WAR SELECTION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
BY CHANCELLOR DAVID STARR JORDAN
LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY
"The human harvest was bad!" Thus the historian sums up the conditions in Rome in the days of the good emperor, Marcus Aurelius. By this he meant that while population and wealth were increasing, manhood had failed. There were men enough in the streets, men enough in the camps, menial laborers enough and idlers enough, but of good soldiers there were too few. For the business of the state, which in those days was mainly war, its men were inadequate.
In recognition of this condition we touch again the overshadowing fact in the history of Europe, the effect of "military selection" on the human breed.
In rapid survey of the evidence brought from history one must paint the picture, such as it is, with a broad brush, not attempting to treat exceptions and qualifications, for which this article has no space and concerning which records yield no data. Such exceptions, if fully understood, would only prove the rule. The evil effects of military selection and its associated influences have long been recognized in theory by certain students of social evolution. But the ideas derived from the sane application of our knowledge of Darwinism to history are even now just beginning to penetrate the current literature of war and peace. In public affairs most nations have followed the principle of opportunism, "striking while the iron is hot," without regard to future results, whether of financial exhaustion or of race impoverishment.
The recorded history of Rome begins with small and vigorous tribes inhabiting the flanks of the Apennines and the valleys down to the sea, and blending together to form the Roman republic. They were men of courage and men of action, virile, austere, severe and dominant.[1] They were men who "looked on none as their superior and none as their inferior." For this reason, Rome was long a republic. Free-born men control their own destinies. "The fault," says Cassius, "is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings." Thus in freedom, when Rome was small without glory, without riches, without colonies and without slaves, she laid the foundations of greatness.
[1] Virilis, austerus, severus, dominous, good old words applied by Romans to themselves.
But little by little the spirit of freedom gave way to that of domination. Conscious of power, men sought to exercise it, not on themselves but on one another. Little by little this meant aggression, suppression, plunder, struggle, glory and all that goes with the pomp and circumstance of war. So the individuality in the mass was lost in the aggrandizement of the few. Independence was swallowed up in ambition and patriotism came to have a new meaning, being transferred from hearth and home to the camp and the army.
In the subsequent history of Rome, we have now to consider only a single factor, the reversal of selection." In Rome's conquests, Vir, the real man, went forth to battle and foreign invasion; Homo, the human being, remained on the farm and in the workshop and begat the new generations. "Vir gave place to Homo," says the Latin author. Men of good stock were replaced by the sons of slaves and camp-followers, the riff-raff of those the army sucked in but could not use.