Ancient Rome illuminates modern violence

BOSTON - Jan. 26, 2017 - PRLog -- PRESS RELEASE

Ancient Rome illuminates modern violence

Jan 27, 2017

Ashok Nimgade, MD, MPH. McLean-Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston

Is violence really contagious, or does modern media simply make it appear so? Clues come from the Roman Empire, where 60% of emperors died violently.  Despite a backdrop of chaos and insanity of Nero's and Caligula's, this was non-random: assassinations and forced suicides occurred in waves or clusters.  Violence and instability begets more of the same – even before television and Twitter.  Related patterns also simplify understanding Rome's rise and fall.

Author's Perspective:  I am a Boston- and Italy-based physician trained in biological anthropology and public health.  One night, I was paged twice to the same psychiatric floor to examine the aftermath of two separate fistfights. I had just been reading about Imperial Rome when it dawned that its bloody history could illuminate current violence.

Photo caption:   Julius Caesar assassinated by the statue of Pompeii, whose murder Caesar himself provoked. This ironic juxtaposition foreshadows Rome's next five centuries of successional violence. (V. Camuccini, 1804).

Citation:  Nimgade A.  Instability and violence in Imperial Rome -- a 'laboratory' for studying social contagion.  Complexity (John Wiley) 21(S2): 613-622, Nov/Dec 2016.

Contact:   617-875-2946;   animgade@gmail.com ;  animgade@partners.org