The 10 Most Brutal Things Romans Did to Defeated Enemies (Recorded by History)

PART 2:

 Our ninth entry is when Rome turned on  its own soldiers, not the enemy.   When a Roman unit broke in battle, fled without  orders, or committed collective acts of cowardice,   the punishment was decimation, the killing of  one in every 10 soldiers by the other nine.   The soldiers drew lots.

 The one in  10 who drew the fatal lot was beaten   to death by his own tentmates with clubs  and stones. The surviving nine then had   to sleep outside the camp and eat barley  instead of wheat for a period afterward.   The psychological design of decimation was  more sophisticated than simple punishment.   By requiring the survivors to kill the victim, the  Roman military made the entire unit complicit in   the punishment. There was no executioner  to blame.

 The man who drew the short lot   might have been one of the bravest soldiers in  the unit. The randomness was the point. It created   collective accountability rather than individual  responsibility. Every man in a formation subject   to decimation knew that cowardice might get  his neighbor killed rather than himself. Craus famously decimated 500 men after the  disastrous early performance of his forces   against Spartacus. reportedly the  first decimation in centuries.  

The display of severity was deliberate. He  was trying to make his soldiers more afraid   of him than of Spartacus. It worked. His army  subsequently performed significantly better. Number eight on our list. And this time it wasn’t  soldiers being punished. It was entire cities.   After the destruction of Carthage in 146  BC, Rome sold the surviving population   estimated at between 50,000 and 200,000 people  into slavery in a single operation.

 After the   sack of Corinth the same year, the male population  was killed and the women and children enslaved.   These were not exceptional acts in Roman practice.  They were institutional outcomes applied to cities   that had resisted beyond the point Rome considered  acceptable.

 The scale of Roman slave taking after   major military victories was industrial. Caesar’s  GAC campaigns produced an estimated 1 million   slaves over 8 years. The markets at Delos  could process 10,000 slaves in a single day.   The Romans built an entire economic infrastructure  around the assumption that military victory   would produce large numbers of enslaved people  and they designed the slave trade accordingly.

What made this particularly brutal was not just  the scale but the specificity of the decision.   Roman commanders could grant  mercy to a surrendered population.   The choice to enslave was a choice made by  specific men on specific days and it was recorded   in the ancient sources with the matter of factness  that institutional normality produces.

 Libby   records the enslavement of populations the way he  records troop movements as administrative facts. Coming in at number seven, 130 mi. That is how  far this particular punishment stretched. After   suppressing the Spartacus slave revolt in 71 BC,  Craus crucified 6,000 prisoners along the Aion way   from Capoa to Rome, a distance of approximately  130 mi.

 one cross every 22 m for the entire length   of the road. The crosses were left standing until  the bodies had completely decomposed, a process   that took months. Every traveler on Rome’s most  important road saw them for the entire duration. Crucifixion was not normally applied to Roman  citizens. It was specifically a punishment for   slaves, rebels, and non-scitizen criminals.

 Its  use against the Spartacus survivors was therefore   a deliberate statement about their status. These  were slaves who had pretended to be something else   and they were being returned to the category of  object rather than person in the most visible way   Rome had available. The Aion way display  was also a message to every slave in Italy.   The road ran through the agricultural heartland  where most of Rome’s enslaved population worked.  

The 6,000 crosses were visible to the people  most likely to be tempted by another revolt.   The display was not spontaneous cruelty. It  was calculated communication and it worked.   There was no comparable slave revolt  in Italy for generations afterward. At number six, we have perhaps the most calculated  act on this entire list because the decision was   made before the war even started.

 The Third  Punic War ended in 146 BC with the complete   destruction of Carthage after a 3-year siege. The  Roman Senate had decided on the motion primarily   associated with Kato the Elder that Carthage  must be destroyed. The decision preceded the war.   Rome went to war having already decided on the  outcome regardless of what Carthage did. The siege   lasted 3 years partly because the Carthaginians  when they realized the Romans intended total   destruction regardless of surrender terms fought  with the specific desperation of people who had   nothing left to lose. They reportedly melted  down bronze statues to make weapons. Women cut  

off their hair to make bow strings. The city was  defended building by building, street by street. When the Romans finally broke through, they fought  through the city for 6 days of continuous street   combat. At the end, the surviving population  was enslaved. The buildings were systematically   demolished and the site was cursed.

 A city that  had been one of the great metropolises of the   ancient world was reduced to rubble in 6 days.  The site remained uninhabited for over a century. Our fifth entry is where things get deeply personal  because Rome understood that destroying a man’s   family in front of him was a different kind of  cruelty than anything a battlefield could produce.   When Rome captured a foreign king or leader of  significance, the execution was often staged   so that family members were forced to watch. This  was not incidental cruelty, but deliberate policy.  

The complete destruction of everything the  defeated person had built and loved was considered   part of the total defeat that Rome intended  to impose. Perseus, the last king of Macedon,   was captured after the battle of Pidna in  168 BC. He and his family were displayed   in Amelius Paulus’s triumph and then held in  a Roman prison. His sons died in captivity.  

