The Roman Empire was founded in 31 BC and lasted until 476 AD. At their peak, Rome ruled most of the Mediterranean region, most of Europe, and parts of the Middle East and North Africa.
Watching slaughtering events was the main (and ticketed) form of entertainment in the Empire. In 66 AD, Nero had Ethiopian women, men and children fight to the death just to impress the visiting King of Armenia. A woman named “Mevia” hunted boar in the arena “with spear in hand and breasts exposed”. In 108 AD, Rome celebrated the Dacian victories by killing 10,000 gladiators and 11,000 animals over 123 days. A gladiator reluctant to confront his opponent was goaded with hot irons until he engaged through sheer desperation. Women and children watched the slaughter from the nosebleed seats above to keep themselves safe.
In the city of Rome, the games were held in the Coliseum, a 12-story-high stadium which held 50,000 spectators. They were accompanied by music played as interludes, or to build a frenzied crescendo during combats with blows embellished by trumpet-blasts. Trapdoors would open with a flourish, as lions, bears, wild boar and leopards rushed into the arena. These starved animals would bound towards the terrified humans, who would leap away from the beasts’ snapping jaws only to end up tangled in a seething mass of claws, teeth, fur, flesh and blood. The crowd would laugh, clap, yell, and place bets on which person would die first, which one would last the longest, and which one would ultimately be chosen by the largest lion, who was still prowling the outskirts of the arena’s white sand.
Death by animals was a part of everyday life for the Romans—literally. Every morning, a Roman citizen could go to the arena to watch these executions take place followed by gladiatorial combats in the afternoon. In 167 BC Aemilius Paullus ordered a group of army deserters to be crushed to death by a horde of elephants. Caesar was the first to arrange fights to the death between captured armies, for the viewing pleasure of Romans.
Besides the “bestiari” games, Romans could also enjoy “venatores” like Carpophorus, who once killed 20 wild beasts in a single day, strangling them to death. He also trained multiple animals, including giraffes, to rape women. To accomplish this, Carpophorus would wait for female animals to be in heat so he could collect samples from them to arouse the male of the species. He would then rub these samples against women he’d tempted to come to the arena.
At its greatest extent, 400 arenas existed throughout the Roman Empire. Open spaces such as the Forum Romanum were adapted to become venues of butchery. “It was their custom to enliven their banquets with bloodshed and to combine with their feasting the horrid sight of armed men fighting; often the combatants fell dead above the very cups of the revelers, and the tables were stained with streams of blood.” —Campanians.
Violence was a norm: The punishment for murdering a fellow Roman Citizen was a fine. And, if a Roman Citizen killed a slave or person of lesser status there would be no punishment at all. Two thousand years ago, human life had little to no value.
Has this changed? 180 degrees. The right to life has become the highest human right, embedded in every domestic and international law. The International Convention on Civil and Political Rights ratified by 173 countries, states: “Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.”
“Murder became a crime that is clearly understood and well defined in the national law of every State” –International Law Commission.
What was fun, sport and entertainment 20 centuries ago is classified today as murder, rape and capital crime. A 95% decrease in homicide rates over the past 700 years is a direct result of our drastically-changed perception of the value of human life. Mankind has evolved immensely…
…and continues to evolve. Slavery have been abolished to a large extent as a result of growing opposition to the unequal and inhuman predicament of slaves in society, which contradicted the new values of humanity.
Some 200 Germans were tried at Nuremberg trials, and 1,600 others were tried in other channels of military justice. Twelve of the most important political and military leaders of the Third Reich were sentenced to death. Their bodies were incinerated in a crematorium in Munich, and the ashes scattered over the river Isar. For the first time in the history of mankind, government-supported wrongdoings were assessed to be criminal. Indeed, the world has changed.
The Nuremberg trial was far from being an isolated event. Similar trials all over the world ensued:
- Auschwitz trial
- Belsen trial
- Belzec trial before the 1st Munich District Court of eight SS men of the Belzec extermination camp
- Chełmno trials of the Chełmno extermination camp personnel, held in Poland and in Germany.
- Frankfurt Auschwitz trials
- Majdanek trials, the longest Nazi war crimes trial in history, spanning over 30 years
- Mauthausen-Gusen camp trials
- Hamburg Ravensbrück trials
- Sobibór trial against the SS men of the Sobibor extermination camp
- Treblinka trials in Düsseldorf, Germany
- Auschwitz Trial held in Krakow, Poland against 40 SS-staff of the Auschwitz concentration camp
- Dachau Trials, held within the walls of the former Dachau concentration camp
- Majdanek Trials, the longest Nazi war crimes trial in history, spanning over 30 years
- Mauthausen-Gusen camp trials
- Ravensbrück Trial
- The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (Tokyo Trial) tried military and pollitical leaders of the Empire of Japan for crimes against peace, against humanity, and war crimes. 6 defendants were sentenced to death and 16 to life imprisonment.
