Humanitas Romana: a first appraisal

The two passages in Cicero on which Schadewaldt relies (above) can be supplemented by further evidence. Cicero raises two questions in De officiis: Is it a good man’s duty to let his slaves starve during a famine? And what of the man who has to jettison a cargo during a storm, and is torn between sacrificing a valuable horse and a worthless slave? Panaetius’ pupil, Hecaton, had held that duty was regulated by expediency (utilitas) rather than by humanitas (Off.

What of â€?the gigantic paradox’, Aemilianus’ brutal treatment of Carthage and Numantia? This depends on how much flexibility we think antiquity was prepared to allow humanitas. Greek thinking was creative: Demosthenes saw nothing wrong with the brutal treatment of enemies; and not even savagery against fellow-Greeks deterred Thucydides from praising Athens’ unilateral beneficence.⁶ Polybius, who stood at Aemilianus’ side as Carthage went up in flames, records both the anti- and the pro-Roman assessments circulating amongst the Greeks. He reports quite impartially, and only comes down on Rome’s side at the end, and even then on the rather austere technical ground that Carthage had surrendered to the fides of the Roman people, that is, at discretion.⁷ He finds the fate of Corinth (also in 146) much more distressing,⁸ but that was not the work of Aemilianus.⁹

Cicero relies entirely on the public interest, rei publicae utilitas, to justify these atrocities:

Our ancestors razed Carthage and Numantia to the ground. I wish they had not destroyed Corinth, but they had good reason, for its location might one day precipitate another war.

(Off. 1.35; Leg. agrar. 2.87)

Appian reflects the adverse view. He says that Aemilianus destroyed Carthage by decree of the senate because it was a great imperial power, but Numantia on his own initiative (Iberica 98). Diodorus declares that �After acquiring dominion over almost the whole world Rome confirmed her power by terrorism, in Corinth, against Perseus, and in Carthage and Numantia’ (Diod. 32.1-2, 4).

There is still more to be said about â€?the gigantic paradox’. For example, Aemilianus’ natural father, L.Aemilius Paullus,¹⁰ followed up his victory over Perseus in the Third Macedonian War (171-167) by destroying seventy cities in Epirus and selling 150,000 people into slavery.¹¹ But this did not silence the chorus of praise that celebrated his humanitas.⁴¹ (Was Polybius attacking Paullus indirectly—he could not do so to Aemilianus’ father directly—when he fulminated against Charops of Epirus?)

An important factor is supplied by Cato the Censor, the custodian of traditional Roman virtues. In the late 150s, as is well known, he ended major speeches in the senate with the words ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam (â€?Moreover I propose that Carthage be destroyed’).¹³ In the dialogue De senectute (dramatic date 150) Cicero has Cato call on Aemilianus to destroy Carthage in order to complete the work that his (adoptive) grandfather, Scipio Africanus, left unfinished (Senect. 18-19). Cicero clearly believed that the obligation had been impressed on the mind of Aemilianus by the most authoritative traditionalist in Republican history.