Works (City of God, On the Trinity, etc.) 4

I think enough has now been said concerning the evils of character and of soul, which are above all to be guarded against, showing that the false gods took no care to succour their worshipping people so that it might not be crushed beneath the mounting heap of such evils, but rather acted so that it should be crushed all the more. Now I see that I must speak of those evils which alone these men refuse to endure — such as famine and disease, war and pillage, captivity and slaughter, and the like, which we have already mentioned in the first book. For these alone the wicked reckon evils, since they do not make men wicked; nor do they blush, amid the goods which they praise, to be themselves wicked who praise them, and they fret more if they have a bad country house than a bad life, as though this were man's greatest good — to possess all good things except his own self.

But not even such evils as these — the only ones these people dread — did their gods, when they were freely worshipped by them, prevent from befalling them. For when, in various times and various places before the coming of our Redeemer, the human race was ground down by innumerable and even sometimes incredible calamities, what other gods than these did the world worship, save for the one Hebrew people and certain men outside that people, wherever any were, by the most hidden and most just judgment of God, found worthy of divine grace? But that I may not draw it out too long, I shall pass over in silence the most grievous evils of all the other nations everywhere.

As far as concerns Rome and the Roman empire, I shall speak only of that — that is, of the city itself in the proper sense and of whatever lands are joined to it by alliance or made subject to it by condition — as to what things they suffered before the coming of Christ, when they already belonged, as it were, to the body of that commonwealth. First, Troy itself, or Ilium, whence is the origin of the Roman people (for this too must not be passed over or dissembled, as I touched upon in the first book) — why, though it had and worshipped the same gods, was it conquered, taken, and destroyed by the Greeks? 'To Priam,' they say, 'were repaid the ancestral perjuries of Laomedon.' Is it then true that Apollo and Neptune served that same Laomedon at hired labour?

For they are reported to have promised him a wage, and he to have sworn falsely. I marvel that Apollo, named the diviner, laboured in so great a work not knowing that Laomedon would deny what had been promised. Yet neither did it befit Neptune himself, his uncle, brother of Jupiter, king of the sea, to be ignorant of things to come. For Homer represents him as divining something great concerning the line of Aeneas, from whose descendants Rome is sprung — since the same poet is said to have lived before that city was founded — and he even snatched Aeneas away in a cloud, as Homer tells, lest he be slain by Achilles, though Neptune desired to overturn from its foundations that which in Virgil he confesses: 'the walls of perjured Troy, built by his own hands.'

Not knowing, therefore, that Laomedon would deny them their wage, these great gods, Neptune and Apollo, were builders of the Trojan walls for nothing and without thanks. Let them consider whether it be not a graver matter to believe in such gods than to swear falsely by such gods. For not even Homer himself readily believed this, since he makes Neptune fight against the Trojans and Apollo fight for the Trojans, though the fable relates that both were offended by that perjury. If, then, they believe the fables, let them blush to worship such divinities;

if they do not believe the fables, let them not hold up the Trojan perjuries, nor claim that the gods deserved to punish the Trojan perjuries and to love the Roman ones. For whence, in a city so great and so corrupt, did the conspiracy of Catiline draw so great a supply of men whose hand and tongue were fed by perjury or by the blood of citizens? What else did senators, so often corrupted in judgments, and the people, so often corrupted in their votes or in whatever causes were debated among them in the assemblies — what else did they do but sin also by swearing falsely? For amid the most corrupt morals the ancient custom of oath-taking was preserved for this reason: not that men should be restrained from crimes by fear of religion, but that perjuries too might be added to their other crimes.

There is therefore no reason why the gods, by whom, as they say, that empire stood, should be feigned to be angry at the perjuring Trojans, when they are proved to have been conquered by the prevailing Greeks. Nor were they incensed at the adultery of Paris — as they are again defended by some — so that they abandoned Troy. For gods are wont to be the authors and teachers of sins, not their avengers. 'The city of Rome,' says Sallust, 'as I have received the account, was founded and held at the beginning by the Trojans, who, wandering with uncertain abodes as fugitives under the leadership of Aeneas.' If, then, the divinities judged that the adultery of Paris must be avenged, it ought rather to have been punished in the Romans, or certainly in the Romans as well, since the mother of Aeneas did this very thing.

