Letter: Pax Romana?

Friday 11 June 1999 23:02 BST

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Sir: Nato's choice of "Agricola" as the name for its land operation in Kosovo offers food for thought. Presumably it was intended as a reference to the Roman governor of Britain.

I hope Nato adopted it because of Tacitus' description of Agricola having "to deal with people living in isolation and ignorance, and therefore prone to fight; and his object was to accustom them to a life of peace and quiet by the provision of amenities" [Agricola 21]; and not because of Tacitus' rather more famous apophthegm: "They create a desert and call it peace" [Agricola 30].

THURSTAN ROBINSON

The Queen's College, Oxford

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