Roman helmet in cover photography for the book Pax Romana by historian Adrian Goldsworthy (fair use)

(1) PAX ROMANA – IMPERIAL PEACE

They make a desolation and they call it peace.

Imperial peace is arguably the defining characteristic of empires or imperialism – certainly as argued by the imperial power itself, usually as the benefit of its empire or hegemony to its imperial subjects, and not without some merit to the argument.

That merit is empires were often the only means for any political unity above the tribal level, or indeed for peace from inter-tribal or internecine warfare, hence imperial peace.

History does seem to corroborate the phenomenon of imperial peace, at least according to historians such as Azar Gat and Ian Morris, as the emergence of states and empires have created “large, internally pacified societies that then drive down the rate of violent death”.

The most famous imperial peace is the Pax Romana or Roman peace, the two centuries of relative peace and stability from Augustus onwards, hence sometimes referred to as the Pax Augusta, at least for his reign. The Romans themselves used the term during this period – “the first known record of the term Pax Romana appears in a writing by Seneca the Younger in AD 55″.

“The concept was highly influential, and the subject of theories and attempts to copy it in subsequent ages”, including being adapted to enough variants of imperial peace or pax imperia by other great powers or empires for their own top ten (and special mentions). Wikipedia has its own list of them as a list of periods of regional peace as well as other pax imperia or analogous imperial peace listed in its entry for Pax Romana. Some of these seem obscure or esoteric to me, but some at least have some common usage, albeit not as much as Pax Romana – with perhaps Pax Britannica and Pax Americana leading the list.

Of course – or on the other hand – some may scoff at the lack of peacefulness or outright brutality of imperial peace. After all, the Pax Romana famously included invasions such as that of Britain, revolts, and even wars such as the Roman Jewish Wars. As historian Walter Goffart wrote of the volume of the Cambridge Ancient History for the years 70 – 192 AD, its title may have been The Imperial Peace “but peace is not what one finds in its pages”.

However, the most famous quotation scoffing at the imperial peace of the Pax Romana is that I featured at the outset, albeit the word desolation is variously translated. That is by the historian Tacitus, who attributes it to the Caledonian chieftain Calgacus on the eve of battle with the Romans at the Battle of Mon Graupius in 83 or 84 AD.

The point of the quotation is to undermine the whole concept of imperial peace. After all, imperial peace or pacification comes at the point of a sword, not the stereotypical plea – can’t we all just get along? And while imperial peace may indeed be largely or relatively peaceful, empires don’t achieve or maintain it by being nice. They do it by crushing their opponents or rebellious subjects, often with great death and destruction – as the Romans themselves saw peace not as the absence of war but “when all opponents had been beaten down and lost the ability to resist”