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Comment by mjfl | Hacker News Reader

But their primary defense was offense. The Roman response to true enemy was always "kill them all, man woman and child". That's why they genocided Carthage, the Gauls, destroyed Israel, massacred rebelling slaves in Sicily and lined the roads from Campania to Rome with crucified rebels. To bring in a modern political analogy is stupid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appian_Way#The_crucifixion_of_...

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That's the human condition. If you think that we're any better, you're wrong.

If any nation today had the ability to slaughter their enemies, they would. When the United States had that ability in the 1940s, we planned on doing so and reengineered the entire military complex to do so. When the Germans had the ability to do so in Angola in the early 1900s, they did.

> If any nation today had the ability to slaughter their enemies, they would.

This is untrue. Most citizens don't have the stomach for total war or civilian massacre. It's not considered acceptable or moral by most people. There was no lack of ability constraining the US from carpet bombing everything habitable in Afghanistan after 9/11, but relatively few people were advocating for that.

They don't need to. Ancient people were no more or less moral than we are today.

Only the people running the tribe matter, whether that be a bronze age war band or a modern army. The fact that only a few people advocated the bombing you described doesn't change the fact that bombs were dropped.

It matters when the leaders are elected.

"To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a solitude and call it peace."

Probably invented by Tacitus.

And believe it or not, the Huns/Gauls/Carthaginians were worse.

To be completely honest, that's what everyone was doing back then. The Romans were just better at it and all things considered they were quite benevolent as far as empires go.

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