Lessons from Rome's diplomacy or on druidism and Islam

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Dec 10, 2006 at 18:20

Dear Octavio, you wrote :

"Ancient Rome had to deal with terrorism, from the Barbarians. The Romans taught us that diplomacy comes first, and war is the very last resort."

The Romans had enough common sense to know that any diplomatic arrangements with the barabarians were useless unless raw force imposed restraints on and inspired constant fear to the barbarians. Hence the Latin phrase "barbaries dolosa" ( "cheating barbarity", "barbarians' tricks , unreliability") . It was only after the lost battle at Adrianople in AD 378 that they had to make concessions to the barbarian Goths. But to the best of my knowledge the history of Rome teaches generally quite a different lesson than what you are trying to suggest. Barbarians are barbarians, diplomacy is for civilized nations.

By the way , I once voiced my doubts on comparing communism and fascism with Islam. These things are incomparable and analogies between them are quite misleading . The only thing the European past produced to a degree similar to Islam was -in my opinion - druidism that bred political violence , hatred , fanaticism , contempt of death favouring political seditions , producing human sacrifices , a priest-ridden social structure in addition to vast oral religious literature and holy places - to name but a few outstanding traces of druidism. The Romans dealt with it radically by military force. They hardly differenciated between "moderate" and "radical" druids. One of the reason for invading Britain was that of eliminating the danger druidism posed to Rome. They gave the druidic Celts a great alternative to druidism and it was not a "modern, moderate, democratic, liberal, good-neighborly, humane, and respectful of women" druidism - as some ancient friends of druidism might have probably argued . It was Romanization.

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