My academic background is Classics (Greek, primarily, but also Latin). So I was pleased to see Nat Torkington begin a blog post on O’Reilly Radar with a reference to the battle of Cannae between the Romans and the Carthaginians. He compares Microsoft (in their effort to promote their Office XML format) to the Romans, and proponents of the Open Document Format (ODF) as the Carthaginians.
For the record, I’m pleased Microsoft’s efforts have been thwarted. But I think Microsoft should be cast as the Carthaginians and the proponents of ODF as the Romans. For one, Hannibal, the Carthaginian general, whose name means, literally “grace of Baal” has to be Bill Gates or Steve Balmer. Second, the famous phrase of Cato the Elder, Carthago delenda est (meaning: “Carthage must be destroyed”), originated, it is said, when Cato was told the Carthaginians practiced child sacrifice. I will let you make the connection. Finally, Dido, Queen of Carthage, tried to seduce Aeneas, later the founder of Rome, from accomplishing his divinely guided mission.
For all these reasons I think Carthage is Microsoft, Rome is ODF.
4 Comments
Except that many contemporary scholars believe that the child sacrifice thing is essentially a blood libel. Asserting a historical analogy just risks making us look silly when the history itself is discredited.
There’s another reason you can compare Microsoft with Carthage – I’m thinking of that battle where Hannibal tried to cross the Alps with an army of war elephants.
In my mind, the OOXML specification is somewhat like those elephants. Trying to pass it off as an ISO standard makes about as much sense as trying to lead a herd of African elephants through narrow mountain passes at below-freezing temperatures.
@Michael: I don’t know if the history is discredited. Yes, some have asserted such. My point, really, is that if an organization ever sacrificed children for the favor of a god…right?
This made me think of Philip Greenspun’s A Future So Bright You’ll Need to Wear Sunglasses, back from around 1995, where he writes “Delenda est Junkware” and more or less predicts all the hot trends of the last two-three years.