A Cultural History of Genocide - The Truth in a 'False' Debate

Abstract

In her recent work on mass-violence in the Roman republic, Barrandon (2018) dismissed the arugments of Van Wees' (2010)and others as to the application of the concept of 'genocide' to mass-violence in antiquity, which a reviewer of Barrandon summed up as putting to rest a 'false debate' ('faux débat). Barrandon's argument, however, hinges on the application of only one of the many competing definitions of 'genocide', which imports a requirement (absent in many other definitions) of the destruction of a people to pursue a goal of 'purity'.