great White conquered, they raped and pillaged and plundered and burned and killed and killed and brought nothing in return. No roads. No law code. No buildings. No philosophy. Their takeover of Europe is aptly called the Dark Ages. St. Patrick’s “Confession” tells of how he and the pirates he escaped Ireland with landed in France after a surge of Germanic invaders had swept through. They walked for days without seeing a living thing until they finally found a pig they could eat. Everything else was dead.

Am I defending Roman imperialism? We’ve all heard of Nero and Caligula. It’s only something to think about, that’s all.

Happy March.

March 1st, 2005 | Category: Scholar |  Print |  Send it | Subscribe to comments | Both comments and pings are currently closed