Peace (10 page)

Socrates' philosophy of peace cannot be discussed separately from that of his student, Plato. Only after meeting him did Plato embark on his own quest, the crowning achievements of which are his Dialogues, the Academy he founded and his prodigy, Aristotle. Plato's ostensibly open
Dialogues
are never open-ended. Instead, Socrates, usually their main character, skillfully steers the conversation. In
The Republic
, for example, discussion springs from Socrates' deceptively simple question: What is
dike
, the source of concord and a determinant of polis peace since mythological times? One of the “discoveries” made through the Socratic Method is that war is “derived from causes which are also the causes of almost all evils in states, private as well as public.”
³⁹
Thus, in
The Laws
: “every one of us should live the life of peace as long and as well as he can” and “cities are like individuals in this, for a city, if good, has a life of peace, but if evil, a life of war within and without.”
⁴⁰
But what are good and evil in this context? While this question has been debated ever since Plato, for our purposes they correspond to pursuing perfect and eternal Ideas, adopting them as ideals and implementing them, or not.
The Republic'
s famous Allegory of the Cave, in which Plato illustrates this idealism, begins with people who live confined inside one, forced to stare at its back wall from birth. A fire behind the captives casts shadows of moving statues shaped like worldly objects onto the wall, figurative of sensory perceptions that always fall short of the Ideas they represent. One breaks free, uncovers the ruse but is blinded as he makes his way past the firelight into sunlight, symbolic of rational inquiry, the pursuit of Ideas. Outside, he eventually regains sight and sees the actual world, representing Ideas. Whether he re-enters the cave to “enlighten” his people and if he does whether they embrace, ridicule or reject him are the Allegory's closing questions, leaving the problem of implementation unresolved.

Peace fits within the Allegory's conceptual framework in three metaphoric places. As a shadow, peace is not an Idea but an image, “in fact only a name.”
⁴¹
The consequential paradox of Plato's contribution to the philosophy and practice of peace lies in the light. As the firelight, peace is pursuable by our bodies and an implementable ideal, but is not an Idea. As the sunlight, peace is an Idea pursuable by rational inquiry, but cannot be implemented otherwise. Plato's Cave thus construes the conditions, experience and ideals of peace inside and outside as mutually exclusive and hierarchical. Humans can adapt to and adopt both, but pursuing or
implementing peace inside will
a priori
always fall short of doing so outside. In other words, the Idea of peace is accessible by our minds, but un-implementable with our bodies; all we can do is try. Rather than resolve this paradox, the socio-political model Socrates goes on to construct builds upon it. Placed at the apex of Plato's ideal state is a class of philosopher-kings who, though vested with near-absolute power, are enlightened and so rule with prudent reason. Fortitude and vigor are the defining traits of the guardian class that takes and executes philosopher-kings' orders. The laboring class under their combined control, farmers and craftsmen who provide for themselves and their rulers, is characterized as tempered by their work despite being temperamentally inclined. Plato, through Socrates, contends that in this state, the Ideas of
dike
and peace come closest to being enacted by the complementary qualities each of the three classes embodies in fulfilling their prescribed roles. The possibilities and limits of peace Plato congealed have shaped the history of peace and peacemaking in the West and, through the West's influence, the world. But there can be no doubt that without Rome's espousal of Ancient Greek culture, Plato would not have had the same influence on pacific thought and practices as he did.

One Empire, One Peace: The Rise of Rome to the Pax Romana's Decline

Although peace and peacemaking took very on different forms and functions during the twelve centuries Rome emerged from obscurity to conquer the Mediterranean region, when they did at all, peacemakers almost always played second fiddle to warmongers. Yet, Romans left such an indelible mark on the history of peace that they cannot be ignored. The inseparability of war and Roman culture made peace and peacemaking into what Gerardo Zampaglione calls an “ideological imperative” in
The Idea of Peace in Antiquity
(1955), overshadowing them as bio-genetic and cultural imperatives but unable to replace them as such.
⁴²
The Roman history of peace is, in the end, more of forms than substance, in which lies its significance. The chronicles pertaining to the origin of Rome are less valuable as accurate records than they are as insights about what later Romans believed or wanted to believe about themselves and their past. Nevertheless, what we know of the violent early history of Rome is for this very reason both self-revelatory and prophetic, if a study in un-peacefulness overall.

