with "falling" and bringing to a fall cannot for the Greeks be the original and proper opposite to "unconcealedness," to ἀληθές.
Why, however, is the falsum, the "bringing to a fall," essential for the Romans? What realm of experience is normative here, if the bringing to a fall attains such a priority that on the basis of its essence there is determined the counter-essence to what the Greeks experience as ἀληθές, the "unconcealing" and the "unconcealed"?
The realm of essence decisive for the development of the Latin falsum is the one of the imperium and of the "imperial." We will take these words in their strict and original sense. Imperium means "command." To be sure, we now understand the word "command" in a later, Latin-romanic, sense. Originally "command" [Befehl] (the "h" should be written after the "l": befelh) meant the same as "to cover" to "commit" (command) the dead to the earth or to the fire, to entrust them to a cover. The original meaning of "command" survives in our expression, "I commend (command) thy ways to the Lord" (i.e., entrust to protection and sheltering cover). This commending is preserved in our word "recommend." Instead of "recommend," Luther always used the word "commend"—commendare. On its way through the French language, "commend" became commandieren, i.e., more precisely, the Latin imperare, im-parare = to arrange, to take measures, i.e., prae-cipere, to occupy in advance, and so to take possession of the occupied territory and to rule it. Imperium is the territory [Gebiet] founded on commandments [Gebot], in which the others are obedient [botmäsig]. Imperium is the command in the sense of commandment. Command, thus understood, is the basis of the essence of domination, not the consequence of it and certainly not just a way of exercising domination. The God of the Old Testament is a "commanding" God; His word is: "Thou shalt not," "Thou shalt." This "shalt" is written down on the tables of the law. The gods of the Greeks are not commanding gods but, rather, ones that give signs, that point. The Roman gods, quite to the contrary, are designated by the Latin word numen, which means "bidding" and "will" and has the character of command. The "numinous," strictly taken, does not at all touch the essence of the Greek gods, i.e., gods who dwell in the region of ἀλήθεια. In the essential realm of the "command" belongs the Roman "law," ius. This word is connected with jubeo: to bid, to let something be done by bidding and to determine it through this doing and letting. The command is the essential ground of domination and of iustum, as understood in Latin, the "to-be-in-the-right" and the "to have a right." Accordingly, iustitia has a wholly different ground of essence than that of δίκη, which arises from ἀλήθεια.
Command, as the essential ground of domination, includes being-superior, which is only possible as the constant surmounting of others, who are thereby the inferiors. In this surmounting there resides again