THE MOST EVIL MEN AND WOMEN

[Guest Faustus]

Oh yeah, didn't Nero have Agrippina beaten to death by the Praetorian guard? What a bad guy. And that was after she survived the first plot to kill her. He had an admiral take her out into the Bay of Naples in a collapsable boat. Can you believe that she actually swam back to shore?

Yeah Agrippina was one tough mother. According to Tacitus (although this is from memory), Nero ordered Burrus one of his Praetorian's to murder Agrippina after she escaped the collapsing boat. In the end Agrippina believes the murderer isn't from her son,but eventually she bears her womb demanding Burrus slay her there, where Nero was born. Burrus then went off to retire as a rich man on an Island and lived to old age.

But, Agrippina did engineer the murder of numerous people, including possibly Claudius and daughter-in-law. Although this could be in part attributed to the negative Roman historical tradition concerning women in certain roles.

The whole scene from the boat to the murder of Agrippina is very good in Tacitus, very cinematic.

...and as for Oasama Bin-Ladin on the list, well i'm sure eveyone has thier own list of the most evil men and women. Bin-Ladin's not on mine, but then again he didn't kill c. 2000 of my countrymen. If he enjoys the media attention so much, well he has to live with being so wanted. I believe he should be brought to Justice, but in accordence to international law. This is going to sound mega-cheesy, but one thing Millennium teaches is not to become that which you fear or hate.  

Faustus

[Guest Perennial]

Pretty difficult to 'really' carry out a comparison over large time scales. Those medieval and like types certainly were evil if you take a look at their actions and impact, but the world was a different place back then ... like people and cattle stuff, the value of human life has gotten more precious over time, lucky for us. I suppose I would be willing to call evil someone who is 'civilized' (whatever the criteria or word for this) but still perform acts you would classify to this category. This would rule out religious extremists and related morons, but state that everything premeditated is really evil .... just a thought.

[Guest Faustus]

Sorry mate, but do you honestly think the value of human life has gotten more precious? Perhaps if you were comming from a another background you might see things differently. How about living in Angola or the Congo? Or the West Bank? Or an Afghanistan refugee camp? Or any other numerous places on the earth? Just because some of us are living longer, doesn't mean life is worth any more.

And I don't get what you mean by "civilised" groups being evil. Are you saying that evil acts are primarily restricted to

"uncivilised" groups? And that religious extremist arin't "civilised"?

Faustus.

[Guest Wellington]

Hi

I agree with Perennial... In older times, life was not valued as it is now: it took long before labor time, medication access, freedom of thought, and other things like that became widely popular. Even now these notions are not accepted on the same level everywhere.

Making such a list is not quite significant. Maybe you can judge people by the number of their victims, but that does not stop there! As was written above, it all depends on which side of the gun you are standing. Ask such a list to be made by people in Far East, Africa, South America, arctic lands, and answers will be different. They may even be embarrassing for us, no doubt! Something important too: we are the ones who wrote History, so we did not need to bother with details that may depict the portrait less perfectly. Beside King-compliant reports of facts and figures, one will never say to his fellow countrymen that they are but a bunch of brutes. Well I think at least, I am not saying it is true like that. For those who read the War of the Gauls, by Caesar, did you never think of it as great breakthrough for civilisation of a part of the then-known world? It brought order to chaos, structures, furnitures, arts, philosophy, and so on, but suppressed forms of freedom. And we are living now on this very basis! Same thing about Napoleon: you can always find a justified reason to wage wars or occupy foreign territories, even, like Caesar, knowingly wrong some figures to enhance your own appeal. And Napoleon started Europe and made countries value their own sovereignty. Churches rivaled with Kings for power and murders were commited in the name of every god man believed in. Nevertheless, in the case of the catholic Church, it played its part for the wide spreading of knowledge, education and we are, for the most part, living by its principles (forgiveness, respect, etc...). Sometimes terrorists of the past become ruler of the present. Not everything is bad, but often the means are disgusting.

However, I do not tolerate any form of violence. I believe in self-determination at the condition that it occurs in an open-minded fashion. And I am no man to judge any misconception or lack of wisdom by anyone, powerful or commoner. I think that man grows up from every mistake and every fault. It is pretty naïve, but at least not really dangerous...  

[Guest Faustus]

I still have problems with the idea life was less valued in the past. I don't think you can say someone in the past didn't value life any more than people do now. The ideas that you mentioned-labour, medication, etc- have probably extended the life of people. "Modern life" (if we can call it that) has resulted in people living longer and being able to do more. But, as I pointed out earlier, this does not mean life is any more valued by people. Certain groups have access to medication. Some do not. Many don't even have enough food to live.

What seems to be the biggest idea is that your making a value judgement of the worth of peoples life in the past from a 20th century perspective. So your applying 20th century biases to it. We all do. I'm sure someone with a medievil, or Greek or Napolionic view point would have different opnion. Because we live in a "better", more consumer driven, society, doesn't mean life is valued any more.

WWII saw the greatest loss of life of any war in history, and that was only 50-60 years ago. Look at the Holocaust. Or what about a closer events. Massacres of Muslems in Serbia during the early ninties. I don't think survivors of September 11 would agree with you either about the value of human life.

And as for Ceasar. You seem to be forgetting Ceasar wrote the Gallic Wars as a report the the Roman senate to justify his extension of his Consular Imperium beyond it's normal life span. Since it was Ceasar, of course he is going to depict it as a victory for Roman imperialism. Of course he is going to cast the Gauls as chaoitc and wild. They probably were, but the whole work is from a distictly Roman viewpoint. Dispite this, the point you seem to be making is that the west is in a similar situation. I'm not sure if this is what you meant. If your proposing that historical mindsets help form our modern one, I would certainly agree. If you could clarfy for me, that would be cool.

