Trasimene and Relativism

It was on this day in 217 BC that the Roman army of Flaminius was ambushed and wiped out at the battle of Lake Trasimene by the Carthaginian forces of the great general Hannibal. For the strict monarchists, there is no dog in the fight. Carthage and Rome were both, at the time, republics (though both were founded as monarchies). However, as everyone knows I am a Roman partisan and so this is a sad event to recall for me while taking nothing away from Hannibal who was a very talented and audacious military man.

The lesson I take from battles of the Punic Wars like Trasimene (in which Carthage won) is how different the world might well be if it had been Carthage that had rose to dominate the western world instead of Rome. Relativism is all the rage today, be it cultural or moral, but those are sympathies that I do not share. Yet, even modern Christians can look at Carthage and Rome and shrug their shoulders since both were pagan. Not me. They were both pagan, true enough, but that does not mean they were both the same. Although the odd fringe existed as in any religion, the paganism of ancient Rome was pretty tame when compared to the paganism of Carthage where they were sacrificing little children in the most horrid way possible. No two people, nations or cultures are the same nor are they equal and the fact that all may have value does not mean that any one is as good or bad as another. For myself, I am quite grateful that the Romans learned a lesson from their defeat at Trasimene and went on to eventually win the war for supremacy against Carthage rather than the reverse.