![]() ![]() Romans named wars after the enemy they were fighting, so in this particular case, to call a war “civil” recognized that it was fought against a particularly familiar, even familial, enemy within Rome itself. The Romans were the first to call this kind of conflict “civil wars.” The literal term “civil” comes from the Latin word cives, which means citizens. Can you explain why the very idea of “civil war,” beginning with the Romans, is a bundle of contradiction? This book is a story of paradox, from the first page to the last. ![]() The conversation has been lightly edited. I recently spoke with Armitage about his book. ![]() Civil Wars ranges over more than two millennia of history, law, and philosophy, but it feels as urgent as the latest shock, as fresh as tomorrow’s news. Several observations and arguments in the book can be harrowing to read-that the nations mostly likely to devolve into civil wars are those that have suffered such conflicts before that civil wars are most likely when the government is divided against itself that politics is civil war by other means. These days, it’s hard to avoid concluding that American society is tearing itself apart. A decade ago, when David Armitage began working on his new book, Civil Wars: A History in Ideas, published this week by Knopf, he had no idea how relevant the subject would become. ![]()
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