“Not foreign
invaders, Italy, but your own sons will rape you, a brutal interminable
gang-rape, punishing you, famous country, for all your many depravities,
leaving you prostrated, stretched out among the burning ashes. Self-slaughterer!
No longer the mother of upstanding men, but rather the nurse of savage,
ravening beasts!”[1]
The message can
hardly be more dystopian. Murders, intrigues, vice, disintegration, collapse;
the Sibyl had foreseen it all. Nor was this prophecy confined only to the
capital, but also rippled throughout the Republic. Although this verse has been
kept secret from the public eyes, its much older version has been circulating
in the East for a long time. The Sibyl did not visit only the Romans, it
seemed. The Greeks and Jews also had their share of the prophecy no less
haunting and foreboding than the one above.
“An empire will
rise from beyond the western sea, white and many-headed, and its sway will be
measureless, bringing ruin and terror to kings, looting gold and silver from
city after city.”[2]
The Roman
Republic’s rise is likened to a deadly multi-headed hydra, ready to burn and
devour everything in its path, causing untold destruction and havoc in its
wake. Ancient kings, monarchs, cities, empires and civilisations would be either
utterly consumed or swept by the hydra’s great torrents. The age of a single
order would begin, but no peace would ensue! Indeed, it is the Romans who would themselves
be responsible for their own demise.
“They will sink
into a swamp of decadence: men will sleep with men, and boys will be pimped in
brothels; civil tumults will engulf them, and everything will fall into
confusion and disorder. The world will be filled with evils.”[3]
The portrayal of
the Republic as a mother of savage ravenous beasts destroyed and consumed by
its own children is first confirmed when the Republic decided to conclude its
unfinished business with the half-dead nemesis, Carthage. Not that did go
without disapproval. How would the Republic expect to maintain its greatness in
the absence of great rival to keep its pride and confidence in check? Ruthless
competition is, after all, the basis of all civil virtue. Nonetheless, against
the surging and overwhelming tide of the majority, Carthage’s ultimate annihilation
was guaranteed, and its death warrant promptly signed. After all, why nurse a
serpent who might one day bite you back? Why keep alive your foe who would see
no qualm in effecting your destruction? Such was the ultimately prevailing logic;
one which irrefutably exposed Rome’s ambition to be the best, and equally its
abandonment of its fundamental principle it has always upheld since its
establishment by Romulus.
 |
| The Fall of Carthage |
Not that Rome’s
blood-lust stopped at Carthage. It spent the spring of 146 BC terrorising the Greeks.
In retaliation to the upsetting of the balance of power established by Rome,
the Roman army overwhelmed its Greek counterpart, and the ancient city of
Corinth was reduced to dust. Corinth’s fame for its prostitutes and art offered
the Romans ample plunder and opportunity to satiate its thirst for blood.
Shrines were desecrated, priceless objects denigrated, and treasure looted and
carried back to Rome.
The annihilation
of two great cities of the Mediterranean was a horror. No longer can the
citizens of the Republic pretend that they were destroying their enemies in
self-defence. No longer can they invoke the name of liberty to glorify and legitimise
their cause. The fundamental principle of virtue has been irreparably breached!
No doubt the Sibyl’s prophecy was increasingly becoming a curse, something that
could no longer be averted. Rome had gone too far. The damage was done. The blood
has been shed. The die has been cast. Rome must pay. Even some Romans were looking
at these two disasters with shame and guilt. Even Scipio was said to have
watched the flames consuming Carthage with tears in his eyes. The working of
some kind of indescribable force he could feel. With Rome’s supremacy
guaranteed, so too was its doom. At that moment, lines from Homer came to him.
“The day of the destruction of sacred Troy will arrive,
After the
destruction of Carthage and Corinth, countless other events ensued which would
confirm the Sibyl’s prophecy of the Republic’s demise, from the rivalry of
Sulla and Marius, the rise of the first triumvirate between Caesar, Pompey and
Crassus, the bloody civil war, Caesar’s rise to power as dictator and his assassination,
and ultimately the death of the Republic as has always been foretold and the
rise of one man to take control of the now Roman Empire, Octavian (later
Augustus).
ไม่มีความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น