But how could they hate that disgrace in him whom they did not hate in Venus, their own associate — to say nothing of the rest — for what she had committed with Anchises, from whom she had borne Aeneas? Or is it because the one was done while Menelaus was indignant, but the other while Vulcan consented? For the gods, I suppose, are not jealous of their wives — so far indeed that they deign to have them in common even with men. Perhaps I am thought to be mocking the fables and not treating a cause of such weight with due gravity. Let us therefore not believe, if you please, that Aeneas is the son of Venus: lo, I concede it, if you likewise grant that Romulus is not the son of Mars. But if the one, why not also the other? Or is it lawful for gods to unite with human females, but unlawful for male men to unite with goddesses?

A hard, or rather an incredible, condition — that what was permitted to Mars in intercourse by the law of Venus should not be permitted to Venus herself under her own law. Yet both were confirmed by Roman authority. For the later Caesar believed no less that Venus was his ancestress than the earlier Romulus believed that Mars was his father. Someone will say: Do you then believe these things? I indeed do not believe them. For even Varro, their most learned man, almost confesses these things to be false — though not boldly nor confidently.

But he says it is useful to states that brave men should believe themselves begotten of the gods, even if it be false, so that in this way the human mind, bearing the confidence as of divine stock, may more boldly presume to undertake great enterprises, may act more vigorously, and on this account may accomplish them the more happily through that very sense of security. This opinion of Varro, expressed as best I could in my own words, you see how wide a scope it opens to falsehood, so that from it we may understand that many more sacred and, as it were, religious things could have been fabricated, where lies were thought to profit the citizens even concerning the gods themselves. But whether Venus could bear Aeneas from intercourse with Anchises, or Mars beget Romulus from intercourse with the daughter of Numitor, let us leave undecided.

For almost a like question arises even from our own Scriptures, wherein it is asked whether the transgressing angels lay with the daughters of men, from whom, when giants — that is, exceedingly great and mighty men — were born, the earth was at that time filled. Accordingly, let our discussion for the present be referred to both cases alike. For if the things read among them concerning the mother of Aeneas and the father of Romulus are true, how can adulteries of men displease the gods, which they harmoniously bear in themselves? But if they are false, then not even so can they be angry at true human adulteries, seeing that they delight even in their own false ones.

To this is added that, if the story about Mars is not believed, so that neither is the one about Venus believed, then by no pretence of divine intercourse is the mother of Romulus's cause defended. But she was that Vestal priestess; and therefore the gods ought rather to have avenged that sacrilegious disgrace upon the Romans than the adultery of Paris upon the Trojans. For the ancient Romans themselves used to bury alive even the priestesses of Vesta caught in fornication, whereas adulterous women, though with some condemnation, they yet punished with no death: so far more grievously did they avenge what they thought divine sanctuaries than human beds.

I add another point: that if the sins of men displeased those divinities, so that, offended at the deed of Paris, they gave up abandoned Troy to sword and flames, the murder of Romulus's brother ought to have moved them more against the Romans than the mocked Greek husband against the Trojans; the parricide of a city just being born ought to have provoked them more than the adultery of one already reigning. Nor does it matter, for the cause we are now pleading, whether Romulus ordered this to be done or Romulus did it — a thing which many deny out of shamelessness, many doubt out of shame, many dissemble out of grief. Nor let us therefore delay in inquiring into that matter more diligently through the weighed testimonies of many writers: it is openly agreed that Romulus's brother was slain — not by enemies, not by strangers.

If Romulus either perpetrated or ordered this, he was more truly the head of the Romans than Paris was of the Trojans; why then did that ravisher of another's wife provoke the wrath of the gods upon the Trojans, while this slayer of his own brother invited the protection of those same gods upon the Romans? But if that crime is foreign to the deed and command of Romulus: since it certainly ought to have been avenged, the whole city did this, which the whole city held in contempt; and it slew, no longer a brother, but — what is worse — a father. For both were founders, where the one, taken away by crime, was not permitted to be a ruler.

There is no reason, as I judge, why it should be asked what evil Troy deserved, that the gods should abandon it so that it might be destroyed, and what good Rome deserved, that the gods should inhabit it so that it might be increased — unless it be that, conquered, they fled thence and betook themselves to these Romans, whom they might likewise deceive; nay rather, they both remained there to deceive after their manner those who should again inhabit those same lands, and here, by practising even more the art of their deceit, they gloried in greater honours. For surely, when civil wars were already teeming, what misery had Ilium committed, that it should be overthrown by Fimbria, a most wicked man of the Marian party, far more ferociously and cruelly than of old by the Greeks?

