How often did the Roman Army commit atrocities?

As far as I see the difference in Roman "atrocities" and other ancient peoples' seems to have been the Roman's more logical and efficient application of it. As others have pointed out all ancient nations took slaves and sacked cities without considering it immoral in any way. Rome took that general and accepted violence and created a much more bureaucratic application of it. Rome wasn't more violent or cruel than other civilizations, they were simply better at it.
 
Quite true. To use a modern analogy, the hardware would be the same, but the software would be very different.

It's not true:
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080218055914AA66P9r
http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2002/HowManyPeopleHaveEverLivedonEarth.aspx

I mean- technically it's possible that 2 persons being perfect copies of themselves walk the Earth at this very moment... But that's highly improbable.

In topic though- are there any accounts of Romans doing worse stuff than others? Or actually quite the opposite, being very gentle (relatively) to conquered population? I'm asking for anything that doesn't fit into time frame.
 
Not really. Was the Romans' behavior any worse that what the Athenians did to Melos in the Peloponessian War, what the Spartans did to the Messenians who became Helots, or how the Carthaginians treated Saguntum at its fall, where every adult was put to death? Or how about Hasdrubal crucifying all the enemy soldiers in the Mercenary War? Or how about how Alexander razed Thebes to the ground? Or how about, about a thousand years later, how the Mongols behaved in the Middle East? Or how about the Assyrians and how the boasted about their atrocities? How many cities during the fourth and fifth century Greek Wars were captured and then its citizens slaughtered and sold into slavery? Or how about in China, according to what I've read, after the Battle of Changping, the Qin commander Bai Qi ordered the 400,000 prisoners-of-war from Zhao to be executed by burying alive.

Roman behavior in warfare is typical of its era. The only difference between the Greeks and Romans and Carthaginians in warfare is that ultimately, Rome won, and the Greeks and Carthaginians lost.

Yes, other people occasionally committed similar atrocities. But the Romans did it regularly, year after year after year. I put them in a group with the Assyrians and the Mongols for routinized mass atrocities over an extended period of time.
 

Yun-shuno

Banned
You have to understand the very concepts of humanism, compassion for one's enemies, mercy, and all that jazz emerged very slowly over the course of two millennia. In Roman times back to say Sumer and forward to around even the 20th century there was no concept of mercy, or compassion. Really there was no concept of shared humanity-that was an idea that emerged as a result of the best programs and practices of Christianity along with Renaissance humanism, and of course the enlightenment. For most of human history war was the time and function when men behaved like beasts-well that was the way things were and nobody questioned it.
 
Not quite sure of saying everyone did it helps Rome. Yes, everyone was more brutal and yes many examples of others doing them. But Rome seems to have been on a different level in organisation and regularity of attrocities. It seems to be standard Roman practice whilst for most of the others ( obvious exception of the Mongols ) it was more of an exception.

Nope, it was regular for almost all ancient states. See my examples. They are not the only examples there too.
 
Yes, other people occasionally committed similar atrocities. But the Romans did it regularly, year after year after year. I put them in a group with the Assyrians and the Mongols for routinized mass atrocities over an extended period of time.

Nope, not even close. My examples are not the only ones. The Greeks regularly did it too. Read the wars of the fourth, fifth, and third centuries in the Greek and Carthaginian World. The atrocities of the Greeks to each other and to barbarians are regular and routine. So did the Chinese states in the Warring States period. The only reason the Greeks stopped doing it, and the Carthaginians also stopped doing it, is because they were conquered. It only stopped in China, because Qin conquered the rest.

The Romans were not particularly more brutal or more warlike than their neighbors. The only difference is that, Rome won, and the other Mediterrean states lost.

Read Arthur Eckstein's Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, and the Rise of Rome (2009). Here's a review and a summary of his views from unrv.com by Ursus.

The central question before us is two fold: why did Rome seek an empire, and what made it so effective as an imperial power? In recent times the answer to both questions by many political commentators is that Rome was more violent than its contemporaries. Rome's pathological violence was, according to this view, both the cause and the agent of its empire building. Rome effectively had the will and the ability to beat up on its more peaceful neighbors. Certainly the image of Rome as the most violent society on earth is the one that modern cinema and media loves to portray.

