On How We Judge Historical Atrocities.
I have just finished Peter Green’s biography of Alexander the Great, which is quite different from the other biographies and essays I have read on this topic. Instead of fawning over Alexander’s meteoric rise and conquests, he takes a far more sober look at the reality and costs of Alexander’s career, both to the people he conquered and the friends and acquaintances who joined him on his journey.
There is also an interesting, if lengthy, podcast by Dan Carilin’s Hardcore History that discusses Caesar’s conquest of Gaul in rather excruciating and bloody detail.
This got me thinking: What’s the difference between some of the famous generals and leaders that we admire today, such as Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Caesar, and Napoleon, and the 20th-century tyrants, such as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao?
In certain cases, such as comparing Napoleon and Hitler, the details merge far too closely with the invasion of Russia in 1812 and the Soviet Union in 1941. Interestingly, Hitler and his generals certainly studied Napoleon’s campaign and the hubris that led him to undergo one of the most disastrous military campaigns, yet could not help repeating the mistake.
Napoleon, impressively, managed to move across Russia more quickly than Hitler and even reached Moscow, which the Russians promptly burned to the ground to deny the French any place to rest. Why did the Germans in WW2 think that reaching Moscow would collapse Stalin’s government any more than Napoleon’s capture of Moscow did not topple Tsar Alexander I’s regime?
So, I want to examine why we view modern atrocities as much more severe than ancient atrocities.
Perhaps they sting more, and that’s a natural assumption to make. There are still a few Nazi concentration camp guards alive today. Think of that — there are people alive today who were partly responsible for putting hundreds of thousands of people in gas chambers and then into crematoriums. Hannibal’s soldiers, who massacred 60,000+ Roman soldiers at Cannae, are long gone, having left 4,000+ tonnes of rotting flesh on that battlefield. Alexander the Great crucified 2,000 enemy soldiers who had surrendered at Tyre.
Time is a lousy beautician but a great healer.
So perhaps one murder today is worth 2,000 murders from 2,500 years ago. I am not sure what the true ratio is, but there is a declining value of death based on geographical and temporal distance.
When I was in Afghanistan on a UN mission, there was a car bomb in Kabul on the 3rd day I was there. That didn’t make the news in the West, but imagine a car bomb in London, New York, Paris, or Milan. There would be 24/7 news coverage of the event and investigation for weeks. That only has to do with geographical distance; the temporal dimension affects the importance of events even more.
The other key thing is that our moral standards change.
It was considered acceptable for Crassus, a Roman general, to crush the slave revolt led by Spartacus in 71 BC and then line a significant portion — over 500km — of the Appian Way, a major Roman road connecting Rome to Capua, with 6,000 crucified survivors from Sparacus’ army. That’s one body every 100m for 500km. This act was intended to serve as a deterrent and a display of Roman power. Although some may have found it distasteful, it was still within the Overton window of acceptability in ancient Rome and paints a grim picture of the moral standards of the time.
Let’s pause to review the Overton window, an interesting concept in political theory that describes the range of ideas tolerated in public discourse. Named after Joseph P. Overton, the theory suggests that an idea’s political viability depends on whether it falls within this range. The window frames the policies a politician can recommend without appearing too extreme, while ideas outside the window are considered unacceptable or radical. This concept helps explain how actions like Crassus’ treatment of Spartacus’ army could be accepted in ancient times but would be condemned today.
Just the fact that Crassus could conceive of doing something like this is a strong indication of the moral standards of the time. It would be difficult to imagine Tony Blair having lined Oxford Street with dying and dead captured prisoners of the Iraq war.
So perhaps we should judge the ancients not on our current moral standards but on the standards of their own time. This is why we find Hitler, Mao, and Stalin far more disturbing, because it was not so long ago, and it perhaps hints that we are not so different to them as we may think. Yes, our moral standards have advanced since the mid-twentieth century, but we are not that far away.
Let’s consider the Rwandan Genocide, which took place in 1994 and claimed an estimated 800,000 to 1,000,000 lives, illustrating how even relatively recent atrocities can feel distant due to temporal and geographical separation. Many of us were alive during this time, yet the event feels remote compared to current concerns. Similarly, the war in Iraq between 2003 and 2011, which killed an estimated 200,000 to 1,000,000 Iraqis, feels like a distant event for many in the West. As a teenager, I joined the protests against the war in London, but that’s about it. I was still part of a society that sent soldiers to another country and contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. But my life went on; I had to study, work, chase girls, and so on. It wasn’t my fault — right?
Right.
The other thing to consider is that we now have a significantly larger population than before. So perhaps we should measure the ratio of deaths based on the total population of the country being invaded or the total world population at the time. This does not do any favours to the ancients because each death was counted far more heavily than it is in modern times.
Let’s take Ceasars’ campaign in Gaul. It is estimated that he killed around 1m Gauls and enslaved up to another 1m, out of a population of 3m. Caesar’s campaign in Gaul was characterized by a level of brutality and direct population reduction that is staggering by modern standards, effectively wiping out two-thirds of the Gaulish population through death or enslavement. This resulted in immediate loss of life and a lasting transformation of Gaulish society and culture, as the survivors were absorbed into the Roman Empire.
Let’s compare these numbers to what Hitler did between May and June 1940. When Hitler invaded France, France had a population of approximately 42 million. Around 85,000 to 90,000 French died during the invasion, so a loss of 0.21% of the population or 1 person out of every 477 died. It’s tragic, of course, but not a civilization-ending event. French culture thrives today.
So, arguably, a death in ancient times was more of a tragedy than a modern death. Fewer people were around, and so each person was perhaps more precious, and the toll on society was greater.
In conclusion, while it is important to consider the historical context and moral standards of the time when judging ancient atrocities, we must not let temporal distance blind us to the scale and severity of these acts.
However, I am not sure this matters much to their victims. If you were crucified by Alexander the Great in the siege of Tyre or shot by a German bullet in World War 2, it was a tragedy.
Perhaps Stalin was correct to observe: The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.
