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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GinoLR, post: 8161868, member: 128351&quot;]History is not about deciding who&#039;s been nice and naughty, who deserves to be admired or despised. We are mere mortal sinners, not God Almighty or Santa Claus. Ancient Romans had a custom that can be seen as the ancestor of our modern cancel culture, it was called <i>Damnatio Memoriae</i>. </p><p><br /></p><p>When an emperor was alive and in power, openly criticizing him was forbidden because it would have been interpreted as undermining the imperial regime itself, the Roman peace, the whole society. Speaking of the ruling emperor was a precise rhetorical genre called Panegyric. It&#039;s like at our modern funerals: the only socially accepted kind of speech about the deceased is funeral eulogy, even if he had been a bastardly son of a b*** all his life and everybody&#039;s happy he died at last. But when the emperor was dead, the Senate examined his records, his accomplishments vs his blunders, he was judged and either deified or condemned. If he was deified, the laws he had signed became divine laws that would be observed forever, but if his memory was condemned (<i>damnatio memoriae</i>) his laws were considered null and void, all his statues and portraits were destroyed, his name was erased from official inscriptions. The Roman Catholic Church still organizes <i>more majorum</i> this kind of post-mortem trials in order to canonize people - or not... </p><p><br /></p><p>For ancient Roman authors, writing about past emperors was a delicate topic. Caesar and Augustus had been deified, Vespasian and Titus too. A Roman was not free to criticize them, for criticizing gods might be felt to be impious. Tacitus was wise enough to begin his historical work at the death of Augustus... </p><p><br /></p><p>Now, who are we to blame or praise political leaders of the past? In the name of what? Because we feel morally superior to our own ancestors? Laws and morals were not the same as ours in other countries and in other periods. When the Indian prince Siddharta discovered the people was miserable and suffering, rather than think : &quot;I&#039;m the Prince, one day I&#039;ll be the King and I&#039;ll use my power to make better laws, create free healthcare and education, give workers social rights, tax the nababs in order to fund welfare for the poor, etc.&quot;, he decided to just become an hermit in the jungle. Will we judge him severely for this?[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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