Terrorism in the Ancient Roman World
By Gregory G. Bolich

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The populace had to choose how to respond to such power. One route was accommodation and sanction: The state is right. Another was avoidance: Right or wrong, it is best to stay out of the state’s way. A third path was resistance: The state is wrong, justifying coercion and overthrow. All three courses had their advocates.

The notion that the state is inherently legitimate in its use of force found expression in the mid-first-century writing of Saul of Tarsus, better known as the Christian apostle Paul. In a letter addressed to Rome’s Christians, Paul wrote, Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of him who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval.

That strategy may have worked well for many people (though not for Paul himself, who was martyred by Rome). But when the ruler’s notion of what was good for him proved bad for his subjects, what then? In such circumstances, the ruled learned to move to the cadences of the ruler, or suffered the consequences. Many sought to do this by remaining sycophants to the state, no matter what. Tacitus criticizes some earlier histories of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, saying their authors wrote falsified accounts to avoid frightful consequences.

Others could not sacrifice conscience so entirely. Yet while they could not sanction evil, neither could they actively resist, so they stepped away. One who advocated this delicate dance was Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger. After years of practicing politics as adviser to the Emperor Nero Claudius Caesar, he concluded in Letters to Lucilius that there were three valid reasons for fear: material want, illness, and the troubles which result from the violence of the stronger. He warned his friend Gaius Lucilius that the wise man will never provoke the anger of those in power; nay, he will even turn his course, precisely as he would turn from a storm if he were steering a ship. Unfortunately, Nero proved to be a hurricane the aged philosopher could not escape; Seneca was forced to take his own life in a.d. 65.

As the deaths of both Paul and Seneca illustrate, neither accommodating the state nor avoiding conflict with it is entirely free of danger. But the third course, resistance, has proven to be the most perilous.

Resistance to a ruling authority in the Roman world took various forms. Most prominent in the minds of Romans themselves were the civil wars whereby all too often one bold group replaced another. A second kind of resistance came in provinces and foreign lands where rapacious Roman governors drove their subjects to desperation. Both sides might resort to acts of terrorism to impose their will.

The Romans themselves were always more distressed by terror at home than by horrors in distant lands. The accounts of the Late Republic and the Early Empire are depressingly full of atrocities committed through naked power but cloaked in the guise of state authority. Rulers used terrifying acts for various objectives, including maintaining their own power, generally at the expense of political opponents. For the masses, civil conflict was a matter of being caught horribly in the middle while powerful men and their allies attacked one another. Picking a side was often tantamount to choosing life or death. Unfortunately, not picking a side could prove just as fatal.

If Rome was no safe haven from terror, neither was any other place. In 88 b.c., Mithridates VI Eupator Dionysus, King of Pontus, took advantage of Roman problems at home by sweeping through the Roman province of Asia Minor. So swift and successful was his conquest that many thousands of Roman citizens and their Italian allies were unable to escape. Mithridates solved the problem expeditiously. He ordered that every one of them should die at an appointed hour on a single day, throughout the province.

Tags: Ancient-Medieval, Historical Conflicts, Military Technology

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