Did rome ever commit genocide?

[DaLeGiOnArY]

I was hearing about how egypt was genociding pigs. Then i wondered if egypt was ever genocided itself. Then i wondered if rome genocided egypt when it conquered it 2000 years before egypt genocided pigs.

And now i wonder if rome ever genocided anyone in general.

[bushbush]

gauls maybe? but i don't think it's fair to judge the ancients with modern moral standards.

[DaLeGiOnArY]

Okay, how bout i put it this way:
Did rome kill mercelessly, indiscriminately and without trial on a massive scale at any point? A.I. 10000 deaths?

[bushbush]

Okay, how bout i put it this way:
Did rome kill mercelessly, indiscriminately and without trial on a massive scale at any point? A.I. 10000 deaths?

if caesar's number is reliable, he killed way more than that in gaul lmao.

[skag]

bah, deleted my post, seems we have a different definition of Genocide

[DaLeGiOnArY]

okay, now let's narrow it down some more:
Civilians, over the course of less than five years.

[War&Politics]

I agree with bushbush on moral standards. That said I suspect we can come up with quite a few ancient examples of what arguably could be called genocide. For example, Rome's total destruction of Carthage.

[conon394]

I was hearing about how egypt was genociding pigs. Then i wondered if egypt was ever genocided itself. Then i wondered if rome genocided egypt when it conquered it 2000 years before egypt genocided pigs.

Genocide and pigs WTF????

edit: nope because that is a single city under siege Rome made no attempt to wipe out Punic culture, religion, or all its people just those who refused to surrender at one city.

[awisler]

Genocide and pigs WTF????

edit: nope because that is a single city under siege Rome made no attempt to wipe out Punic culture, religion, or all its people just those who refused to surrender at one city.

Swine flu, duh. They clearly were more advanced than we thought, and saw it all coming.

[Carpathian Wolf]

Swine flu, duh. They clearly were more advanced than we thought, and saw it all coming.

Smartassicus Maximus: "Man in 2,000 years these Egyptians are totally gunna get the swine flu."

[War&Politics]

Egypt is killing off all of it's pigs as part of the whole swine flu scare.
And no you can't genocide pigs (I think, technically it's commit genocide against...), nor is genocide defined as simply killing a lot of people. Here is the definition:

...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

– Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article II

[conon394]

Well that's silly anyway thanks I was thinking there was some order by Pharaoh to make war on pigs.

[Watchman]

AFAIK the closest would be what they did in Dacia after getting fed up with the intractable natives. That's why they had to repopulate the region with colonists, no ?

Even allowing for the usual exaggeration of numbers, it's clear that the final death toll in Gaul was pretty ugly. Arguably, however, that was "collateral damage" rather than any particular goal of the Romans - Caesar was there for the glory and the profit, after all, not to slaughter peasants for and giggles. Plus the place wasn't exactly lacking in native populace as a Roman province.

[Lysimachos11]

...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

– Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article II

The Romans clearly committed acts of genocide according to this definition. Julius Caesar states of the Eburones tribe that resisted/rebelled against Roman occupation: "[T]he race and name of that state [The Eburones] [will] be annihilated[.]" Strabo, writing a few decades later, no longer mentions the Eburones tribe when he sums up the tribes of Gaul. According to Collis, in his book The Celts, p. 114, this probably indicates that the entire Eburones tribe was put to the sword or sold in slavery etc., meaning genocide.

(Caesar, Commentarii de Bello Gallico, VI.34)

[Optimus Marcus Ulpius Traianus]

Ceaser didnt bucher innocents at his mercy but i can imagine he could not always control his troops now the Romans did conmmit genocide on the jews huge numbers of them hunting them down and in response to rebellion. Also Trajan's treatment of Dacians and Parthian's (after they rebelled) was more than harsh bordering on genocide.

[War&Politics]

The reason why I think Carthage is a good example is that Rome deliberately set out to destroy the entire Carthaginian people.

[DAVIDE]

The reason why I think Carthage is a good example is that Rome deliberately set out to destroy the entire Carthaginian people.

they did destroy Carthage not Carthaginians. Utica, Kerkouane, Leptis Magna, Leptis minor, Hadrumetum etc were kept untouched. Carthaginians and their culture, continued to survive until VI cent Ad. Saint Agostine in one of his books, reveals he was tryin to convert local people into Catholicism but those country peasants in north africa did not understand latin. They were speakin neopunic even centuries after the Carthage's fall, so Agostine had to learn punic to speak with them. Carthaginians and their culture, after 146BC, were assimilated to romans. There are roman frescos in Khamouda who shows the perfect living together between romans and carthaginians

[The Noble Lord]

Well, Carthage, Gauls, destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and dispersion of the Jews.
All those things could today be considered as a genocide.

[0N3]

they did destroy Carthage not Carthaginians. Utica, Kerkouane, Leptis Magna, Leptis minor, Hadrumetum etc were kept untouched. Carthaginians and their culture, continued to survive until VI cent Ad. Saint Agostine in one of his books, reveals he was tryin to convert local people into Catholicism but those country peasants in north africa did not understand latin. They were speakin neopunic even centuries after the Carthage's fall, so Agostine had to learn punic to speak with them. Carthaginians and their culture, after 146BC, were assimilated to romans. There are roman frescos in Khamouda who shows the perfect living together between romans and carthaginians

How did this suddenly end? did they speak punic until the muslims came or did something happen that made them speak latin?

[DAVIDE]

How did this suddenly end? did they speak punic until the muslims came or did something happen that made them speak latin?

Romanized Carthaginians of big towns were bilanguage.. they spoke latin as first one ad neopunic as dialect. Saint Augustine referres about Carthaginians living in countries, 100% punic speakers. In Ululas (eastern Tunisia) for example, there are things written in a neopunic evolution, called Latino-Lybian and dated IV century AD. Latino-Lybian who uses latin letters but it's written in eastern neopunic words

Neopunic i suppose, disappeared when muslim conquered north africa. Someone says it survived until 11 cent. AD, because Al-Bakri said to inhabitants of Sirt, Lybia:

لهم كلام يراطنون به ليس بعربي ولا عجمي ولا بربري ولا قبطي ولا يعرفه غيرهم

""..They have a speech in which they jabber which is neither Arabic nor Ajami nor Berber nor Coptic, which no one but them knows ""



some examples of neopunic:

BYROM = their sons
THALATH = three
BYTH = daughter
ESRYM = twenty

here's an entire monologue written by plautus in neopunic