But Ekstein is a political scientist and disagrees with the thrust of such political commentary. The very nature of the international system, lawless as it, causes states to dominate their neighbors before they are themselves dominated. In other words, violence and power mongering is endemic to the system as a whole, not to any particular actor in the system. We thus have a reason for empire building: this is simply the normal course of affairs between states. As to why Rome excelled in this particular business, Ekstein offers plenty of evidence it was not Rome's violence, but its inclusiveness, that forged victory in war. Rome turned many of its formerly defeated foes into citizens and allies, thus erecting a power base of men and wealth that newer enemies could not overcome.

Revisionist? Not really. In his introduction, Ekstein points out that the detractors of Rome's alleged pathological violence are themselves not working from any real empirical basis. These views of Rome as an Evil Empire probably have more to do with the general tenor of the post-colonial intellectual atmosphere of the last few decades than anything resembling actual history. Ekstein places the study of Roman international politics within its proper framework. Eckstein is therefore not revisionist but is in effect rescuing classical studies from rampant post-colonial revisionists!

After his introduction, Ekstein launches into a general overview of international relations theory. He does a great job of explaining the basics to those who may be bereft of such a background. All international theory proceeds from the assumption of anarchy; "anarchy" here means that there is no world government to enforce an objective law on states. In the absence of a central authority, states are free to conduct relations amongst themselves as they see fit. No one disagrees on this point; how they should perform this is where the argument lies. The Realist school of thought posits that no matter how much a state may desire peace, it must be prepared to use force to defend itself and its interests from potentially bellicose states. When the interests of states collide and diplomacy cannot resolve the issue, war is the natural result. Otto Von Clausewitz, the Prussian military theorist, said it best: "War is the extension of diplomacy by other means."

Ekstein traces the history of Mediterranean wide interstate conflicts through this Realist perspective. He spends two chapters providing an overview of conflict in Classical Greece and the Hellenistic world. There is a modern tendency to overvalue the place of philosophers, artists and literati in the Hellenic world. While Hellenes had extraordinary achievements in these areas, they were not essentially peaceful cultural artisans. Eckstein's two chapters firmly establish Ancient Greeks as the warlike people they were. In fact, the Realist school of thought can be said to have developed (as with so many other things) in Ancient Greece. In the absence of an overarching authority, the Greek city-states had to defend themselves from themselves. And the warrior culture they erected to deal with this harsh world was often more savage than anything Rome developed!

The next chapter then deals with Rome's immediate enemies. Eckstein traces the development of Roman power from a central Italian, to a greater Italian, to a Western Mediterranean theatre of operations. Latins, Etruscans, Greeks in southern Italy, Celts, and Carthaginians - all used violence to further their interests in a lawless international arena. The Celts, in fact, were often the savage aggressors against Rome rather than vice versa. The idea of Rome as bully that took advantage of weaker neighbors is pure lunacy. Eckstein points out that every ancient state, whether small or large, whether cosmopolitan or tribal, used violence in the international arena. Violence was endemic to the system as a whole as per the Realist school of thought. It was not the special province of a Roman pathology.

Ekstein's next chapter focuses on the culture of Roman militarism. That the internal attributes of a given culture may exert some influence on international politics is not in dispute. What Realists object to is when internal factors are placed as the determining factor in international relations. Any state, no matter its given culture, may react violently to defend its interests in the face of anarchy. In any event, all of Rome's neighbors held an internal culture that glorified the warrior ethos. Case in point: the state religion of the Roman Republic officially only sanctioned defensive wars; no other culture had religious qualms to a war of outright aggression.

Ekstein's last chapter deals with the aftermath of the Second Punic War. Rome, having become mistress of the Western Mediterranean, was drawn into the power vacuum of the Eastern Mediterranean caused by the disintegration of the Ptolemaic regime. Roman diplomacy and might secured the East and thus made Rome the undisputed master of the Mediterranean. Through all of this it was Rome's policy of inclusive citizenship and alliances, not its violence, that led Rome to final victory. Rome could draw on more manpower than any single enemy because of its armies of citizens and allies. Ultimate victory was thus assured.
 
