Queen Amanirenas
The Black Lady Who (Allegedly) Opened a Can of Whup-Ass on the Roman Empire
Part 2

Candace shoves Roman courtier aside by the booty to tell Caesar Augustus he’d better give up, OR ELSE!

2,303 words

Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

Did the Romans chicken out, start a war of conquest and lose, or surrender to Cush?

Often with twisted narratives, or the usual sort of pilpul, it takes considerable explanation to demonstrate that the argument is hollow and disingenuous. To begin briefly, the Roman military situation during the punitive expedition was hardly desperate. Petronius capably handled matters in the field, winning all his battles despite the Cushites having the home court advantage of logistics and familiar terrain. He could’ve called for vast reinforcements, but never needed that. All told, the Roman Empire was on a roll, expanding greatly during Caesar Augustus’ term. After repeated pitiable Cushite battlefield performances, Rome had little more to fear from them than a wolf should fear a bunny rabbit. The idea of a much stronger power capitulating to a weaker one, when the former isn’t under any hopeless military situation at the front, is an absurdity. The rest that follows here is commentary.

The abbreviated account by Cassius Dio states quite plainly that the Cushites were forced to negotiate, not the Romans. Quite remarkably, the woke narrative claims that the mutually agreeable deal Caesar Augustus made with the Cushites amounts to a surrender by Rome. This misses the distinction between total war ending in complete subjugation versus limited war ending with a negotiated settlement. The next act creatively misconstrues a magnanimously-granted square deal as a loss, thereby rewriting history.[1] Ancient warfare in particular was no picnic, so the Cushites were fortunate not to suffer a total war like Gaul or Carthage.

Really, the wokesters should be delighted that story ended with their BIPOC buddies from two millennia ago getting the kid gloves rather than the mailed fist. All told, Caesar Augustus merely made the Cushites a fair deal, leaving them no outstanding gripes that might inspire future trouble. This shrewd measure resulted in three centuries of peace along Egypt’s southern border, as well as reopening international commerce along the Nile’s trade route to the interior of Africa. If the Emperor had been forced to make extraordinary concessions, only then would the wokesters have reason to crow about it two millennia after the fact.

Quite strangely, minoritists mistake mercy, fairness, noblesse oblige, magnanimity, and so forth for weakness. If white liberals ever got wise to that, it would clear up a lot of things for them in a hurry! There’s nothing wrong with trying to restore peace, of course. If we were to suppose, however, that the ruler of the Roman Empire nearing its peak lost his wits and wished to surrender to the ancient equivalent of Sudan, he would’ve begun by sending his emissaries to Cush to open a dialogue. The opposite happened; the Cushites approached Rome with three peace overtures.

Still, why not put the screws to Cush rather than offer a fair deal? For some context, a severe food shortage was occurring in Rome in 22 BC, consequentially leading to considerable political pressures. The Emperor had likewise survived a life-threatening bout of ill health the previous year, during which there was much discussion about who’d be his successor. When the diplomats showed up, why not take the opportunity to put out a bothersome brush fire? Caesar Augustus had bigger fish to fry than dinking around any further with a border raid that had already been avenged to the point of overkill.

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Note well, Cush already had been spanked; only then was mercy appropriate. If they’d gone unpunished for the sneak attack, it would’ve inspired future obstreperous behavior. All carrot and no stick doesn’t work — something that modern liberals should learn.

What were Rome’s objectives? They succeeded in driving the invaders out of Egypt, and then pressed forward. By definition, a punitive expedition is for teaching the enemy a lesson. Indeed, the Cushites got their Prügelstrafe, as we barbarians from Magna Germania would call it. The woke narrative instead suggests that Rome attempted a land grab to acquire Cush’s natural resources and failed. However, the ancient accounts above give no indication that territorial aggrandizement was Rome’s objective.

Again, Strabo’s well-informed take at the beginning was that the Cushites had imperiled their own country by rashly picking a fight with Rome. If Petronius wished to annex Cush, though, he would’ve pulled an LBJ and called for massive reinforcements. The punitive expedition would’ve grown into a full-blown offensive, ready to unfold during more favorable weather. Unlike the Big Johnson, he wasn’t bound to the Geneva Conventions, didn’t have reporters snapping atrocity pictures, and didn’t have millions in his own political party jeering him daily. With a free hand and overwhelming manpower, it would’ve been the usual ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.

