Funny how these articles seldom mentioned the war crimes of the sympathetic side. Like how these rebellions started by killing all Romans in the province, after raping the women and children first of course.

Well, you see, for my side it’s Different…

More seriously, are we going to have a put disclaimers on an all encyclopedic articles that “standards of conduct were much different then”? How much pretext then becomes necessary?

Considering that encyclopedias are meant to be pedagogical in nature since they were invented during the Illustration, yes, that would be helpful; if a teenager would come off with the wrong impression from reading an encyclopedia, it doesn't serve the function of one.

Material for people who are knowledgeable in the area are specialized books that can assume more background knowledge or journal articles meant for people keeping up with the state of the art.

There should be a separation between historicism and ethics and factual data. If you want to blame the school curriculum because they dont teach ethics or morals, im fine with that but moralizing what should be a factual recount of some events is another thing. This is like me opening a chemistry book and reading, the formulation and process of synthesizing cyanide, despite its multiple uses in crime and assasinations by the soviet union, is .....

Those rebellions in those provinces start after Romans export half of the population as slaves and send the rest to work in the local mines. There's the catch.

Actually, its worse - even if you were a saintly society neighboring Rome or within the reach of Rome, Rome would invent a 'reason' to invade you if you had something they wanted or they lacked enough slaves. Like how the Syracuse invasion was done on literally manufactured consent by disguised legionnaires committing acts of atrocities against the Romans. All the wars of Rome from Early Republic and on were done on such manufactured consent and false flags.

At the end of the Republic period, everything changes - they stop needing to manufacture 'reasons' for invasions. By this time, the empire is already nascent as a social and political format and the slave-reliant economy is already dominant so there is no need to manufacture consent for the need for acquiring slaves.

Only half? That's so civilised. Inter tribal wars ended with all the men dead or in slavery, all the old women murdered and all the young women taken in as sex slaves. Same for the children too.

> Only half? That's so civilised. Inter tribal wars ended with all the men dead or in slavery

Well yes, that's true. But one could consider the central Italian unification wars as even nastier affairs. However yes, its not like Romans were not as brutal in other periods as they were in social wars...

Given that today we expect war crimes not to occur, how will people know that they did or didn't occur in Antiquity if not told explicitly so?

The bigger problem is being so unspecific about the atrocities committed.

It’s something along the lines of accusing the Romans of violating the Geneva Conventions. Out of time. Reporting what kinds of things likely happened is not just advisable but necessary. Applying modern terms and standards by just saying “atrocity” doesn’t fit. Also the historical context that everyone did it is important.

> Given that today we expect war crimes not to occur,

To what gauge? What was the last warcrimes-free war to occur?

Hell name any war without war crimes.

> we expect war crimes not to occur

I think that’s a bad assumption.

As these events occurred more than a millennia prior to the Geneva conventions which defined war crimes, I would strongly argue that these acts did not constitute war crimes at the time and that comment is simply misplaced.

War crimes were defined before the Geneva conventions, specifically the Hague Conventions 50 years earlier.

Fair enough. Still not terribly relevant in the context of the Roman Empire.

Definitely not :)

> I see this in a lot of historical Wikipedia articles now. I'm not sure what to think of it. It feels like a modern tag added to articles that feels somewhat out of place. > My understanding that at the time, and most of history war, what we think of as war crimes were a standard practice of war.

Nah. They werent - Romans were famous for being particularly brutal even in their time. Which was one of the reasons for their easier conquest against weaker targets. Much better to become a Roman province or client state than get yourself conquered a few years later, half of your population enslaved and exported and the other half sent to work in the local mines.

Solely what Julius Caesar did in Gaul would give shivers to even his contemporaries. That's why he so slyly wrote the history of his own Gallic conquest himself - to shape the narrative.

There were other societies in history that employed brutal 'conqueror's rights' formats, like Assyrians, and after Assyrians this became kind of standard practice in Near East. But even Assyrians were not as brutal as Romans, who even discarded their unwanted babies into a trash pile outside their cities.

> It seems strange to me to tag the end of an article about a large scale war and saying "hey this one group committed war crimes" and just leave it at that if you're not talking about specific events.

For any other society or period, you might need to do that. But the atrocious behavior in Roman practices was so widespread that there would be no end to it if you started detailing the acts individually. Granted, what you described is something that is obvious to students of history, but its not so obvious to the general public.

As others mentioned here, the contemporaneous audience may be unaware of that era's lack of many conventions which are more or less assumed nowadays, including for conflicts/wars, so mentioning (unbiasedly) the brutality of a given interaction may paint a clearer picture, which is (or should be) the point of these articles. And as the time goes on and we distance ourselves from memorable conflicts, that may be increasingly more necessary if less and less of the audience would assume it by default.

Regarding the difference in the level of war brutality that the involved parties experienced in history, one notable example comes to mind - mongols. I have yet to encounter someone willing to argue that the suffering that medieval mongols inflicted in their campaign was comparable to that of their opponents.