Killing and dying for love: the common fatherland

The fatherland is so precious to all men that legislators everywhere punish the worst offences with exile as the heaviest penalty at their command. And not only legislators think this way; army generals who want to encourage their troops formed for battle can only tell them: ‘Fight for your fatherland!’ No one wants to disgrace himself when hearing this; the name of fatherland turns even a coward into a brave man. Lucian, An Encomium of Fatherland , around ad 160 I see you do not know how sweet the love of the fatherland is: if it was expedient for the fatherland’s protection or enlargement, it would seem neither burdensome and difficult nor a crime to thrust the axe into one’s father’s head, to crush one’s brothers or to pull out the unborn child from the womb of one’s wife with a sword. Coluccio Salutati, Letter to Andrea di ser Conte , 1366 ‘All roads lead to Rome’ was a phrase unheard of in Antiquity, and neither had it anything to do with the Roman road network initially. ‘A thousand roads lead men forever to Rome’ ( Mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam ) wrote the theologian and poet Alain de Lille in his Book of Parables ( Liber Parabolarum ) around 1175. He coined a religious metaphor to describe the wide variety of ways to reach salvation. Most ancient Romans would never have thought in these terms, yet without them, this metaphor would not have been possible. The same can be said about nationalism. There were no nationalists walking the streets of Ancient Rome, but when considering nationalism’s origins, all roads lead to Rome. Of the utmost importance is the language of patriotism. It addressed a basic problem each body politic has to deal with: how can individuals be motivated to become involved in public affairs? The main reason why patriotism has proved so successful to this day is that it establishes a system of strong coercion with subtle force. It subjugates people to the dictates of the body politic by invoking an unconditional love and constant fear for the community, which is aimed at the creation of a collective sense of self-sacrifice for the higher good.