- 5,700 lower-ranking Japanese personnel were charged in trials convened by Australia, China, France, Netherland, the Philippines, United Kingdom, and the United States. 984 individuals were sentenced to death, 475 received life sentences, and 2,944 were given prison terms.
- The Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal tried Japanese Imperial Army officers guilty of death of 300,000 in Nanking massacre, China. All officers were found guilty and were executed by a firing squad.
Violence vs. Non-violence
The ancient ‘might makes right’ principle of morality encouraged violent conquests between persons and societies. For thousands of years, violence was a legal act of extinguishing the rights of the other persons or states without their consent. No more!
In 1928, 63 state signatories of Kellogg–Briand Pact “solemnly declared in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another.”
In 1946, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg proclaimed: “War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.“
Armed violence has become a supreme offence. ‘Mighty’ governments can no longer ‘make it right’. The world has changed fundamentally. And the list of ‘prohibited activities’ continuous to expand:
In The Republic of Nicaragua v. The United States of America (1986) the International Court of Justice held that the U.S. had violated international law by supporting the Contras and by mining Nicaragua’s harbors. The court ordered the United States of America to immediately cease all such acts, and awarded reparations to Nicaragua. ‘Support for armed bands’ became an internationally-recognized form of aggression regardless of ‘invitation’.
Between 1993-2017, Slobodan Milošević and 160 others were charges by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Milošević became the first sitting head of state to be charged with war crimes. He died in a prison cell.
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (1994) convicted 61 government officials of slaughtering 800,000 people during the Rwandan genocide.
In 2012, the International Criminal Court unanimously ruled that Charles Taylor, ex-president of Liberia, was guilty of “aiding and abetting” war crimes and crimes against humanity, making him the first head of state to be convicted by an international tribunal since the Nuremberg Trials. Taylor was sentenced to 50 years in prison.
Those who still practice the ancient principle of morality are a dying breed. The German government acknowledged that by agreeing to compensate the survivors of the Holocaust and those who were made to work as forced labor or who otherwise became victims of the Nazis. The sum amounted to over 100 billion Deutsche Marks. As of the mid-1980s, over four million claims had been filed and paid.
Non-violence as a new norm of human coexistence reverberated across the globe, catalyzed the human rights revolution, and enabled the use of economic sanctions as a tool for law enforcement. The consequences were impressive: From 1816 through 1928, there was on average one military conquest every ten months. After 1945, the number of such conflicts declined to one in every four years. The world had, indeed, fundamentally changed.
Personal violence is now a crime in the domestic law of every country. The same cannot be said about state violence, which is a crime under international law only. The case of Violence vs. Nonviolence is not yet closed, but the nature of the upcoming verdict is clear: Nonviolence has won, creating a foundation for a society principled on permanent and irreversible peace.
The process of building such society is well underway, with new substructures being continuously added to support its founding principles: Permanent and irreversible peace.
- Antarctic Treaty (1961)
- Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water (1963)
- Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (1967)
- Treaty of Tlatelolco (1969)
- Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (1970)
- Treaty on the Prohibition of the Emplacement of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction on the Sea-Bed and the Ocean Floor and in the Subsoil Thereof (1972)
- Biological Weapons Convention (1975)
- Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques (1978)
- Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects (1983)
- Treaty of Rarotonga (1986)
- Southeast Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty (1995)
- Chemical Weapons Convention (1997)
- Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons (1998)
- Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction (1999)
- Treaty on Open Skies (2002)
- The Protocol against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, their Parts and Components and Ammunition (2005)
- Central Asian Nuclear-Free Zone Treaty (2009)
- African Nuclear Weapon Free Zone Treaty of Pelindaba (2009)
- Convention on Cluster Munitions (2010)
- Arms Trade Treaty (2014)
- Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (Not in effect yet)
The human race has decisively changed its direction. There is no more doubt in humanity’s collective mind which way to go. The development, production, and use of all devices of armed violence will be abolished the same way as were abolished anti-personnel mines, chemical, and biological weapons.
This trend was manifested on December 8, 2017, when 2.3 billion Christians around the world changed their stance towards the policies of “nuclear deterrence” and “balance of power,” as the Vatican moved the official Church position away from “just war” to the position of “just peace”, endorsing the abolition of nuclear weapons. Today, Christians believe that the “just war” theory is a big obstacle to the creative thinking moving the world beyond perpetual violence and war.
Human affairs are not forever destined to be determined by force; they can be affected by reason and choice. A key goal is to outlaw all war and armed violence, not to legitimize it by supporting the “just war” theory.
