The Criminal History of Mankind by Colin Wilson

It is true that, on this level, the achievement of Rome was very remarkable indeed. Roman engineering created roads and aqueducts from Scotland to Africa, and the Roman armies carried the ideals of Greek civilisation over millions of square miles. But in Rome itself there was a continual bitter power struggle. The Greeks invented the democratic system of election. The Romans have the dubious distinction of having invented the homicidal system of election – the deliberate development of murder as a political engine. Most historians date this from the murder of the tribune (or people’s representative) Tiberius Gracchus in 133 B.C. and state that the Emperor Augustus put a stop to it about a century later; in fact, it started in the early days of republican Rome and continued until its downfall in the fifth century A.D. By then it had become such a tradition that it continued intermittently down the ages, so that the history of the popes often reads like pages of I, Claudius.

The real history of Rome begins from the period when the last of the Etruscan conquerors was expelled, about 509 B.C.; then Rome, like Athens, became a republic. At the time when Athens was fighting for its life against Persian invaders, Rome was demonstrating its own peculiar originality by staging the first strike in history; in 494 B.C., the plebeians, angry at class-injustice, all marched out of Rome up the Tiber and declared that they would simply found another city unless they were given their rights. This mass withdrawal of organised labour had the desired effect, and the patricians were forced to grant the people their own representatives. But when in 486 B.C. a patrician named Spurius Cassius proposed to grant the plebs the right to public land, the patricians rose as one man; Cassius was accused of wanting to become tyrant and executed. And when, in 440, a rich plebeian named Spurius Maelius tried to become a popular leader during a famine and lowered the price of his corn, he was summoned before a hastily appointed dictator and murdered. To pacify the people, his corn was distributed free; those who talked of avenging his death were quietly disposed of. Rome was learning the arts of gangster rule. But at least it was administered with an air of public concern worthy of Orwell’s Big Brother. Marcus Manlius was a national hero who had been responsible for saving the Capitol during the occupation of Rome by the Gauls in 390 B.C. (every schoolboy used to know the story of how the geese sounded the alarm). Saddened by the spectacle of brave ex-soldiers being thrown in jail for debt, Manlius began freeing debtors with his own private fortune. Aghast at this spectacle of demoralising altruism, the patricians accused him of wanting to become tyrant and incited the plebs to sentence him to death. Manlius was thrown from the Tarpeian rock.

Perhaps it was the occupation by the Gauls that shocked the Romans into a new kind of unity. At all events, Roman expansion now continued steadily for century after century; little more than a hundred years after the execution of Manlius Rome ruled all Italy. Conquered citizens were not regarded as mere subjects but were made citizens of Rome, with full voting privileges. Understandably, most of them preferred this new status to that of enemy.

At this point, Mediterranean piracy played a decisive part in history and started the Romans on their conquest of the world. The only city in the Mediterranean whose power compared with that of Rome was Carthage in North Africa (what is now Tunisia). It had started as a Phoenician trading post, which had swiftly expanded – rather like modern Hong Kong – until it became a melting pot of nationalities. And since the Mediterranean was not only full of pirates but also of predatory Greeks, Macedonians, Lydians, Syrians, Etruscans and Romans, Carthage had also become a maritime power. For a while, Carthage united with Rome against the Greek general Pyrrhus, king of Epirus (282-272), but when Pyrrhus withdrew he left the allies facing each other across the straits of Sicily – too close for comfort.

Carthage fought its wars with mercenaries, and in 289 B.C. these included an Italian tribe who called themselves Mamertines. Out-of-work mercenaries are always a public danger, and on their way home from a war against Syracuse (in Sicily), these mercenaries took a great liking to a pleasant little Greek town called Messana (modern Messina) which had offered them hospitality. In the middle of the night they rose from their beds, slit the throats of the men and seized the women. And, being adventurers, they decided that they preferred piracy to farming and trade. For the next twenty-five years they were the scourge of the area, preying largely on ships from Syracuse and Carthage.

At Rhegium, in the toe of Italy, another Mamertine regiment heard about this exploit and decided to imitate it; they slaughtered their hosts and seized the town. But since they were supposed to be a Roman garrison, the Romans sent an army against them. They took the town by siege and proceeded to a mass execution of the rebels, four hundred of them. They were aided by a Greek ruler named Hiero of Syracuse, who then decided to go and smoke out the nest of pirates in Messana. The Carthagians agreed this was an excellent idea and sent help. And the Messanian pirates had the remarkable impudence to send to Rome for aid. They were in luck. Although the Roman senate said it would be absurd to help pirates – especially after punishing the rebels at Rhegium – the plebs scented plunder and conquest and overruled the senate. It was, as the German historian Mommsen called it, ‘a moment of the deepest significance in the history of the world’, for it was the first step towards the Roman Empire. H. G. Wells says indignantly in his Outline of History (Book 5): ‘So began the first of the most wasteful and disastrous series of wars that has ever darkened the history of mankind.’ He is convinced that this decision was the moral turning point in Roman history – that it was the beginning of that epoch of slaughter, cruelty, vice and betrayal that has made the name of Rome a synonym for decadence.

There is an element of simplification in this view – as if Rome were a character in a Victorian melodrama who takes the ‘wrong turning’ and slips into vice and ruin. The tragedy of Rome was more complex. The Romans were an eminently practical and sensible people – the compromises between plebs and patricians show that. They lacked Greek subtlety and Greek intellectuality and, unlike Alexander, were not even worried about the lack. Like some simple and good-tempered country lad, they had the temperament to be happy and uncomplicated. The first Punic war (punic meaning Phoenician), which dragged on for a quarter of a century and which almost brought Rome to its knees, forced them to develop a new set of qualities: ruthless determination, intense patriotism; above all, aggressiveness. And nations are like individuals: once they have developed such qualities, they are stuck with them.

In 1935 a remarkable novel called No Mean City, by A. MacArthur and A. Kingsley Long was published. It was about the Glasgow slums, of which the authors obviously had first-hand knowledge. The title refers to St Paul’s ‘I am a citizen of no mean city’, and the novel is the story of a simple and ordinary youth, Johnnie Stark, who is forced to learn the arts of self-defence, and who is so successful that he becomes known as the ‘Razor king’. But this kind of success is in itself a trap; like an actor who cannot escape a certain type of role, he is forced by the nature of his self-image to go on radiating aggression and violence. There is no way in which he can relax into a more productive frame of mind. Inevitably, he dies in a street fight. Johnnie Stark is a symbol of the Roman Empire.

Rome’s progress towards becoming the razor king of the Mediterranean began with setbacks. Rome and Carthage were evenly matched; the war dragged on, and after twenty-four years both sides were exhausted. It was Carthage that sued for peace; but Rome had lost two hundred thousand men and five hundred ships. When the Carthaginian general Hamilcar conquered Spain, Rome was piqued and alarmed to see its old rival back in business, and the two antagonists were soon squaring up again.

This time, Hamilcar’s son Hannibal seized the initiative and invaded Italy across the Alps. For years his successes were brilliant; he beat Roman army after Roman army. Most of southern Italy came over to his side. But the Romans had a bulldog stubbornness. Their general, Fabius – the one after whom the Fabian Society was named – took care to avoid battle, but concentrated on harassing the invaders. Finally, the Roman Scipio carried the war back into North Africa, and Carthage was once again obliged to sue for peace. Rome acquired Spain and settled down to enjoy its new position as master of the Mediterranean.