I was about to post about the difference between moral and physical bravery, and this post pretty much sums it up.
The people who took part in the former, I’m sure demonstrated plenty of physical courage prior to the massacre (several of them had received decorations for bravery, I believe). The latter showed is something far rarer in wartime, that is moral courage.
The point has often been made in connection with the Wehrmacht in WW2, they showed an abundance of physical courage, often facing overwhelming odds, but there a very few examples of Wehrmacht troops showing the moral courage to object to Nazi war crimes. Even earlier in the war when objecting troops would in all likelihood be putting only their careers at risk, not their lives.
Hence Kipling’s later attack in “The Last of the Light Brigade”, which has the last survivors, now old men, confront Tennyson about his poem, and the fact that they are now living forgotten in poverty.
I rather suspect that if they had survived they would have had a future that consisted of entertaining the mob in the Arena.
Any cite for Roman non-enslavement of rebels who surrender? Strikes me that Arena “games” or crucifictions all around was more their style, and enslavement was a “best” outcome. Particularly after forcing the Romans to build a honking big ramp up the side of a plateau (the ramp’s still there - I walked on it).
Even more than Schindler, I would list the Polish Righteous Among the Nations.
Had Schindler been caught, bad things would have happened to him, but my guess is he would have lived. When Poles were caught helping Jews, they and their whole family were liable for execution.
While this is not typically my style (that post was only the second time I have ever posted anything to Great Debates) but I would be interested in a site that states that the Romans did not usually enslave prisoners on a routine basis.
That just seems to run counter to everything I have read/been taught about the Roman M.O. but I have certainly been misinformed before, so anything new I can learn is always welcome…
Thanks, Matthew
That is a mess but should do. They tended to ransom people before trying to sell them as slaves. Massacres occurred if they fought their way into the city. And they certainly didn’t transport slaves across the sea to the arenas unless they wanted exotic gladiators. Commonplace arena bait were criminals and local slaves.
Along these same lines, the entire country of Denmark in 1943. Any individual might, sure, not have been as heroic as Schindler or the Poles above, but the whole country rallied to smuggle all of their Jews out: lots of little acts of bravery and heroism by people who weren’t and didn’t think of themselves as heroes. which to me adds up to a whole that is simply phenomenal.
I learned of this through Fred Small’s song “Denmark 1943” (what else? ), which still makes me bawl whenever I listen to it.
Not just Romans, that was pretty much a universal code in ancient time (and much later, even up to the Napoleonic times). If you surrendered your city quickly without a fuss you usually left alone with a bit of tribute exacted, and maybe a new ruler. If you held out and forced the enemy to into a siege(which usually as painful for the besiegers as the besieged), then when they finally break through the shit will definitely hit the fan, and you’ll be lucky if you survive long enough to be enslaved.
There we exceptions to this, but it’s pretty much the way things worked back then.
Makes sense, and jibes with what I had been taught; that said, the Jews at Masada would be looking at some very pissed off Romans when they (Romans) would have finally breached the walls, and I would be shocked if they could have just given the Romans some beads and trinkets and sent them off on thier way…
Though I would add that notwithstanding my last post, there was ALOT of enslaving done by Roman armies. So much so that the volume of slaves being brought back to Rome radically changed the Roman economy (replacing small land-owning farmers, with huge slave-run aristocratic estates), and which in turn led directly to the fall of the Republic. Here I’ll put in my weekly plug for the awesome History of Rome podcast, which explains this in detail.
Different rules applied when the cities involved were owned by rebels. Certainly the Jews of Masada could expect little mercy if they surrendered - they were the last hold-outs of a rebellion than had cost Rome dearly.
German and Russian soldiers on the Eastern Front. There were solider who on purpose let themselves be run over by tanks between the tracks so they could place a mine under the tank. German Uboat men also appear to have taken on an extraordinary nail biting and dangerous profession.
Columbus.
Armstrong. First man on the Moon. Never a man so lonely. Sitting in a tiny capsule on top of a giant rocket filled with explosive fuel must have been a bit uncomfortable. But of all the places the mission could have gone deadly wrong I sometime think Armstrong and Buzz alone on the Moon must have been extremely edgy about the moon landing craft’s engines, if they had failed to start they would have been marooned further from home than any man ever before.
Though talking of thatthis weeks episode has an excellent example of cowardice by the Emporer Caligula who crossed the Rhine to attack Germania, where rather than actually enter the forest and attack the Germans (gods forbid that shits dangerous), he paid some allied Gauls to pretend to be Germans, and emerge from the forest to “attack” him. He then apparently spend the aftermath of the “battle” boasting about his bravery and how cowardly his troops were (apparently wondering round looking a little bemused instead of “fighting” off the attackers), before some really Germans turned up and he legged it back to the Roman side of the Rhine as fast as possible.
I’d second that. There are some incredible stories of the bravery of Soviet troops (one that sticks in my mind is mortally wounded soviet soldiers apologizing for getting blood on their precious snow camouflage overalls, when his comrades come to retrieve them from their dying colleague).
Even Hilter said something along the lines of “just give a a division of troops like these”, when touring the newly captured city of Kiev, referring to the defenders. Of course one of the most tragic things about it is the few that survived Nazi captivity were treated as traitors and immediately sent to the Gulags.
There is no end of military bravery, but for me the necessity of doing whatever it takes and the lack of time to really think about any of the consequesnces really makes it easier. For me bravery requires risking your life to save another even after carefully considering it all.
Bravery: Ernest Shakleton’s rescue of his crew on Elephant Island is a glowing example of how a real man conducts himself.
Cowardice:The Meduse’s ill fated voyage is for me one of the most disgusting acts of cowardice I’ve ever read, the wikipedia article doesn’t even come close to explaining it all. The disaster came shortly after Napoleon’s fall and when the French public discovered what when down there was almost another revolution.
The Apollo 13 astronauts. The sheer ability to hold their shit together and jury-rig their spacecraft to get home was pretty badass.
**Sitnam **beat me to Ernest Shackleton.
Why do people have to resort to this hyperbole? Is WW2 not justified enough that we have to make up totally absurd things like this to emphasize the need to fight it?
Yes, but it wasn’t something that hapened every day or to whole cities. Furthermore, speaking to a previous poster as well, the Masadans could have arranged a surrender earlier. The longer they held out, the higher the price, but they would have survived and even gotten their freedom.
), which still makes me bawl whenever I listen to it.