From jbutrica@morgan.ucs.mun.ca Fri Apr 19 06:40:58 2002 Received: from mailscan1.cac.washington.edu (mailscan1.cac.washington.edu [140.142.32.16]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.01) with SMTP id g3JDesDN185584 for ; Fri, 19 Apr 2002 06:40:54 -0700 Received: FROM mxu1.u.washington.edu BY mailscan1.cac.washington.edu ; Fri Apr 19 06:40:53 2002 -0700 Received: from cerberus.ucs.mun.ca (cerberus.ucs.mun.ca [134.153.2.162]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.01) with ESMTP id g3JDerc6028498 for ; Fri, 19 Apr 2002 06:40:53 -0700 Received: from [134.153.128.98] (drusus.clas.mun.ca [134.153.128.98]) by cerberus.ucs.mun.ca (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id LAA25307 for ; Fri, 19 Apr 2002 11:10:50 -0230 (NDT) Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 11:10:50 -0230 (NDT) X-Sender: jbutrica@pop.morgan.ucs.mun.ca Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <462F323275D6D311BA0200805F356C5201F2F9D9@LGCADEV001.ad.lgc.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: classics@u.washington.edu From: James Butrica Subject: RE: Roman parallels (was Re: Filicide?) >1) I suspect that this attribution of purely personal emotions to an entire >state leads to incorrect thinking. At a minimum, it is a concept much >overplayed by the press today. (There is probably a better phrase than >"incorrect thinking".) Probably I should have been more precise in my phrasing; how about a perception of humiliation on the part of observers? Powell's mission began with fire and brimstone and what seemed to be a zeal to bring an even-handed cease-fire (one of the George Bush's currently serving as President even mentioned the need to withdraw illegal Israeli settlements), but in the end it only succeeded in getting one side to agree to do what it intended to do all along, and whenever it felt like doing it. When you threaten to throw your weight around like that and don't follow through, the result is to be seen as humiliated, or at least highly ineffectual or even biased (despite the initial rhetoric). All in all, the mission was a gigantic disappointment, largely thanks to the portentous build-up and the near-total lack of results. Surely there must be diplomatic parallels in antiquity? > >2) Did the Roman state ever "feel humiliated"? I suspect not. Many >individual Roman elites may have gotten mad or scared at the same time and >for the same reasons, and individual Roman envoys humiliated, but certainly >not the entire state. But what was the Roman state if not "the Senate and the Roman People"? Individuals abd groups, that is, who had varying stakes in events. At times like this, I wish that I had a stronger grasp of republican history and of late imperial history, both of which no doubt contain examples of individual delegates being humiliated in some way: but were there any diplomatic missions of a peace-keeping nature in which Rome attempted to influence the course of events in foreign states and was rejected as emphatically as Powell was? The *clades Variana*, which has been invoked, was certainly seen by Augustus as a personal humiliation ("Give me back *my* legions"), but perhaps public too in his role as pater patriae, princeps, etc. > >3) In the modern world, no matter what the press says, the United States is >not humiliated by anything happening in Palestine. Possibly Colin Powell >may be.... Assuming that he and others in the present administration >actually thought something would come out of his mission. All the fanfare, before and while Powell was taking about as long to get across the Mediterranean as it would have taken Titus, certainly suggested that something could come out of it. National humiliation or not, there is no question that Powell seems to have been shamefully used by several parties in his trip, perhaps even including one or two of those George Bush's in the White House. (NB My use of the plural in reference to Bush is not an allusion to his father but rather to the impression that, from time to time, different people have their arms in the sock-puppet.) > >Steven Zoraster James Lawrence Peter Butrica Department of Classics The Memorial University of Newfoundland St. John's, Newfoundland A1C 5S7 (709) 737-7914 .