Who was more evil, the Gauls/Celts, OR the Roman Empire during Julius Caesar's reign?

[Tailswipe]

As many as a million people (probably 1 in 5 of the Gauls) died, another million were enslaved, 300 tribes were subjugated and 800 cities were destroyed during the Gallic Wars.The entire population of the city of Avaricum (Bourges) (40,000 in all) were slaughtered.[9]

Killing and enslaving 2 million people to expand your empire is pretty damn evil.

[Deleted]

Im fairly sure that genocide also covers the complete distruction of cultural and social constructs, the Romans done exactly that and the lucky ones who didnt get murdered or tortured had to live on as slaves or exist under their culture.

I wouldnt try to embellish them either.

Genocide: the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular nation or ethnic group.

Though I know what your getting at, genocide isn't the word.

[Garnier Fructis]

[Tailswipe]

Genocide: the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular nation or ethnic group.

Though I know what your getting at, genocide isn't the word.

He deliberately killed 20% of Gauls population, you don't need to get them all to call it genocide.

[Deleted]

They did pretty much the same thing that the occidental to the native american (with rougly 1800 years of differences)

[want my Slimjim]

Thats great, i'm sure they'd oblidge.

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I don't see how anyone would want to be slave, sure you might be breathing but that doesn't mean you're living life.

You were stripped away with any dignity you had, You didn't get rights, you couldn't do what you wanted, you weren't allowed to go anywhere, you couldn't go learn stuff. you're treated as a sub-human and treated poorly, and you were tortured, beaten and whipped or raped by your slave master if you disobeyed, you didn't get much for food, water or shelter. Slave work was hard, and you didn't get payed for it. And you lived the rest of your life in a cage or in chains. it might have been the norm back then but that didn't mean people accepted it, lots of people choose death over slavery or ran away why do you think so many died or choose to die? But if you wanted to live that way then more power to you, but don't expect it to be cakewalk.

[Deleted]

I don't see how anyone would want to be slave, sure you might be breathing but that doesn't mean you're living life.

You were stripped away with any dignity you had, You didn't get rights, you couldn't do what you wanted, you weren't allowed to go anywhere, you couldn't go learn stuff. you're treated as a sub-human and treated poorly, and you were tortured, beaten and whipped or raped by your slave master if you disobeyed, you didn't get much for food, water or shelter. Slave work was hard, and you didn't get payed for it. And you lived the rest of your life in a cage or in chains. it might have been the norm back then but that didn't mean people accepted it, lots of people choose death over slavery or ran away why do you think so many died or choose to die? But if you wanted to live that way then more power to you, but don't expect it to be cakewalk.

I thought this thread was about Roman times. Slavery in the antique was much differend than in later colonial and imperial ages. Many slaves were more like house servants and craftsmen than what we today usually think when we think about slaves.

[Stir]

The Gauls certainly did stuff everybody else frowned upon, sure. But they didn't exactly do that to other peoples.
The Romans conquered them, and they certainly didn't do that for the benefit of the Gauls.

Given the situation (and my bias towards the (pre-Gothic era) Romans), I'd say the Romans were (far) worse at that time.

[Conspicuous Cultist]

Sure, the Romans were questionable but boy were their gods a hoot. Back in my day, we had Bacchanalias, wine, and gluttony aplenty.

Then Catholicism came in and ruined all of that. Booooo!

[Deleted]

Sure, the Romans were questionable but boy were their gods a hoot. Back in my day, we had Bacchanalias, wine, and gluttony aplenty.

Then Catholicism came in and ruined all of that. Booooo!

Luckily the renaissance popes resurrected the ancient traditions and started holding orgies again!

[Airwaves]

Fuck me. Julius Caesar never reigned over anything. He was a general and a politician. He NEVER become emperor. All he lead was the army and the Army went where the senate wanted them to go. People have some grandiose ideas that Julius Caesar was some great Roman leader when in fact he wasn't. All he did was play his cards right to get most the senate on his side so he could force his way into becoming Emperor. The ones that saw what he really was doing didn't like it and ended up stabbing him to death.

[Deleted]

Rome for sure, genocide the Gauls

Wait, what? what genocide?
Let me make a couple of points:

1.- The Romans didn't genocide the Gauls. The Romans defeated and conquered the Gauls. Why would they kill them off? Who was going to work on all the lands of Gaul, then? Rome conquered in order to make slaves out of the defeated soldiers (not the civilians) and to add more provinces that would pay them tribute, hence enriching the Republic's treasury. A depopulated province was of no use to them.

