The Official Truth: Propaganda in the Roman Empire
By Dr Neil Faulkner
Last updated 2011-02-17
Propaganda is considered to be a modern political art, but the Romans were masters of 'spin'. How did Rome's leaders communicate their power and their policies to a massive and diverse empire?
All empire-builders have to justify what they do - to themselves, to their own people, and to those they dominate.
The Romans developed a sophisticated world-view which they projected successfully through literature, inscriptions, architecture, art, and elaborate public ceremonial.
Some elements of this world-view evolved during the existence of the empire, most notably with the adoption of Christianity in the early fourth century AD.
Other themes remained constant. Perhaps the most important of the latter was the idea that Rome represented peace, good government, and the rule of law. The societies with which Rome was in conflict were caricatured as barbaric, lawless and dangerous.
Julius Caesar, in his famous account of the Gallic Wars of the 50s BC, provided readers at home with a blood-curdling description of the Germanic tribes he encountered in battle:
'The various tribes regard it as their greatest glory to lay waste as much as possible of the land around them and to keep it uninhabited. They hold it a proof of a people's valour to drive their neighbours from their homes, so that no-one dare settle near them. No discredit attaches to plundering raids outside tribal frontiers. The Germans say that they serve to keep young men in training and prevent them from getting lazy.'
Barbaricum was not only a place of perpetual strife. There was also grinding poverty and cultural backwardness.
Describing the Caledonian tribes of ancient Scotland in the early third century AD, Dio Cassius wrote:
'They inhabit wild, waterless mountains and lonely, swampy plains, without walls, cities, or cultivated land. They live by pasturing flocks, hunting, and off certain fruits. They live in tents, unclothed and unshod, sharing their women and bringing up all their children together.'
'Others shall hammer forth more delicately a breathing likeness out of bronze ... but you, Roman, must remember that you have to guide the nations.'
Clearly, the implication seems to be, such people could not but benefit from Roman rule. But even those already civilised - those, indeed, whom many Romans recognised as more civilised than themselves - stood to gain.
There is a famous passage in Virgil's Aeneid, written in the reign of the first emperor, Augustus (30 BC - 14 AD), where the achievements of the Greeks are acknowledged, but their need of Roman government asserted.
'Others [that is, Greeks] shall hammer forth more delicately a breathing likeness out of bronze, coax living faces from the marble, plead causes with more skill, plot with their gauge the movements in the sky and tell the rising of the constellations.
'But you, Roman, must remember that you have to guide the nations by your authority, for this is to be your skill, to graft tradition onto peace, to spare those who submit, but to crush those who resist.'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/romanpropaganda_article_01.shtml
Topic: The Koran and Islam as weapons