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ricardienneNo seriously. This was an actual thing in a respected commentary:
Henry Furneaux, Cornelii Taciti Vita Agricola (Oxford, 1898):
That's right, guys! People don't like being conquered and added to empires because THEY HATE PEACE. Trufax, as they say.
So context: this is maybe the most famous moment of the big speech of the British chieftain Calgacus as he rallies the Britons to fight (and lose, by the way) against the Roman invaders in Tacitus' biography/euology/monograph on his father-in-law. Who is the Roman general, so obviously this is a complicated and problematic set-piece on How We Need to Defend Our Freedom, and people who go around saying things like "the great Roman historian Tacitus said of empires, that they "make a desert and call it peace" are talking, so to speak, out of their hats and probably horrifying the manes of dear Publius Cornelius T. But it's long, it's complex, it's rhetorically and emotionally compelling, and it is very much part of the debate on whether/how to fight or/and comply with (bad) power that Tacitus is rather interested in, at least.
Anyway, times have really changed. Not least because, as I was rereading the speech and translating it, I couldn't help but think that it would have worked really well during WWII, with very little changed.
Here's a translation of Calgacus's speech up to that point, for the interested:
Henry Furneaux, Cornelii Taciti Vita Agricola (Oxford, 1898):
ad Agr. 30.7: auferre, trucidare, rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi desertem faciunt, pacem appellant.
pacem, the ' pax gentium ' of H. 1. 84, 9, 'pax Romana' of Seneca (de Prov. 4, 14), Pliny (N. H. 27.1, 3), &c.; the peace and order established through the Roman world, which warlike and predatory races naturally abhorred. Cp. 'additis qui pacem nostram metuebant,' A. 12. 33, 2.
That's right, guys! People don't like being conquered and added to empires because THEY HATE PEACE. Trufax, as they say.
So context: this is maybe the most famous moment of the big speech of the British chieftain Calgacus as he rallies the Britons to fight (and lose, by the way) against the Roman invaders in Tacitus' biography/euology/monograph on his father-in-law. Who is the Roman general, so obviously this is a complicated and problematic set-piece on How We Need to Defend Our Freedom, and people who go around saying things like "the great Roman historian Tacitus said of empires, that they "make a desert and call it peace" are talking, so to speak, out of their hats and probably horrifying the manes of dear Publius Cornelius T. But it's long, it's complex, it's rhetorically and emotionally compelling, and it is very much part of the debate on whether/how to fight or/and comply with (bad) power that Tacitus is rather interested in, at least.
Anyway, times have really changed. Not least because, as I was rereading the speech and translating it, I couldn't help but think that it would have worked really well during WWII, with very little changed.
Here's a translation of Calgacus's speech up to that point, for the interested:
Whenever I consider the the reasons and our necessity of war, I am completely of the opinion that this day today and your alliance will be the beginning of freedom for all of Britain; for both are we devoid of the universal state of enslavement and is no land and not even the sea secure, while the Roman fleet hangs over us. So battle and to arms, which are an honorable course to the brave and the safest course even to cowards. The previous skirmishes, where the fighting against the Romans fell out with varying success, kept hope and help in our hands, because we, the noblest men of all Britain and therefore set in her innermost corner itself, since we do not see the shores of the enslaved, have kept even our eyes from violation by the miasma of arbitrary power. The remoteness and seclusion of our reputation has protected us, inhabitants of the outermost lands and freedom, until this day; (that is because since anything unknown is considered magnified.) But now the boundary of Britain lies open; no race of people further out, nothing but rivers and stones, and -- even more inhospitable -- the Romans, from whose arrogance compliance and moderation would provide you with useless avenues of escape. Rapists of the world, after there is nothing left on the land they have destroyed, they turn their gaze even to the sea; if an enemy is rich, they are greedy, if poor, then ambitious. Neither the east nor the west has sated them; they alone of all people lust with equal passion for one's wealth and one's want. Plunder, slaughter, rape get the false name "empire," and where they make a desert, they call it "peace."
