War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means."

Clausewitz

John Jenkins is quite an authority on the famous Roman motto, "Si vis pacem para bellum." ("If you seek peace, prepare for war.")

I attributed the quote to Cicero (who doubtless used it , as would have almost every Roman in a position of authority at one time or another), and I supplied a URL for it. Mr. Jenkins immediately took notice, and emailed me as follows:

I believe the quote which you attributed to Cicero was actually by the general Vegetius,(http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_preparewar.htm).

It is originally, Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum--"Therefore, he who desires peace, let him prepare for war"

I spent last year digging around about this when I was taking Latin and
couldn't find anything about Cicero having said this. That's not to say he didn't, of course, just that I couldn't find it.

I researched the hell out of this last night, and you are right; the motto did originate with Vegetius. But there are additional problems in that the original quote was paraphrased by later Romans. This creates confusion, and the situation is further compounded by the adoption of the paraphrased quotation as the official motto of the Roman legions.

Original text:

Qui desiderat pacem, preparet bellum.
"Who desires peace should prepare for war."
Vegetius De Rei Militari III

Sometimes the original and the paraphrased quote
appear interchangeably:

In time of peace prepare for war,
[Lat., Si vis pacem, para bellum.]
- Epitoma Rei Militaris (lib. III, end of
prologue),

Qui desiderat pacem, preparet bellum
(Vegetius De Rei Militari III)

"Over 1600 years ago Vegetius wrote 'Qui desiderat
pacem, praeparet bellum,' a maxim often paraphrased as
'Si vis pacem, para bellum.' "

Worse yet, the paraphrased version is often credited not only to Cicero, but to Appius Claudius the Blind:

"Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum" Appius Claudius the Blind,
281 BC

This would make a fun posting; do you mind if I use
your name or do you want to remain private?

If this isn't getting complicated enough, consider something that very few people in modern America ever think about: the prohibition on "Igitur"!

Feel free to use my name. It gets better though: Igitur is supposed to be a postpositive conjunction that can't appear at the beginning of a sentence, but it does here.

My Latin professor has suggested to me that this is because Vegetius was a late Roman author and perhaps the prohibition on igitur was no longer recognized or considered important.

I don't know.

I do know that the 1885 Lang edition of Epitoma Rei Militaris, reprinted in 1967 uses the igitur version. I can't find any other versions to compare it with though....

I'm not sure if *Epitoma Rei Militaris* and *De Rei Militari* are alternate titles for the same work or not.

If you want something even more funny, Wheelock uses the shorter version (si vis pacem...) and cites it as original Latin (the asterisk indicates the original, not paraphrased as I mistakenly noted yesterday), not paraphrased from something called "Military Prologue 3".

If I find out that *Epitoma Rei Militaris* and *De Rei Militari* are the same or different, I'll let you know. There's a copy of Epitoma available at the OU library, so I'm going to go look at it and see which version it uses.

Whew! At the rate this is going, I'll be a full time researcher instead of the crazed blogger I wanted to be.

Any research volunteers?

When a quote becomes famous enough to gain wide circulation, it can easily be misattributed, and of course, it gets worse when the quote is paraphrased. Even the phrase, "the best defense is a good offense" expresses the same sentiment as "si vis pacem para bellum."

So, to make things easier, I am going to use the paraphrased version, and I think I'll just call it the Roman Legion motto.

But wait! The Imperialist Dog has also raised another very important issue: the curtailment of free speech under the guise of new political campaign laws.

You have to read this website for about five minuted to know that I'm not a Howard Dean fan. By extension, you might also conclude that I don't often agree with professor Lawrence Lessig at Stanford. But this horseshit is just plain wrong.

Because Dean was allowed to guest-blog on Lessig's website, Stanford is asking him to take the site off of the Standord servers, "given FEC regulations." The only thing that I can come up with is that maybe they see this as an in-kind campaign contribution, but it's patent to any observer that's not what it's about.

This is clearly a limit on constitutionally protected speech that shouldn't be allowed to go unchallenged. Dean has a right to speak in any public forum, even one on the internet, and its clear that the web servers of a university are a public forum. This is not something that an institution of higher learning should be engaging in. Consider this list list of Standord student organizations, many with websites on the Stanford servers. I should think that some of them have and enunciate political views that, if you were to read the statutes broadly enough, could be considered in-kind contributions. This sort of silliness is not the sort of thing that institutions of higher learning should be engaging in. I still remember the marketplace of ideas, but apparently Stanford has forgotten it.

Every blogger should take notice of this deeply disturbing development. If you don't think that big government, Bigger-Than-Ever-Consolidated-Big Media, and the regulatory thugs who work for both wouldn't love to either wipe out blogging completely, or at least emasculate bloggers so that they are unable to reach out and touch certain institutions or political developments, think again. In Europe, so called "fair comment" regulations are already in the works, and if you don't think it could happen here, consider again the FCC's ominous reclassification of cable and phone based broadband providers as information rather than telecommunications services:

The Internet might soon be the last place where open dialogue occurs. One of the most dangerous things that has happened in the past few years is the deregulation of media ownership rules that began in 1996. Michael Powell and the Bush FCC are continuing that assault today (see the June 2nd ruling).

The danger of relaxing media ownership rules became clear to me when I saw what happened with the Dixie Chicks. But there’s an even bigger danger in the future, on the Internet. The FCC recently ruled that cable and phone based broadband providers be classified as information rather than telecommunications services. This is the first step in a process that could allow Internet providers to arbitrarily limit the content that users can access. The phone and cable industries could have the power to discriminate against content that they don’t control or-- even worse-- simply don’t like.
The media conglomerates now dominate almost half of the markets around the country, meaning Americans get less independent and frequently less dependable news, views and information. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson spoke of the fear that economic power would one day try to seize political power. No consolidated economic power has more opportunity to do this than the consolidated power of media.

What say ye, bloggers?

Do you think the bastards are already trying to snuff out our newly born presidential campaign in its crib?

I can't resist closing with another ancient slogan:

Silent enim leges inter arma. [Laws are silent in times of war.]

Cicero, Pro Milone

FEC, FCC, this is war! So blow it out your ass!