Tacitus on Turkishness

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Jan 26, 2010 at 09:05

>Anyway, there is a thorough German study on how the Turks eradicated Hellenism in Asia Minor in the early stages of their jihad " But go deny also this book and all the sources it contains and many other sources you Turks forgot to destroy, distort so far and yet deny without ever inspecting them! Commit the second part of your barbarism -that of destroying the last spiritual vestiges reminding of your heinous crimes.

Sure. An 'ode' to Roman Empire, where you used to protect the Gates.

'Pillagers of the world, they have exhausted the land by their indiscriminate plunder. East and west alike have failed to satisfy them. To robbery, butchery and rapine, they give the lying name "government". They create a desert and call it peace.' (Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant) Tacitus, Agricola ...<

It is interesting - beside your mastery of Latin - how Tacitus - a staunch Roman could ever identify himself with the speech of the barbarian who was fighting against his own father-in-law Agricola? What the barbarian said about the Romans and what the Romans all stood for are two different things and nobody knew it better than Tacitus.

It is the barbarians that were involved in incessant robbery, butchery and rapine. The Romans always put an end to that.They brought Roman Law, built roads and introduced higher culture and institutions to these woodlands and marshes and deserts.

Your conclusion is premature and wrong then, Turk, and you'll definitely need to peruse the whole life of Agricola and other works of Tacitus (although I am sure you'll never do ) to see that Tacitus had no doubts about the superiority of the Roman civilization over illiterate barbarity of the Celts with their human sacrifices and mad druidism - the ancient fanatical cult comparable to to Islam.

Anyway, what Tacitus puts in the mouth of Galgacus exactly prevailed in Britain after the fall of Rome- some 400 years later with the new age of barbarity in the island and an unparalleled cultural regress and decay.

Mutatis mutandis Tacitus' quote is fully applicable to Islamic barbarity and the Turks. What is more, Tacitus has even something valuable to say about today's Kemalism and Turkishness :

Idque apud imperitos humanitas vocabatur, cum pars servitutis esset.

"Because they didn't know better, they called it 'civilization,' when it was part of their slavery."(Ibidem)

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