2.- For the same reason, you almost never will see genocides before the industrialization. Before the explosion engines, human strength was essential for any country, and they couldn't just give them up. Before vaccinations and intensive agriculture, you didn't have population explosions that would allow you to take over an abandoned land. Think how colonization processes worked before and after the contemporary era: before, you could send a few settlers if your population growth was slightly positive, although that would hurt you in the end, and then you'd have to wait a century or so before the colonial society could exist. That's how the Spanish, French and British did in America, for example. They had to work with the natives, and the fact that almost all native population had vanished from America due to European diseases was very hurtful for these empires. Otoh, the colonization of North America by the US, the British Raj, Eastern Russia... that was much faster, as those empires were producing strong population surpluses, and could afford to actually eradicate the native population in some of the colonized areas.

On topic: Romans and Celts had a fairly similar morality. The only difference is that Romans had experienced a more complex social evolution, going from the tribe to the city state and eventually to a continental-spanning republic. The Romans were more "civilized" than the Celts, but morally equivalent.

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Fuck me. Julius Caesar never reigned over anything. He was a general and a politician. He NEVER become emperor. All he lead was the army and the Army went where the senate wanted them to go. People have some grandiose ideas that Julius Caesar was some great Roman leader when in fact he wasn't. All he did was play his cards right to get most the senate on his side so he could force his way into becoming Emperor. The ones that saw what he really was doing didn't like it and ended up stabbing him to death.

Julius Caesar was dictator of the Republic. He launched a coup d'etat against the Senate, using the devotion of his soldiers and his popularity among the pleb. Of course he didn't dismantle the Senate immediately, that would have created a vacuum of power, but as dictator he could supersede it. JC wasn't emperor, but he was the supreme ruler of the republic for a few years, before the Senate conspiracy decided to commit suicide by assassinating him.

[Mormolyce]

I think it's kind of silly to characterise one side as evil. Both sides committed atrocities and the motives for both were mostly money.

Kind of like all of history right up until present.

because the gauls were known for their sacrificial rituals on people going to war with several other gaulish tribes prior to the conquest for gaul, and slaughtering the heads of their enemies and keeping their heads as trophies and invaded Rome first, but on the other hand the romans were also guilty by commiting genocide on the gauls afterwards during the Gaelic wars. I want peoples opinion on who were more evil really : /.

I wouldn't say genocide but Caesar treated them brutally to ensure there would be no further uprisings. He wanted a cooperative client state to make money for Rome, not armed rebels.

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Fuck me. Julius Caesar never reigned over anything. He was a general and a politician. He NEVER become emperor. All he lead was the army and the Army went where the senate wanted them to go. People have some grandiose ideas that Julius Caesar was some great Roman leader when in fact he wasn't. All he did was play his cards right to get most the senate on his side so he could force his way into becoming Emperor. The ones that saw what he really was doing didn't like it and ended up stabbing him to death.

He convinced his Legions to march on Rome, and also against Pompey and the optimates. He was immensely popular as the autocratic ruler of Rome and was given the title Dictator in Perpetuity, against tradition and law, as a sign of his power and popularity. The man was freaking deified after his death. And Romans didn't deify people before him.

He was absolutely a great, powerful leader and highly charismatic. He was not officially Emperor, and may not have even wanted such a title or institution. He didn't go out of his way to destroy the Republic, he did great damage to it out of what he thought was necessity. Even Augustus and I think some subsequent Emperors went out of their way to maintain the charade of the Republic long after the Imperial era had started.

[BEYR]

They were all brutal, warring cultures. Romans had the edge in technology and tactics. They were also the victors, so we know infinitely more about their culture than the others at the time. As for the gladiators, most were actually convicted criminals and, yes, captured soldiers. But most cultures were folded into the Roman empire and the armies were assimilated to their own. The reason the Gauls especially were basically slaughtered was because they didn't surrender and refused to fight for Rome. "Evil" is a pretty loaded word for the time as war was common between all cultures.

[Mormolyce]

I'd also like to point out that the Gauls were not one people, it's a broad term for a large region of Europe that at the time was inhabited by many tribes that had common ancestry but were independent and had their own political affiliations. Several Gaulish tribes actually fought alongside Caesar. He got a lot of his cavalry auxiliaries from them as well.

In fact the official casus belli for the War in Gaul was that Caesar was assisting a group of Gaulish tribes in the south who had been invaded by the Germans. Those tribes were official Friends and Allies of Rome and had been for generations, the south of Gaul had become quite Romanised in fact. Once the Germans were beaten back he turned his attention to the northern tribes, and it wasn't until Vercingetorix and others united them against the Romans that there was any kind of "Gaulish nationalism" involved. The allied tribes stayed loyal to Caesar I believe.

Sure, the Romans were questionable but boy were their gods a hoot. Back in my day, we had Bacchanalias, wine, and gluttony aplenty.

Then Catholicism came in and ruined all of that. Booooo!

Like most Classical Mediterranean societies their religions were also syncretic. If they conquered a nation that had a different religious system, they just added them to the pantheon or assimilated them via religious correspondences (eg, you have a war god? Aspect of Mars). The other thing Christianity ruined was that it made religion intolerant and absolutist.