But thanks guys for sparking the debate on the issue.

Cheers,

Faustus   .

[The Old Man]

Hi all,

I'd have to agree that life was less valued in the past...

It wasn't long ago that we were into slavery...

Now it's being ruled out across the globe although of course not everywhere.  

It has only been in the last 50 years that racial equality has improved....

Still I bet if there was a U.N. when Vlad the Impaler was around I think they would have stomped on him...

Gra.

[Guest Perennial]

Claiming that life would have any more value nowadays is naturally not the point nor true, that would be really absurd. What I am saying, on the other hand, is that strong reactions to monstrosities like the September 11th are proofs that at least people feel stronger about issues that fundamentally matter. We at least think that people have some core values that exceed all the pettiness of today's world when hardships arrive...20-21th century egocentric & biased thinking for sure... I'd also say that it is to great extent a matter of perspective, i.e. at what level you're thinking this about. If you're thinking about it from a single persons point of view or from the view of the governing body (or some group of people). A person might not see much change in this 'value' over different historical periods of time (gets the boot in any case, ways differ + feels strongly at least about anyone close enough), but I think that the governing does ... that is probably how I at least though about this in the first place. That over time one would have a larger probability of finding 'civilized' masses that would be smarter (at least on a small enough scale) by placing people first and rest second.

So if people would have had complete news coverage during the imperiums of the past would it have been any different... would they have felt as disgusted as people do right now when they see something similar and revolted, or kept on going about their businesses...

Sparky in any case !

[Guest Wellington]

Hi Faustus

In fact, I did not intend to compare our way of living with the long past manners of some people. However, this could be interesting discussing...

My point was that the examples of Caesar and Napoleon (two amongst many, of course) decided to rule other people mainly against their will, by forcing their way of living into them. Romans' barbars had no use of a social structure, of urbanism, etc... but indeed we have built our times and habits upon this. The way our governing bodies have been created refers directly to the old Roman and Greek Republics. For those matters, we invented very little, but our ancestors died not to be cannibalised by those rules. The fact is now we find them very convenient.

Here your point of me looking at things from a 20th century side is correct. As the Old Man said, this century saw a boom in social matters (syndicalism, racial equity, etc...). My way of reasoning is: if we think today that something is good, then there is no reason for it not to have been good yesterday. Of course evolution takes time, and I do not expect our 2 thousand year old ancestors to embrace our social system at all. Nevertheless, they may have been killed trying to resist the invaders, still we cannot say that these invasions were evil driven, for we fully benefit from them. Of course, the mere fact of people dying for that is a true pity, essentialy because some of them saw progress for their people (I do not think it was all about capitulation). About the value of life, it is the same for farmers working all their life to be able to pay the grain and salt taxes to their lords. I do not think that now one could find normal making people die at work or being canon fodder on their spare time, and not only because of laws. One can simply not imagine that any more. Those who can are quickly and publicly exposed (of course, commercial matters of today are an efficient way of blinding people, but that is another matter, each period of History has its downside). But if it was not seen as a bad thing in the past, then I think that life did not have the same value for some.

I hope it is better expressed. I do not wish any misinterpretation!  

Regards

[Guest Faustus]

Nah guys, it's cool. Thanks for your responses.

Perennial: September 11 is inherently a controversial issue. And while it is certainly a valid point, there are heaps of other events which go by without the same response. If where lucky we get a 60 second sound bite on the news. I also agree with you in saying that some governing bodies might have increased thier value of their citizens, but many other governing bodies do not. It's all pretty relative I guess.

Wellington: Cheers for clarifying that. I agree with your point about Ceasar and Napolean to a degree. With the point about something being good today being good yesterday, i'm not quite so sure. Sometimes we think something is good when it isn't, and sometimes we know it isn't good but still do it anyway. If something  is good today, doesn't mean it will be good tomorrow.

I don't know if these historical invasions were evil or not. And we have benefitied from them to a great degree. But I don't think the Romans (for example) were on any great civilising mission. They weren't nice guys. It was classic Roman Imperialistc expansion. The Roman developed things like urbanisation, etc, as a result of this and to keep them pacified. Make them like Romans.

I do not think that now one could find normal making people die at work or being canon fodder on their spare time, and not only because of laws. One can simply not imagine that any more.

Mayby i'm just too cynical for my own good, but this happens in the word, ever day, as we read this. It depends were in the world you are. I don't want to bring everybody down, but I don't think we can fool ourselves into thinking we live in a perfect world.

Ahh well.

Merry Christmas.

Faustus.

[Guest]

...........my downbeat opinion is that we are about as far from being in a perfect world as we can get. and you are right about other atrocities in the world not getting coverage that are infinately more catastophic than 9/11. but i do not think that should minimize that tragedy at all-(and i'm not implying you feel that way). for our country this was the worst case of domestic terrorism ever on american soil. and it shook me and scarred me badly. still does. much as i love my country-(though certainly not the present leaders of it)-we tend to have this very bad habit of sticking our heads in the sand when "things are good" when it comes to world events. it seems we are more than happy to try an tell other countries the "right" way to live but anything beyond that..............where are we???      i'm NOT trying to imply that mine is an uncaring country but it certainly has had a strange set of priorities as regards foriegn matters since the korean war,in my view.          ~just a few thoughts.

                           ~DAVE