Explanation: Early in the days of the Empire, the famous Roman general Germanicus took charge of a punitive campaign against the Germanic tribes for the loss of 3 Legions at the Teutoburg Forest by ambush a couple of years earlier. Germanicus was a swell, stand-up guy, real nice, real patient. With Romans.
With barbarians? Well, he was not nearly so kind. He spared the tribes allied to Rome (for obvious reasons), but any tribe which opposed Rome got an exceptionally brutal scorched earth campaign. Germanicus was not in Germania to get rich - he was there to get revenge, and boy, did it show. At the Battle of Idistaviso, when up against the mastermind of the Teutoburg ambush, Arminius, Germanicus exhorted his men to cut down every last hostile Germanic, as nothing less than the extermination of all the hostile tribes would buy Rome peace. Y I K E S. Past ain’t pretty. Not that the Germanics were any better, mind, but it’s gruesome either way it slices.
But we’re here to meme, so barbarians aren’t people and they got what they deserved!
Ah, it looks like I made a previous explanation. Ah, well.
Explanation: During the Battle of Idistaviso, “[f]rom nine in the morning to nightfall the [Germans] were slaughtered, and ten miles were covered with arms and dead bodies.” In addition, the Roman general, Germanicus, exhorted his legions by saying, in an unusually bloodthirsty statement, that the only resolution of the war would be by the total extermination of the rebellious German tribes.
While I joke and meme a lot about barbarians being ‘civilized’ to death, this is really quite an extraordinary moment of bloodlust. It shows, I think, just how far humans can go in dehumanizing their enemies, as Germanicus was noted for his mercy and generosity - towards his fellow Romans. In his dehumanization of the Germanic tribes, he felt comfortable calling for the deaths of the entire nation.
In the end, the point was moot, as Germanicus returned to Rome in triumph while the rebellious Germanic tribes retreated and dissolved into internal conflict, as they had before their short-lived alliance against the Roman Empire.
At least they’ve had the last laugh in the end. #gothsdidnothingwrong #fuckthevandalsthough