The high esteem Romans came to hold for the Greeks who came before them is evident in that the twins Romulus and Remus, legendary descendants of the Trojan War hero Aeneas, are said to have founded their city
(
c
. 753 BCE). Archaeologically, Rome seems to have resulted from a vicious struggle for supremacy over the northern Tiber River region between three tribes: Latins, Etruscans and Sabines. They were apparently influenced by Sparta's Sicilian colonies, visible in their aggression towards one another as recorded in their remains as well as stories. Romulus killed Remus over who would be the namesake of what was to become Rome and went on to grant asylum to the region's brigands and outcasts, all warlike men like him. So while the first Romans soon partially pacified the Etruscans, at one time more powerful, they also suffered a shortage of brides. The episode that ensued, called the Rape of the Sabines, brought about the first known instance of Roman peacemaking, uncharacteristic as it was. The Romans invited the rival Sabines to celebrate a festival, which they accepted in good faith. However, once their guests were inside their walls, the hosts abducted the visiting women and made them unwilling wives. The Sabines took months to prepare for war against the Romans. Just as the two armies were about to annihilate each other, the abducted women and by-now mothers rushed between them to plead for peace. They declared that death was preferable to losing both their fathers and the fathers of their children to one war. This Peace of the Sabines, often overlooked in favor of the more graphic Rape, brought about not only the immediate end of hostilities, but also lasting concord between the Sabines and the Romans. Thus, conceived and gestated in violence, Rome was born in peace. Unnecessary loss of family members remains one of the most widely used anti-war pleas for peace to this day.

The first decades of the Roman Republic (
c
. fifth–first centuries BCE) set the tone for war- and peacemaking for the rest of its existence. The final local war of significance between Rome and its tribal rivals was the Battle of Lake Regillius (
c
. 496 BCE). This battle's concluding peace terms, which formed the Latin League, marks the start of Rome's regional consolidation and inter-regional conquests. The League was similar to Spartan predecessors in most respects, and like them was discarded when convenience outweighed necessity:

Let there be peace among the Romans and all the Latin cities as long as the heavens and the earth shall remain where they are. Let them neither make war upon one another themselves, nor bring in foreign enemies nor grant a safe passage to those who shall make war upon either. Let them assist one another when warred upon . . . and let each have an equal share of the spoils and booty taken in their common wars.
⁴³

Here emerges the antipathetic Roman practice of using war to prepare for peace, and peace to prepare for war. Employing this method as well as divide-and-conquer, Rome subjected the last independent peoples of Italy and those of Gaul and Hispania, roughly modern France and Spain,
making limited partners of the conquered where this could be done and annihilating them when not. These principles are the basis of the historian Tacitus' (
c
. 56 -117) statement, centuries later, that Roman leaders “create desolation and they call it
pax
(peace).”
⁴⁴

Etymologically, the Latin word
pax
is linked with
pacisci
, to conclude a pact. But whereas for Greeks pact-making at least aspired towards isonomic convergences of free people, for Romans it was from the start either synonymous with the unconditional surrender of the defeated to their will or a means to this end. Conquered lands and peoples were “Romanized” by victorious governors, soldiers and settlers to which they were granted as plunder. At best, Romanization meant “assimilation to Roman customs and habits and promotion of an identification with Roman interests,” and at worse the militarily manageable animosity of the enslaved. Either way, it was Romanization that gave Europeans of the future, both as individual nations and as a whole, their identities and interests. The flipside of Rome and the Latin League's foreign policies is made clear in the case of Pyrrhus (
c
. 318–272), the last Greek general to seek control over southern Italy. After defeating the Romans several times, his peace proposals were rejected. Following another series of battles, he is said to have exclaimed: “Another such victory and I shall be lost!” hence the expression Pyrrhic victory, by which the vanquished (in this case, the Romans) reverse their losses by dictating peace terms. Pyrrhus' capitulation led directly to Latin League control over Greece and so brought the Romans to the attention of the Eastern Mediterranean powers from Persia to Egypt and vice versa.

