“The history of the Romans is the greatest single reason for perpetuating wars. Their wars simply became the paragon of all success. For civilizations, they are the example of imperiums; for barbarians, the example of booty. But since all of us have both—civilization and barbarity—the earth may be destroyed by the heritage of the Romans.
What bad luck that the city of Rome survived when its empire was smashed! That the Pope kept it going! That vain emperors could capture her empty ruins and the name of Rome within them! Rome conquered Christianity by becoming Christendom. Every apostasy from Rome was merely a new great war. Every conversion to Rome, in the farthest corners of the world, was a continuance of the classical plunderings. America was discovered to reanimate slavery! Spain, as a Roman province, was the new lord of the world. Then the renewal of the Germanic plundering forays in the twentieth century. Only the measure gigantically magnified, the entire earth instead of the Mediterranean, and a hundred times as many people meeting with destruction, participating in it. Thus twenty Christian centuries were necessary to give the ancient and naked Roman idea a garment for its nakedness and a conscience for weak moments. And now that idea is here, perfect and equipped with all the forces of the soul. Who will destroy it? Is it indestructible? Has mankind, with thousandfold efforts, carefully conquered its own annihilation?” - Elias Canetti, ‘The Human Province’ (1978) [p. 28, 29]
