Pirates and Emperors
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. [...] Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, 'What do you mean by seizing the whole earth; because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you who does it with a great fleet are styled emperor'."--The City of God (5th century) by St. Augustine |
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Pirates and Emperors, Old and New: International Terrorism in the Real World is a book by Noam Chomsky, titled after an observation by St. Augustine in City of God, proposing that what governments coin as "terrorism" in the small simply reflects what governments utilize as "warfare" in the large. Yet, governments coerce their populations to denounce the former while embracing the latter. In the City of God, St. Augustine tells the story (see inset) and it also appears in John Gower's Confessio Amantis III.2363–2438 and in a sequence by François Villon ("Why art thou a sea-plunderer?").
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