A powerful city in northern Africa, Carthage, tried to replace Greeks in Italy as their control waned. Rome, always recovering from or preparing for local wars, signed trade and cooperation treaties with Carthage, stalling a regional war it could not yet win. These strategic peace tactics outlived their usefulness when Pyrrhus fell, and Rome took Carthage head on. Janus' temple doors were closed at the end of the First Punic War (264–241) between them, for a few days. By the third and last Punic War (149–146), Carthage was ruined. Ending its League, a nearly ruined Rome now ruled the Western Mediterranean. “At one time bringing their wars to rapid conclusion by invasion and actual defeat, at another wearing out an enemy by protracted hostilities, and again by concluding peace on advantageous terms, the Romans continually grew richer and more powerful,” praised Machiavelli centuries later.
⁴⁵

The Roman Republic, despite its many shortcomings, is the second longest-lasting form of government in world history. Understanding the dynamics of domestic peace during this era requires reviewing republican socio-political structures because they were often the causes of recurring class struggles and civil wars, as well as used in their resolutions. Pax thus
evolved from being an asymmetrical pact-making process to a social condition devoid of violence. With this redefinition of peace came a re-characterization of war. The Rex or king, like Romus, had been granted lifelong
imperium
: absolute authority over and immunity from his actions or inactions as chief legislator, executive and adjudicator. These powers were at first divided between two elected Consuls in the Republic for one-year terms and
imperium
lasted only while they held office. Consular duties were later subdivided into judicial posts (Praetors), legislative assemblies and an extensive network of administrators for tax collection and other tasks, with the Consuls acting as appointers and overseers. The primary assembly, the Senate, was a patrician body that controlled state finances, passed laws and elected officials among its ranks. Finally, the Pontifex Maximus was high priest of Rome, conducting as augur the auspices required for nearly every undertaking, especially war-and peacemaking. Consuls levied the military's legendary legions and conducted their campaigns, a mandate they came to share with provincial Governors. By these martial powers and the revenues they raised, Governors later became threats to the central government. The legions were initially not a standing army, but one composed of landed citizens called on seasonally by Consuls to carry out foreign expeditions or as necessary for defense. Only after the Consul Gaius Marius' reforms of 107 BCE did the legions become permanent conscripted bodies of landless citizens and slaves, somewhat separating military and civilian life, making the Pax Romana possible. In emergencies or in gratitude for services rendered, the Senate could elect a Dictator who could wield all the powers just described for a strictly limited six-month term, at least by the letter.

The basis of early Republican law, the famed Twelve Tables (
c
. 450 BCE), do provide specifically for the pacific settlement of disputes:

When the litigants settle their case by compromise, let the magistrate announce it. If they do not compromise, let each state their own side of the case. . . before noon. Afterwards let them talk it out together, while both are present. After noon, in case either party has failed to appear, let the magistrate pronounce judgment in favor of the one who is present. If both are present the trial may last until sunset but no later.
⁴⁶

However, the legal tradition the Twelve Tables represent and the early Republic's socio-political structures distinguish between patricians and plebs, openly discriminating against the latter. As the number and wealth of plebs grew, so did their contribution to the state. Their dissatisfaction became the first of two major threats to domestic peace. Within twenty years of the Republic's founding, the plebs led the first known successful campaign of non-cooperation against the patricians, refusing to work for or pay them taxes. A compromise was reached when a Plebeian Council
was formed, led by two elected Tribunes who could overturn patrician magistrates' discriminatory pronouncements. But this Council's legislation was binding only on the plebs. A quarter-century later, the plebeian cause was furthered by a similar campaign, after which ten Tribunes with wider powers were elected. Only after a third campaign (
c
. 287 BCE), this time more violent, did the Council's decrees (
plebiscites
) become binding on all the people of the Republic, including patricians and non-citizen residents. In these ways, the Republic's socio-political structures were modified over time to mitigate civil wars.