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New user? Re: Beware the leader
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Posted
9/21/2002; 8:33 PM by Brian CarnellLast Modified
9/21/2002; 8:33 PM by Brian CarnellIn Response To
Beware the leader (#5705)Label
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At 04:54 PM 9/21/2002 -0400, Jim wrote:
>"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of
>war in order to whip the citizenry into a
>patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a
>double-edged sword." (continue
>(http://www.timtrautmann.com/weblog/archive.php?file=2002_09_15_archive.html))
That quote is very popular with a wide variety of people. Unfortunately it
is also almost certainly a fake.
1. It *never* appears reliably sourced. Usually, as in this quote, it's
just attributed to Julius Caesar, with where he is supposed to have said or
written this ommitted. Nobody, to my knowledge, has ever found a legitimate
place where this occurs in any of Julius Caesar's writings or speeches (it
is also occasionally falsely attributed to Shakespeare, but it doesn't
appear in any of Shakespeare's extant works either).
2. It encapsulates a view of the state which is very familiar to 20th
century Westerners, but would have been largely alien to Caesar (the very
idea of the state ". . .seizing the rights of the citizenry" is very much a
post-Enlightenment view of the nature of the relationship between
individual and state -- in the Roman world it was definitely the other way
around: the state was the supreme entity and any rights such as monopolies
or pillaging rights were granted at the pleasure of the state). Similarly,
it is difficult to imagine Julius Caesar talking about the dangers of
patriotism given that nationalistic patriotism is a *very* recent
phenomenon that emerged only over the past 200 or so years (Roman armies,
after all, were largely for-profit affairs which is what enabled Caesar to
conquer Rome in the first place -- they owed their allegiance to individual
generals who were their benefactors rather than any abstract state).
>"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of
>war in order to whip the citizenry into a
>patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a
>double-edged sword." (continue
>(http://www.timtrautmann.com/weblog/archive.php?file=2002_09_15_archive.html))
That quote is very popular with a wide variety of people. Unfortunately it
is also almost certainly a fake.
1. It *never* appears reliably sourced. Usually, as in this quote, it's
just attributed to Julius Caesar, with where he is supposed to have said or
written this ommitted. Nobody, to my knowledge, has ever found a legitimate
place where this occurs in any of Julius Caesar's writings or speeches (it
is also occasionally falsely attributed to Shakespeare, but it doesn't
appear in any of Shakespeare's extant works either).
2. It encapsulates a view of the state which is very familiar to 20th
century Westerners, but would have been largely alien to Caesar (the very
idea of the state ". . .seizing the rights of the citizenry" is very much a
post-Enlightenment view of the nature of the relationship between
individual and state -- in the Roman world it was definitely the other way
around: the state was the supreme entity and any rights such as monopolies
or pillaging rights were granted at the pleasure of the state). Similarly,
it is difficult to imagine Julius Caesar talking about the dangers of
patriotism given that nationalistic patriotism is a *very* recent
phenomenon that emerged only over the past 200 or so years (Roman armies,
after all, were largely for-profit affairs which is what enabled Caesar to
conquer Rome in the first place -- they owed their allegiance to individual
generals who were their benefactors rather than any abstract state).
Replies
| Re: Beware the leader ( 9/21/2002 by Tim Trautmann ) | |
| On Saturday, September 21, 2002, at 06:36 PM, Brian Carnell wrote: > That |
