Expert: Francesco Marchesani - 11/16/2004

Question
Hi Francesco.  I have so many questions that I don't where to start.  Looking at what is familiar today, do we know when spoken language began, and where?  When and where did English begin?  Italian?  Spanish?  Who took the first shower, or bath, and when?  Cooking food?  Shaving?  I was amazed when I first learned that Rome had a senate over 2000 years ago.  So when and how did organized government begin?  Would that be the direct democracy in Athens?  I was also amazed to learn of the Roman brutality.  But now I need to ask if this was specific to the Romans, or if all ancient cultures dealt with "others" in this way.  Did the Romans invent crucification?  If they had such disdain for the peoples they ruled, then why did they not wipe them out?  Certainly they could have, correct?  And did nobody other than Spartacus and the guy who spared his life find it wrong to force gladiators to fight to the death?  How could anybody have joined Crassius' army?  "Just following orders"?  Finally, how did they become so powerful?  I mean, the Greeks (or at least the Macedonians) had an empire in 336 BC.  How did the balance shift?  Sorry for all of these questions, but there is just so much that I don't know.  Well, thank you!

Vance

Answer
I'm back to you, finally!

The Romans weren't either more brutal than other ancient peoples, or less. Brutality and harsh punishment were common in the ancient world (and in our own "modern" world, for what it matters...). The Romans didn't hate the people they conquered, actually one of the reasons of their success in creating a long lasting empire, was their ability to assimilate other populations, making them believe they were part of a nation, not just conquered subjects without any right. Obviously, they employed brutal means when necessary, but it was considered normal in a world where a conquered city, for example, was routinely destroyed and her citizens sold as slaves or killed on the spot.
Crucifixion was invented way before the Roman age: all the ancient middle eastern nations employed it to punish criminals, as a form of public display to inspire fear in the bypasser. For a Roman, crucifixion was an exceptional punishment, used only against the enemies of the nation, the revolters or those non-citizen (a citizen was beheaded instead, see st Paul's death).
About Spartacus, he revolted against the state, thus it was perfectly normal, for a Roman soldier, to take arms against him and defeat his army; the gladitor games were normal for the time, considering also that fights to death were not as common as we are usually taught: training a gladiator was a costly investment, thus their owners wanted to keep them alive as long as possible. Death was exceptional, unless those forced to fight were condemned to death by a court. Even today we have bloody fights we call sport (boxing for example...) but nobody complains about them, except when a boxeur "accidentally" dies on the ring!
Rome achieved his power by a strong military (the legions) united to her ability to rule the subdued nations by respecting their tradition and culture (most peoples kept their own government, language, faith etc.) and at the same time by making them feel part of a bigger body, and receive benefits from it.
It took centuries (Rome was founded in 753  BC, reached it's peek during the 1st century AD, and disappeared in 476 AD in western Europe, and in 1453 in the Byzantine empire!) to build such an empire, during all this time Rome fought against fierce enemies, saw mny of them disappear, then was defeated by the big mass of barbarian populations moving from central Asia to Europe. It's normal to see balance shift, a country cannot be at its peek for long, internal social, economical and political reasons, united with external pressure, always change the situation, letting some nations lose power and other grow bigger: see England for example, at the beginning of the 1900's she was the most powerful nation on earth, now she has lost most of her colonies, and thus her power.

If you need further information, feel free to ask me again!
Francesco