On the other hand, his predecessor Aelius Gallus was indeed tasked with territorial aggrandizement — not in Cush, but rather in Arabia. That turned out to be a big disaster for many reasons. 2,000 years later, anything in the Middle East still turns into a big disaster.

It seems that a story about the Romans encountering the usual sort of quagmire in Arabia isn’t interesting enough to put on my Firefox start page, however. Neither is their far more destructive centuries-long spit-in-your-eye war with Persia. How about celebrating the stunning victory of Arminius, the Teutonic warlord who commanded a horde of blond beasts who recaptured much of Germania? Perish the thought! Rome had no shortage of restless neighbors, of course — a fairly manageable problem until things started going catawampus three centuries later. Still, what could be more “newsworthy” lately than a sassy story about a differently-abled gender-non-conforming soul sistah who whupped Mighty Whitey Rome like a Nubian Rambo — or would that be Rambette?

Overall, the Cushite strategy appears rather nearsighted, likely underestimating what they were getting themselves into by taking on the Roman Empire. (It seems rather like Plains Indians in the nineteenth century who aggressively attacked white settlers rather than trying to make nice with them and negotiate borders. They assumed that the newcomers were just a pale-faced tribe with odd customs who arrived at the periphery of their known world, not realizing that they were at the forefront of a large nation undergoing dynamic expansion.) Did the Romans lose the war because the Cushites escaped complete subjugation and got a fairly negotiated settlement?

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There’s a loose analogy in modern times. Argentina took over the Falkland Islands in 1982. The British counterattacked, recovered the territory, and soon enough things settled down to status quo ante bellum. Does anyone say that the British lost because they didn’t go on to take over Argentina and make it a Crown colony?

Moreover, I’m ancient enough to remember how the first Gulf War went. Faced with overwhelming firepower, Saddam mooned the world. When time ran out to hand over Kuwait, Iraqi forces suffered a tremendous rout. Just as coalition forces were closing in on Baghdad, suddenly Bush the Elder pulled the plug on Desert Storm. Granted, it would’ve been better not to have gotten involved in the first place; it wasn’t our problem, it was for the wrong reasons, etc. Still, after things had gone that far, then to wiggle, waffle, and waver merely prolonged the inevitable.

Why not finish the job? Likely Bush the Elder had a pretty good idea that administering Iraq could become a huge mess — justifiably, as it turned out. (Thanks, Dad!) He chose to kick the can down the road; the sour economy was already bad enough on its own for the upcoming 1992 election. After that came an unending circus: no-fly zones, circumvented embargoes, United Nations cookie-pushers endlessly passing toothless resolutions, and Inspector Jacques Clouseau sniffing around for weapons of mass destruction while being tooled and led in circles.

Were the coalition forces defeated? Did Iraq being granted an indefinite ceasefire, followed by endless horsing around, amount to America surrendering? Such conclusions would’ve been ridiculously absurd. Hopefully the analogy to the wokesters is clear with this! Nobody believed that Iraq won, except Saddam himself, and his subordinates whose lives depended on “believing” it, too. Unfortunately for him, much unlike the ancient Cushites, he didn’t learn a lesson about overconfidence. If anything, the last-minute reprieve emboldened him further. Confusing mercy for weakness, Saddam immediately resumed swinging his willy around like a nudist on a trampoline, up until his rude awakening a decade later.

All told, contrary to the woke narrative:

• The Roman Empire’s war with Cush was comparable to a man being hounded by an angry Chihuahua. In fact, I’d almost pity the Cushites, but they shouldn’t have started a needless and unprovoked war.
• If anyone was out for territorial aggrandizement in that conflict, it was the Cushites.
• The Romans didn’t initiate unprovoked aggression; the Cushites breached the peace with their border raid on Egypt.
• The Roman counterattack was an overwhelming success despite being outnumbered three to one and fighting on foreign territory.
• Further progress by Roman forces was made impractical at the time by harsh conditions in the Nubian Desert, not by lack of strength or enemy valor.
• The Cushite army did not defeat the Romans. The only battle they won was the initial sneak attack on a lightly-guarded garrison. As for the rest, the Roman victory was so lopsided that I almost feel bad for their opponents.
• Cush did not force Rome to surrender. Their military was unable to repel the devastating Roman counterattack. Luckily for them, diplomacy salvaged the situation, ending the ruinous war they’d started.
• Candace/Queen Amanirenas was a nuisance to Rome for a hot minute, but she wasn’t exactly Attila the Hun with a pirate eyepatch, boobs, and an Afro. If she was the one who approved the reckless sneak attack on Egypt, which is certainly possible, then she’s hardly a figure to admire.

