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. Unbroken lines of refugees filled the roads, the sight of each other renewing their tears; pitiable cries were heard, especially among women, as they passed venerable temples under armed guard, abandoning their very own gods, as it seemed, to captivity.
‘The Albans gone, the Romans levelled the town, in one hour turning to dust and ashes the work of 400 years though not, by royal order, the gods’ temples. The destruction of Alba, however, swelled Rome, doubling its size.’
The point is that Roman policy – the key to their success – was to make enemies into friends. Result: Albans were at once integrated into the senate and the army.
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