The ancient sources describe Perseus watching his  children deteriorate and die while being unable   to do anything. a specific kind of long-term  cruelty that outlasted the battle itself by years. The Romans also practiced the execution of the  entire male line of a defeated royal family   to prevent future challenges. When a dynasty  was conquered, its continuation was the threat.  

The elimination of every potential claimant  was strategic rather than personal.   It was terrible and it was  deliberate and the Romans   recorded it in the same administrative  language they used for everything else. Number four on our list, and this one is unique  because Rome knew exactly what it felt like   to be on the receiving end.

 When a Roman army was  defeated so decisively that it had to surrender   in the field, the victorious enemy sometimes  imposed the specific humiliation of passing   under the yoke. A frame made of spears under  which the soldiers had to walk bent and disarmed.   For the Romans, this was one of the most  intolerable humiliations imaginable.   Rome imposed this on others.

 After the battle of  the cotting forks in 321 BC, the Romans themselves   were forced to pass under the yoke, one of the  most traumatic events in Republican memory.   When Rome subsequently defeated the Samites,  the humiliation was returned with interest.   The Romans who imposed the yoke on defeated  enemies understood exactly what they were doing   because they knew what it had  meant when it was done to them.

Roman commanders also imposed physical  branding, forced labor on public works, and   the permanent removal of civic rights on conquered  populations. The yoke was the symbolic version of   what the other punishments made literal, the  conversion of free people into something less. At number three, we reach a  punishment that went beyond death.  

Because death alone was not considered enough  for defeated enemies of sufficient status, Rome   developed a punishment that went beyond death.  The systematic eraser of the person from history.   Damnio memorier, the condemnation of memory meant  that inscriptions were chiseled off monuments,   statues were destroyed or had their faces  removed, official records were altered,   and the name of the condemned was  forbidden to be spoken or written.

[crying]   The practical effect was to make a person  retroactively not have existed. Buildings they   had constructed were rededicated to someone else.  Coins bearing their image were melted or defaced.   Family members who bore their name were required  to change it.

 The Romans understood that memory   was a form of continued existence and that its  destruction was a punishment that the physical   death of the person did not accomplish. This was  applied most extensively to Roman emperors who   were condemned after death, but it was also used  against defeated foreign leaders who had been   significant enough to have their existence  recorded.

 The goal was not only to punish   the individual, but to remove the inspiration  their memory might provide to future resistance. Our second entry. And here Rome stopped targeting  people and went after something even harder to   replace. Roman armies did not merely defeat  enemies militarily. They stripped the religious   infrastructure of the defeated people as  a deliberate act of cultural destruction.  

Temples were looted. Sacred objects  were carried to Rome as trophies   and the specific religious identity of the  defeated people was materially dismantled.   The sack of Jerusalem in AD.70  is the most documented example.   Titus’s army removed the manora, the table of  shoebread and the silver trumpets from the temple   objects whose religious significance  to the Jewish population was absolute.  

These were displayed in the triumph of Titus  and then stored in the temple of peace in Rome.   The Arch of Titus, still standing in Rome today,   shows the looted [music] temple objects  being carried in the triumphal procession. The message of this kind of looting was  precise. Your gods could not protect you.  

The objects that represented divine protection had  been taken by Rome and were now trophies in Roman   temples. The defeat was not only military and  political, but theological. It was designed to   convince the conquered population that resistance  was not only feudal but cosmically unjustified. And finally, number one.  

Everything on this list was a piece of the  same system. And this is where that system led.   The most extreme outcome Rome could impose on a  defeated enemy was total annihilation. The killing   of the entire population of a city that had  resisted beyond what Rome considered acceptable.   This was not applied universally.

 Rome  preferred submission to destruction   because submission produced tribute, slaves, and  manpower. But when a city resisted after a point,   Rome had decided was the final one, the result  could be the complete end of that community. The most chilling aspect of Roman total  annihilation was its procedural quality.   It was not the result of soldiers in the grip  of combat rage.

 It was a command decision   made before the final assault that when the  walls were breached, there would be no quarter.   The soldiers who carried out these orders were  not acting outside their institutional role.   They were executing a policy. has been fulfilled.  Palibius, who was present at the destruction of   Carthage, describes the Roman soldiers killing  every living thing they encountered as they fought   through the city. Not because they were out of  control, but because they had been ordered to.  

The most disturbing thing about the systematic  brutality of Roman military practice   was not that it was exceptional.  It was that it was normal. What set the Romans apart from others was  not that they were more ruthless, but how   and for what purpose they acted. The events  we just witnessed were not random occurrences.  

They were all decisions that had been carefully  considered, planned, and deliberately carried out. Orders came from the higher ranks and the soldiers  as part of this system were compelled to carry   them out. Rome gained power not only through  warfare but also by instilling fear because   everyone who faced them knew this. If you resist,  you know exactly what will happen to you.

 That’s   why most people didn’t even choose to fight. So  ruthlessness wasn’t something separate for Rome.   It was part of the system they built. And perhaps  that’s why they were able to survive for so long.   Do you think Rome could have remained just as  powerful if it hadn’t used such harsh methods?