The Roman Taliban

With some previous wars, most obviously Vietnam, it took a long time for Hollywood to engage with the conflict and its consequences at all, let alone directly; the first films to start exploring Vietnam did so obliquely, like Altman's M.A.S.H., ostensibly set in the Korean War. When it comes to involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq over the last decade there's scarcely been the same hesitation - for goodness' sake, Bigelow's Hurt Locker has been showered with Oscars - so it's a little difficult to imagine that films seeking to address recent experiences by depicting the Roman army's travails north of Hadrian's Wall, Centurion and The Eagle of the Ninth, are going to have much to add to our understanding. I suppose the case could be made that M.A.S.H. was a rather better and more interesting film than most later attempts at showing Vietnam directly and explicitly, so an oblique approach may be an artistic choice rather than a political necessity, but it's not obvious that the director of The Descent and Dog Soldiers is the man to do this. Still, the appearance of these films offered Charlotte Higgins the opportunity to make some interesting points about our attitudes towards Rome (not missing the fact that the traditional account of the IX Hispana legion disappearing in the mists of Scotland, the basis for both stories, is complete cobblers).

Higgins suggests that we're invited to have some sympathy for the Picts but to identify with the Romans, lost in enemy territory; more than likely, given both the dynamics of the story-telling and the inherited weight of positive images of Rome = civilisation. There's a missed opportunity here to engage with Richard Hingley's discussion of nineteenth-century ambivalence towards Rome in Britain; certainly we could choose to side with the forces of empire, as imperialists ourselves, but focusing on Roman Britain, rather than on other regions, creates the possibility of seeing ourselves instead as the natives, facing an invasion from the continent.

What is most striking, however, is Higgins' assertion that Rome's enemies "did indeed use what we would now call terrorism", and the quotation from Mary Beard that "Boudicca is a good analogue for the Taliban". Really? I'm struggling to think of the slightest resemblance (Fanatical religion? Nope. Suicide bombers? Nope. Maybe it's the propensity for skirts...). The only thing I can come up with is the simple fact that both are/were opposed to the dominant imperial power - and that is the exact logic of those who draw analogies between Rome and the United States in order to offer dire warnings about the threat of barbarian hordes. Anyone who opposes an empire is by definition a terrorist? In one sense that's true - the Romans depicted any sort of opposition in terms of banditry and piracy, stripping it of any legitimacy just as the label 'terrorism' does today - but you wouldn't expect respected contributors to a liberal newspaper to be taking that sort of line, or identifying with the forces of imperial domination to quite such an extent.