Eturnalshift wrote:
PS: You weren't around for all of European history so make sure you remind yourself next time you read a book that none of us were actually around, despite whatever written evidence may say as to what happened, so it must not have happened the way you think it did hurhurhur.)
I go out of my way to read all sides of the story.
Ethan wrote:
I decided to write this paper about a conundrum that has always fascinated me, and I felt driven to research the answer. This wasn’t my original topic, and I didn’t get it approved, but I do hope you will humor my intellectual curiosity at the expense of my education...
...A most curious recurring theme in Roman history: the Romans signed treaties of friendship with nearly every major and minor power within a three thousand mile radius of their seat of power, and wound up subjugating each and every one of them. One might initially think, the Romans were a treacherous people, given to making treaties with neighboring powers, then wantonly invading them, a la Ribbentrop. While this did happen occasionally, it was almost always at the initiative of ambitious individual commanders such as Marius , Caesar , and Pompey .
The Senate – the government – did not, as a general rule, issue decrees that amounted to knowingly stabbing allied states in the back. In fact, the Senate’s foreign policy was dictated, to a far greater extent than any nation up until the time of the United States, upon what they believed was just, or what they were obligated to do by having given their word. The Romans were a singularly honorable people; even foreigners bore testament to this national characteristic .
So how did an honorable people wind up gloating over subjugating all their one-time allies?
I got started on this train of thought in a most unusual way, and I decided to attack the conundrum from the same angle.
Growing up in a Reform Jewish household, I of course heard the story of Hanukkah – how our hero Judah Maccabee forced the evil Antiochus IV Epiphanes out of Judaea, by waging a guerilla campaign: attacking Greek settlers, blowing up gymnasiums, imposing orthodox Jewish law on those who would have the Hebrews become more Western. And so, I found the tale of Gaius Popillius Laenas drawing a line in the sand around Antiochus very interesting. My parents often say, I was born in the wrong era; like most apostates, I respect greatness. The power dynamic – that the polity for which this man was an agent was so highly regarded that he was able to leverage it in such a bold and original way, and that his deed became a legacy for millennia to come – was for me, much more appealing than the story about some God making oil last longer.
I wondered – was the enemy of Antiochus’s enemy, also their friend? What was the interplay between the co-belligerents of the Seleucids, the Romans and the Judeans? And if so, how did they go from being allies, to the Romans making the calculated decision to demolish Jerusalem, an act of foreign policy with repercussions as significant as ever two millennia later?
Indeed, the two powers did sign a treaty: the Roman-Jewish Treaty, in 161BC . It read:
May all go well with the Romans and with the nation of the Jews at sea and on land forever, and may sword and enemy be far from them. If war comes first to Rome or to any of their allies in all their dominion, the nation of the Jews shall act as their allies wholeheartedly, as the occasion may indicate to them. To the enemy that makes war they shall not give or supply grain, arms, money, or ships, just as Rome has decided; and they shall keep their obligations without receiving any return.
In the same way, if war comes first to the nation of the Jews, the Romans shall willingly act as their allies, as the occasion may indicate to them. And to their enemies there shall not be given grain, arms, money, or ships, just as Rome has decided; and they shall keep these obligations, and do so without deceit.
Thus on these terms the Romans make a treaty with the Jewish people. If after these terms are in effect both parties shall determine to add or delete anything, they shall do so at their discretion, and any addition or deletion that they may make shall be valid. Concerning the wrongs that King Demetrius is doing to them, we have written to him as follows - 'Why have you made your yoke heavy on our friends and allies the Jews? If now they appeal again for help against you, we will defend their rights and fight you on sea and on land.'
-Roman/Jewish Treaty, Maccabees I:8
A few points of the wording stand out. The treaty’s stipulations are written in a repetitive way, with the two powers committing to their mutual defense. The identical positive stipulations, however, are each followed by dissimilar negative stipulations:
[The Judeans] shall keep their obligations without receiving any return.
[The Romans] shall keep these obligations, and do so without deceit.
