Intelligence activities have always been an integral part of
statecraft, and the Romans could not have built and protected their
empire without them. In both the Republic and the Empire the Romans
realized that to keep their borders safe, to control their
population, to keep abreast of political developments abroad, and
for the internal security of their own regime, they needed a means
to collect the intelligence which enabled them to make informed
decisions. The Romans certainly did not have our technology nor did
they use our terminology. A search for the Roman equivalent of the
CIA is fruitless; there was no such thing. But this is not to say
that they did not collect intelligence. While no one department of
government was ever trusted with all of Rome's clandestine
activities, there were several organizations that shared the
responsibility of telling the emperor what he wanted to know. Onto
their vast system of roads was grafted an intelligence network
which carried information from all ends of the empire to the
emperor. The men responsible for monitoring that system became, in
effect, a Roman Secret Service.
What are referred to as intelligence activities, in fact, include a
whole range of subjects that are only loosely bound by the fact
that modern intelligence services practice those arts. Professor
Sheldon uses the modern concept of the intelligence cycle to trace
intelligence activities whether they were done by private citizens,
the government, or the military. The range of activities is broad:
intelligence and counterintelligence gathering, covert action,
clandestine operations, the use of codes and ciphers, and many
other types of espionage tradecraft have all left theirtraces in
the ancient sources. This book will certainly dispel the myth that
such activities are a modern invention.
These ancient spy stories have modern echoes as well. We still
debate many of the questions that faced the Romans. What is the
role of an intelligence service in a free republic? When do the
security needs of the state outweigh the rights of the citizen? And
if we cannot trust our own security services, how safe can we be?
Although protected by the Praetorian Guard, seventy-five percent of
Roman emperors died by assassination or under attack by pretenders
to his throne. Who was guarding the guardians?
In the wake of the World Trade Center attack on September 11th, the
world once again has been reminded of how painful and expensive
intelligence failures can be. The Romans, too, suffered such
disasters, and Sheldon details how the Romans could be tricked,
ambushed and even defeated by an enemy with better intelligence on
the ground. This is the first work in English, written for the
general public, to bring together all of Rome's intelligence
activities from the Republic to the high Empire. It is not
difficult to see why espionage is often referred to as the World's
Second Oldest Profession.
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