Finally, if not for the recent racial angle, the episode would remain nothing more than antiquarian trivia. This obscure footnote from ancient times got spun and hyped to rewrite history so that it reinforces politically correct narratives. Namely, it’s to make it seem as if a glorious white empire was brought to its knees by a one-eyed butch black lady. Cultural Marxism has become remarkably silly and petty.

Some final thoughts

Sole survivor of Roman punitive expedition begs for his life.

Although the woke narrative about this obscure border scuffle doesn’t compare too well to the facts, I shall conclude with the words of Rudyard Kipling, the great poet of a much later empire which experienced a far more dicey imbroglio in that part of the world:

So ‘ere’s to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your ‘ome in the Soudan;
You’re a pore benighted ‘eathen but a first-class fightin’ man;
An’ ‘ere’s to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, with your ‘ayrick ‘ead of ‘air —
You big black boundin’ beggar — for you broke a British square!

A bit more seriously (but not much), let’s suppose the deeds of Queen Amanirenas were everything that the wokesters say. Suppose that this was much more than a mere footnote in history. Let’s say the Romans were indeed out to take over East Africa, and she stood in the way of their intended conquest. If so, then let us indeed celebrate Candace the Great! If millions of fuzzy wuzzies had been incorporated into the Roman Empire and free to go wherever they wanted, then it would’ve been only a matter of time before they expanded into North Africa, the Levant, and ultimately, Europe.

There seems to be something in sub-Saharan DNA, apparently much like the biological impulse that sends birds northward in the spring, instinctively compelling them to undertake a peculiar migratory pattern. In this case, they’re symbiotically assisted by other strange creatures carrying out their own imperatives. First, the welfare tourists board overloaded motorboats and rubber dinghies bound for Europe, eager to become oppressed minorities. (A few even managed to squeak through into Israel, but they know how to handle invaders.) Often the foundering African flotsam is picked up by ships run by do-gooder non-governmental organizations. Rather than returning the migratory Pechvögel to where they belong — perish the thought! — they’re dumped on Italy. The wretched refuse is greeted on the teeming shore by Israeli foundation staffers who somehow know exactly where they’ll arrive, helpfully distributing flyers about where to apply for benefits. Some of these pension-payers will stay, culturally enriching Italy while on the dole. Many other Asylbewerber will press onward to colder countries yet, with even sweeter milk to be sucked from government welfare teats.

Had this begun two millennia ago, the fuzzy wuzzies would’ve brought genetic confusion to Europe long before Coudenhove-Kalergi and his ideological successors plotted to do so. For averting this disaster, I salute you, Queen Amanirenas, the multiply intersectional Brunnhilda of the upper Nile, unlikely defender of the white race!

Finally, special thanks for bringing this to my attention goes to Afrika Is Woke, Adhiambo Edith Magak of Narratively, many other wokesters pushing this narrative, and especially the apparatchik who pipelined this wonderfulness down the transmission belt to my Firefox newsfeed.

Note

[1] Our cultural perspective in light of the American Civil War and both world wars might figure into the implication. That is, only total war counts as the “real thing,” and it’s not truly won without unconditional surrender, severe “victor’s justice” imposed on the defenseless former enemy, and psychological warfare continued generations after the fact. These measures typically include a long-term occupation, vast territorial dismemberment, dissolution of the losing government, installation of a puppet government, eternal disparagement of their former political system, making their national symbols taboo, denigration of their heroes who fought against all odds trying to defend their country, and show trials. Ain’t liberal democracy grand! There’s a lot more, of course, but that doesn’t make it into our cultural perspective, because they don’t talk about that stuff in history class.