In fact Christianity became a popular cult in Rome the same way lots of others did, like Mithraism, the cult of Sol Invictus, Magna Mater... the Romans were always happy to import more religions.

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I thought this thread was about Roman times. Slavery in the antique was much differend than in later colonial and imperial ages. Many slaves were more like house servants and craftsmen than what we today usually think when we think about slaves.

In the Republican era, educated Greeks would sell themselves into slavery and become tutors for wealthy Roman families. You served for a period and then got manumitted along with Roman citizenship (which was priceless).

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Their civilisation was impressive, however their way of sharing that was not. The downfall (and birth) of their Empire was most likely one of the reasons Europe struggled, im sure having your country decimated and then taken over, only for the invaders to bugger off again and leave you limping doesnt do wonders for your scientific progress.

Quite the opposite really, Rome itself may have decayed and died but its technological and social institutions remained massively influential to this very day, it's their greatest accomplishment. They may have been brutal in their conquests but the countries that came under Roman rule or had close contact with them took huge strides forward in all respects and became superpowers in the Middle Ages when the Empire was gone.

Even to the point where we had a whole Renaissance when a lot of lost classical works were rediscovered and it revitalised Western societies and drove us into the modern age. They revolutionised Western culture over a thousand years after their demise!

[Deleted]

In the Republican era, educated Greeks would sell themselves into slavery and become tutors for wealthy Roman families. You served for a period and then got manumitted along with Roman citizenship (which was priceless).

Of course, it was not the same thing to be an educated slave who would work as paedagogus or as personal scribe or accountant, as being a war prisoner sold into slavery, and even worse if the war prisoner was a young girl or a woman.

[mizeri]

well the vikings were all about pillaging and what not

[Mormolyce]

They did pretty much the same thing that the occidental to the native american (with rougly 1800 years of differences)

Not even remotely, Gaul went from a bunch of warring tribes with no national identity and antiquated infrastructure, military, legal, political and social institutions to one of the greatest powers in Europe in the course of Roman occupation. Rome built and civilised everywhere they conquered. I mean they weren't nice about it, in many respects they were brutal but that's what life was like at the time. In the long run France benefited immensely from Rome and wouldn't exist today in the same form had it not happened.

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Of course, it was not the same thing to be an educated slave who would work as paedagogus or as personal scribe or accountant, as being a war prisoner sold into slavery, and even worse if the war prisoner was a young girl or a woman.

You would not want to be a woman in any part of the Classical era really. Or any part of history until like 1800 at the earliest.

It's true there were classes of slavery in the Roman Republic though. They did have an equivalent of Atlantic slavery in ergastula, where rich Romans bought large tracts of land and lots of very cheap slaves (generally the weak, difficult or disobedient ones I think), chained them up at nights and worked them to death in the day. Most slaves had it a lot better than this, although slaves were abused by some masters of course. In fact by law the paterfamilias, male head of a Roman household, had absolute dominion over all wives, children and slaves and could beat or execute them if he wanted. Rarely invoked by the late Republic of course, and when it was it was scandalous.

TLDR: it was actually complex, most slavery in the Republican era was very civilised compared to Atlantic slavery but some abuses occurred.

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I see slavery to be pretty fucking evil. Theres no other heinous act I can consider more evil than slavery imo it's up there along with rape.

Every society in the classical era used slaves, in fact the Gauls took many of their own and they had far fewer rights than Roman slaves.

I think I once read that almost a quarter of the world was in slavery at one point in the classical era. I suspect that's not accurate though.

I'd choose to be dead. Even in that time.

That's what the Cimbri did. They were a migrating horde and the women and children watched the battlefield. When the Romans defeated them (which was a hell of a battle, the Romans were outnumbered something like 10:1) the women slit the throats of their children and then themselves, and the Cimbri ceased to exist as a people. They'd rather die than live as slaves.

[Deleted]

You would not want to be a woman in any part of the Classical era really. Or any part of history until like 1800 at the earliest.

I'm not so convinced. In many agrarian societies, or in the agrarian segment of a feudal society, women worked as much as men and doing the same jobs. Consequently, women could be highly regarded and be the mistress of the house in fact.
Of course, that mattered little when the noble person or some of his servants arrived at the house of the serf looking for "female flesh". That one thing they couldn't get rid of, even if among the serf peasants women enjoyed a good degree of equality (again, this was a regional/cultural thing*).

*To identify where this happened, the best hint is reading when authors of the XIV-XVI centuries qualify the women of a certain region as "loose" or "witches": when this agrarian sexual equality appeared, there was a lot of sexual freedom that came along with it... also, women that became socially important among the serfs or villains would be called witches by those who were not part of the peasant class.

[Prokne]

Neither one was more evil than the other. Caesar was just better at playing the Gauls against each other and the Gauls lost. They were always a pain to the Romans until that point.