Bulletin

Issue: March 2004

News

WHEN IN ROME - OR IN WASHINGTON

Military confrontation and what looks good on TV may not be the best ways of securing goals. Long term quiet diplomacy may be better, and there are examples in Roman history to prove this.

Contrasts between the political effectiveness of quiet diplomacy and moral grandstanding in the political arena were themes of a public lecture in February by noted Welsh classical scholar, Professor Gareth Williams, Chair of Classics at Columbia University, New York.

The lecture was a major event during the Australian Society for Classical Studies 25th annual conference at La Trobe University, Bendigo. Professor Williams cited the case of Roman consul (general) Marcus Atilius Regulus, a man of truth but prone to political grandstanding-who was rewarded for both with a nasty death.

Regulus was captured by Carthage at the time of the First Punic War between Rome and Carthage (264-241 BC) and was sent home to persuade Rome to seek peace. He gave his word that he would return to Carthage irrespective of the outcome of his mission. Instead of advocating peace, he publicly urged the Roman Senate to continue hostilities, then returned to Carthage and was executed.

While Regulus became a by-word for the Roman virtues of fides (keeping your word) and pietas (duty), later writers such as Horace and Silius Italicus presented his virtue as praiseworthy but his inflexibility as counter-productive.

In the real world of the Roman Empire more was achieved by quiet and patient diplomacy than by moral grandstanding. For Silius, the man who saved Rome in the Second Punic War was not one of the old-fashioned consuls (the 'Regulus' types) who insisted on meeting the enemy head on and lost battle after battle but rather Quintus Fabius Maximus who wore Hannibal out by shadowing his army around Italy and consistently refusing to fight.

At the time of Augustus the return to Rome of standards lost in the Parthian War was represented as a great military victory. In fact it was achieved by years of negotiation.

'Shock and awe' may look good on TV, just as the return of the standards looks good on the 'Primaporta Augustus'-the well-known statue now in the Vatican Museum.

Professor William said the Bush administration needed to be aware that what looks good on TV may not secure long-term goals. Taking the Regulus approach may give you and your conservative supporters a warm inner glow-but it can also prove to be a political and strategic dead end.

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