Livy writes in Ab urbe condita libri that Rome was initially founded in violence. By introducing customs and laws, Numa Pompilius has thus founded the city anew. In order to mitigate the ferocity of his subjects, he concluded peace and formed treaties of alliance with all his neighbors. To prevent the Romans from luxuriating in idleness, as they would no longer be restrained by the fear of an enemy or by military discipline, “he strove to inculcate in their minds the fear of the gods”. The significance of the fear of an enemy is most notably emphasized in Sallust’s Bellum Iugurthinum. In this book, the Roman historian writes that metus hostilis (fear of an enemy), which he regards as conductive to internal cohesion, has lost its integrating force after the destruction of Carthage hence leading to sociopolitical ‘decomposition’ of Roman republic. Sallust’s political opponent Cicero introduces in his last work De officiis a paradoxical figure of “communis hostis omnium” (common enemy of everyone) referring it to pirates who, in the philosopher’s view, possess faculties of reason and speech like all humans yet are excluded from mankind. In my paper, I want to elaborate the significance of that peculiar Ciceronian figure for the current politics. I think that is not a random fact that Cicero introduced that concept after elimination of the most serious imperial rival of Roman republic while it went through a deep crisis. The fall of Carthage revealed Rome’s imperial predominance and changed the ideological constellations. Has not something similar occurred after the demise of the USSR? Starting from an ongoing debate about USA as the new empire, I want to take up recent discussions about the status of terrorists that the Ciceronian concept sheds a novel light on and discuss some ideological aspects.
