Tacitean Studies - Twenty-first Century

Twenty-first Century

One of Tacitus' polemics against the evils of empire, from his Agricola (ch. 30), was often quoted during the United States invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, by those who found its warnings as applicable to the modern era as to the ancient (see for example The Guardian). It reads, in part:

Raptores orbis, postquam cuncta vastantibus defuere terrae, iam mare scrutantur: si locuples hostis est, avari, si pauper, ambitiosi, quos non Oriens, non Occidens satiaverit Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.

Brigands of the world, after the earth has failed their all-devastating hands, they probe even the sea; if their enemy be wealthy, they are greedy; if he be poor, they are ambitious; neither the East nor the West has glutted them They plunder, they slaughter, and they steal: this they falsely name Empire, and where they make a wasteland, they call it peace.

(Punctuation follows the Loeb Classical Library edition)