Read Arthur Eckstein's Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, and the Rise of Rome (2009). Here's a review and a summary of his views from unrv.com by Ursus.

Oh my gods. Reading that instantly transported me into the tweed-wearing pipe-smoking 1970s where people took the Accidental Empire and Defensive Conquest thing seriously and made not so subtle parallels to Britain. No. And assuming his opponents are ignorant and tendentious certainly does Ekstein no favours at all. Rome was simply exceptionally brutal in a very brutal world full of brutal state agents. And it stomped on its so-called allies and associates far more often than even the wall-razing Carthaginians or the andropodismos-loving Athenians.
 
Oh my gods. Reading that instantly transported me into the tweed-wearing pipe-smoking 1970s where people took the Accidental Empire and Defensive Conquest thing seriously and made not so subtle parallels to Britain. No. And assuming his opponents are ignorant and tendentious certainly does Ekstein no favours at all. Rome was simply exceptionally brutal in a very brutal world full of brutal state agents. And it stomped on its so-called allies and associates far more often than even the wall-razing Carthaginians or the andropodismos-loving Athenians.

No. He makes his case, and it's convincing. Rome is not unique in anything in its mentality about warfare and brutality among its contemporary states.

I've read the entire book a long time ago, and it convinced me that the thesis that Roman innate characteristics driving Roman violence, while true, is not at all exceptional, not at all unusual, for that period, and does not explain the Rise of Rome at all. Just look at the cultural predisposition for war and violence of all of the states of the period, and Eckstein cites numerous examples, that makes Roman cultural traits on warfare not that unique at all. It is commonplace, and was driven by the violence and interstate relations of the era. Rome is not unique in betraying it allies. It was simply following Greek and Carthaginian precedent on that matter. And the reason why Rome did it more, was that the Greeks lost their independence, and the Carthaginians their existence, before they could betray more of their allies. Believe me, if the Greeks and Carthaginians survived as independent polities, the number of their betrayals would rival OTL Rome's.
 
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It's not true:
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080218055914AA66P9r
http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2002/HowManyPeopleHaveEverLivedonEarth.aspx

I mean- technically it's possible that 2 persons being perfect copies of themselves walk the Earth at this very moment... But that's highly improbable.

In topic though- are there any accounts of Romans doing worse stuff than others? Or actually quite the opposite, being very gentle (relatively) to conquered population? I'm asking for anything that doesn't fit into time frame.

An absolute copy? Not likely Close enough that the average person couldn't tell you two apart? Very likely.
 
What was their justification for killing and enslavement? Did they think of their opponents as subhuman?

Neo-Assyrians believed their opponents to be sub-humans for refusing the rule of the King of Assyria, the representative of Law on Earth and whose Laws prevented the world being destroyed by chaos.

Later Roman writers would come up with various excuses as to why each war was fought which generally boils down to 'Offence is the best Defence' and perhaps that was true for a time. The paranoia the Romans felt after the invasion of Rome by the Senones was still very much a concern up until the annexation of Gaul. They even kept a special room in the treasury stacked with treasure for the sole purpose of funding the state in the event of another Gallic army attacking Rome up until Julius Caesar broke the seal and took all of the gold.

The Third Punic War can quite rightly be seen as the end of this argument. They did not need to defend themselves from Carthage. This is the point the Republic began to rot and various individuals in the Roman nobility actively sought out rich targets to goad into war for their own gloria and enrichment.

Nasty individuals like Manius Aquilius, after the 'aquisition' of Asia in Attalus' Bequeathal, poisoned entire cities with Hellebore rather than assault them leaving the entire populations dead with their blackened mouths opened in silent screams for air. He was recalled and tried by the Senate but had gained so much loot that he bribed his way out of serious punishment.

If you read the in depth descriptions of the fall of Carthage it can be quite heavy going. There were soldiers whose sole job was to skewer corpses with iron pikes and dump them into charnel pits for burning, along the roads to let the soldiers move more efficiently through the streets completing the annihilation of the Carthaginians. Descriptions tell of them with children impaled upon the pikes before being tossed into incineration pits (some of them still moving).

The city burned and Aemilianus wept.

