To protect Gazan civilians (used as shields by Hamas), Israel has told them to leave their homes. When in 665 bc Romans forced the people of ancient Alba Longa (from which Rome had been founded) to leave and move to Rome, the historian Livy sympathised with their civilians’ plight as legions arrived to demolish their city: ‘They found none of the pandemonium associated with gates being smashed down, walls reduced to rubble, citadel captured, and armed men rampaging through the streets, killing and burning, but only a despairing silence and wordless grief, so paralysing that the populace had no idea what to leave or take with them; they just stood at the doors of the houses, asking each other what to do, or wandered through them, as if for the last time.
‘Once the troops ordered them to leave, and they heard the crash of dismantled buildings, as dust rose in the distance, enveloping everything in a vast cloud, they snatched up whatever they could and left, abandoning their family gods and the homes where they had been born and raised.
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