It is most extraordinary to say, “I agree to not demand money to keep my word”, or, “I promise to keep my promise.” That they made a point of making these redundant commitments, demonstrates the negative intentions of each party as perceived by the other. The Romans feared the Judeans would demand foreign aid to continue to serve the superpower’s interest, and the Judeans feared the overwhelmingly powerful Romans would see no reason to not betray their word. The fact that they apparently accepted a written promise to this effect is telling about both cultures: if they did not believe that asking the Romans to explicitly give their word was any more assurance than the treaty itself, they would not bothered to have asked. Presumably, the Romans would make a distinction between the promises of gunship diplomacy, and a solemn oath.
There is no evidence the Romans wrote to Demetrius I Soter , and in any event, being asked to simply write a letter seems almost like a sop. In any event, although the Romans did not force an immediate change in the policies of Demetrius, the Judeans achieved independence the year after the treaty was signed , and thirty years later, in 129BC, Antiochus VII, the last of the Seleucid rulers, died; Selucid rule vacillated, and Judaea was, for a brief while, a free and independent kingdom.
About sixty years later, the Romans became involved again in Judean politics in the same way they had become involved in the affairs of so many other nations: they were asked to choose between supporting two local rulers, and this choice, as it had been so many other times, was driven partly by a bribe to a mezzo-ranking Roman official on the scene, and partly by the domestic political ambitions of a Roman commander - in this case, Pompey the Great.
Pompey, like many Roman leaders, felt his ambition aroused when he first got a taste of glory ; seeking greater accolades, he sought to extend Roman power, even if that meant not merely bringing closure to strife, but going out and looking for trouble.
Judaea was thrown into civil war when a regent, Antipater the Idumaean, sought to elevate to power one brother, Hyrcanus, over the other, Aristobulus, believing the former to be less assertive and more controllable, and therefore more acceptable as a puppet monarch while he continued to wield power behind the scenes . Pompey's man in Judaea, Marcus Aemilius Scarus, accepted a bribe of four hundred talents to throw his decision in favor of Hyrcanus and Antipater. This bribe bought them Aemilius' leverage on Aretas III, the king of a neighboring power, the Nabateans, centered around what is today Jordan. The Nabateans sought to exploit the power vacuum in the region to make inroads into Judaea while it was in a state of internal unrest; they were frustrated in this goal when Aemilius compelled Aretas III to withdraw from Hyrcanus's doman, and instead fight and be defeated by the forces of the other brother .
Pompey himself eventually took an interest in Judaean affairs and sought to annex it. Once more, a bribe was proffered, this time to Pompey himself, by Aristobulus. Pompey did what any professional-grade politician would do, which was take the bribe and vacillate - and then ultimately favored the popular party, the general populace who were tired of the dynastic infighting and wanted it ended, even at the cost of Roman domination. These same people would later ask, "But what have the Romans ever done for us?"...
...All this time, Judaea had continued as an allied state, with its own resources that various Romans and other leaders had sought to corral towards their own ends. So how did it become inimical to Rome’s armies?
The hammer finally fell in 66AD. The first of what would be a series of ugly wars between Rome and their recalcitrant Judean subjects began, like many wars of the time, with a small civil incident: a spat between a few Judean Greeks and Jews over the former sacrificing birds in front of a synagogue . The incident inflamed local ethnic tensions which rapidly snowballed into a general revolt against the Romans. The Judeans were also disgruntled about imperial taxation and the presence of Roman colonists and merchants in their midst, and Roman forces moved in to restore order, an objective attained in characteristically Roman manner, by demolishing first the Second Temple, and eventually, under Emperor Hadrian some seventy years later, the entirety of the city of Jerusalem.
My single most surprising finding was of an image I saw of a reconstruction of the Second Temple on-site in Jerusalem. I would not have had such insight into it had I not taken the course. The temple features a colonnade around a central plaza, with a tiled roof. The Second Temple, one of the most religiously significant structures, torn down by the Romans to subdue Judean separatists, was, in fact, a Hellenic structure. This irony begs deep meditation.
Just providing a case example.
I never content myself with one side of the story.