The siege of Athens by Sulla during the First Mithriditic War resulted in the wholesale slaughter of the population and after Sulla gathered the last survivors to read aloud a proclamation granting them mercy before carting them off to slavery. The extreme violence was due to the Archon of Athens insulting Sullas terrible acne. Being called 'Mulberrys-in-Oats Face' is hardly diplomatic, but Sulla was rather short tempered.

Sulla also took the last 3000 Samnite prisoners from the Battle of Colline Gate in Rome and had them executed one by one outside the Senate while making his case for electing him Dictator. He was unanimously elected. Though the Samnites themselves were about to slaughter the city of Rome itself, under their leader Pontius Telesinus who called for the 'Lair of the Wolves of Italia to be burned to ashes along with their pups', as the last gasp of the Social War of Italy.

If you want to see how hated Romans were by those subjects they gained through peace look up the Asian Vespers. A practical orgy of anti-Roman violence by local hellenics against Romans. A direct result the brutal and inhuman actions of Roman Citizens against local people when Janus' Doors were closed for that particular region of the coalescing Empire.
 
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Not really. Was the Romans' behavior any worse that what the Athenians did to Melos in the Peloponessian War, what the Spartans did to the Messenians who became Helots, or how the Carthaginians treated Saguntum at its fall, where every adult was put to death? Or how about Hasdrubal crucifying all the enemy soldiers in the Mercenary War? Or how about how Alexander razed Thebes to the ground? Or how about, about a thousand years later, how the Mongols behaved in the Middle East? Or how about the Assyrians and how the boasted about their atrocities? How many cities during the fourth and fifth century Greek Wars were captured and then its citizens slaughtered and sold into slavery? Or how about in China, according to what I've read, after the Battle of Changping, the Qin commander Bai Qi ordered the 400,000 prisoners-of-war from Zhao to be executed by burying alive.

Roman behavior in warfare is typical of its era. The only difference between the Greeks and Romans and Carthaginians in warfare is that ultimately, Rome won, and the Greeks and Carthaginians lost.

Carthaginians have a reputation of ruthlessness in ancient sources, which means, in sources hostile to them. Romans have the same reputation, in sources generally sympathetic to them.
Actions such as the Melian massacre were controversial even in Athens, and clearly caused outrage among Greeks. It was regarded as exceptional conduct, even if the usual one was not much better. And the Classical Greeks were, of course, a bunch of bloodthirsty warmongers.
 
Carthaginians have a reputation of ruthlessness in ancient sources, which means, in sources hostile to them. Romans have the same reputation, in sources generally sympathetic to them.
Actions such as the Melian massacre were controversial even in Athens, and clearly caused outrage among Greeks. It was regarded as exceptional conduct, even if the usual one was not much better. And the Classical Greeks were, of course, a bunch of bloodthirsty warmongers.

How much can Carthaginian cruelty be attributed to them; mercenaries are needlessly cruel by design. Carthage didn't raise its own armies from its populace, they did raise their generals but beyond that tiny minority they were pretty hands off from the more grimy parts of their wars.
 
How much can Carthaginian cruelty be attributed to them; mercenaries are needlessly cruel by design. Carthage didn't raise its own armies from its populace, they did raise their generals but beyond that tiny minority they were pretty hands off from the more grimy parts of their wars.

There is some recent research that suggests that Carthage, like most other Mediterranean city states of time we know of, actually had a citizen army in addition to, and before, mercenaries. And citizen armies of the time were often extremely cruel. Detailed accounts of Greek conflicts, which are the best documented, are a special kind of revolting.
Rome was cruel and merciless with more efficient regularity, but the underlying mindset was not very much different, I would think.
 
Carthaginians have a reputation of ruthlessness in ancient sources, which means, in sources hostile to them. Romans have the same reputation, in sources generally sympathetic to them.
Actions such as the Melian massacre were controversial even in Athens, and clearly caused outrage among Greeks. It was regarded as exceptional conduct, even if the usual one was not much better. And the Classical Greeks were, of course, a bunch of bloodthirsty warmongers.
How much was exaggeration, though? The Bible depicts Joshua as waging a war of genocide, which I doubt actually happened as portrayed, and the First Crusade chroniclers depict the sack of Jerusalem in terms that were not physically possible- i.e. Crusaders literally wading through blood.
 
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