For then indeed many fled thence, and many, taken captive, at least survived in slavery; but Fimbria first issued an edict that no one should be spared, and then burned the whole city and all the men in it in a conflagration. This Ilium deserved — not from the Greeks whom it had provoked by its own iniquity, but from the Romans whom it had propagated by its own disaster — while those common gods gave no help toward repelling these calamities, or, what is the truth, had no power to do so. Did then also at that time 'depart all the gods, forsaking their shrines and altars,' by whom that town had stood, after being rebuilt from the ancient fires and ruins wrought by the Greeks? But if they had departed, I seek the cause; and the better I find the cause of the townsmen, the worse I find that of the gods.

For they had shut their gates against Fimbria, in order to keep the city intact for Sulla; whereupon he, in anger, burned them, or rather utterly destroyed them. Yet Sulla was still the leader of the better party in the civil war, still striving to recover the commonwealth by arms; of these good beginnings he had not yet had the evil outcomes. What then could the citizens of that city have done better, what more honourable, what more faithful, what more worthy of their Roman kinship, than to keep their city for the better cause of the Romans and to shut their gates against a parricide of the Roman commonwealth? But to what destruction this turned for them, let the defenders of the gods take heed. The gods may have abandoned the adulterers and left Ilium to the flames of the Greeks, that from its ashes a chaster Rome might be born:

why then did they afterwards likewise abandon that same city, kindred to the Romans — not rebelling against Rome her noble daughter, but keeping most constant and most dutiful faith with the juster party of Rome — and leave it to be destroyed, not by the brave men of the Greeks, but by a most filthy man of the Romans? Or if the cause of the Sullan party displeased the gods, for whose sake the wretched citizens had shut their gates in keeping the city: why did they promise and foretell such great goods to that same Sulla? Or is it here too recognized that they are flatterers of the fortunate rather than defenders of the unfortunate? Not even then, therefore, was Ilium overthrown by their abandoning it. For the demons, ever most vigilant to deceive, did what they could.

For when all things had been overthrown and burned along with the town and its images, the statue of Minerva alone, beneath so great a ruin of that temple, is reported — as Livy writes — to have stood intact: not that it might be said, to their praise, 'gods of our fathers, beneath whose divinity Troy ever stands,' but that it might not be said, in their defence, 'departed are all the gods, forsaking their shrines and altars.' For this they were permitted to do — not whereby they might be proved powerful, but whereby they might be convicted of being present. To the gods of Ilium, therefore, after the very lesson of Troy, with what prudence, pray, was Rome committed to be guarded? Someone may say that they were already accustomed to dwell at Rome when, as Fimbria stormed it, Ilium fell. Whence then stood the statue of Minerva?

Then, if they were at Rome when Fimbria destroyed Ilium, perhaps they were at Ilium when Rome herself was taken and burned by the Gauls; but, as they are most keen of hearing and most swift of movement, at the voice of the goose they quickly returned, to guard at least the Capitoline hill, which remained; but for defending the rest they were warned to return too late. These same gods are also believed to have aided Numa Pompilius, the successor of Romulus, so that throughout the whole time of his reign he might have peace and might close the gates of Janus, which are wont to stand open in wars — by that merit, forsooth, because he established many sacred rites for the Romans.

But that man ought to have been congratulated on so great a leisure, if only he had known how to spend it on wholesome things, and, neglecting his most pernicious curiosity, to seek out the true God with true piety. But as it was, the gods did not confer that leisure upon him; rather, they would perhaps have deceived him less, had they found him not at leisure. For the less occupied they found him, the more they themselves occupied him. For what he contrived, and by what arts he was able to associate such gods with himself or with that city, Varro relates — which, if it please the Lord, shall be more diligently discussed in its own place. But for now, since the question is about their benefits:

peace is a great benefit, but it is a benefit of the true God, given, like the sun and the rain and other supports of life, for the most part even upon the ungrateful and the wicked. But if the gods conferred this so great a good upon Rome or upon Pompilius, why did they never afterwards bestow it upon the Roman empire throughout those ages worthy of praise? Or were the sacred rites more useful while they were being instituted than when, once instituted, they were being celebrated? But at that former time they did not yet exist, but were being added in order to exist; whereas afterwards they already existed, and were being preserved that they might profit.

What is it, then, that those forty-three years — or, as others will have it, thirty-nine — were passed in so long a peace while Numa reigned, and afterwards, once the sacred rites were instituted and the very gods, who had been invited by those same rites, were now presiding and protecting, hardly, after so many years from the founding of the City down to Augustus, is one single year recorded as a great miracle, after the first Punic War, in which the Romans were able to close the gates of war? Or do they answer that, unless by continual wars ever succeeding one another, the Roman empire could not have been so far and wide enlarged and spread abroad with such great glory? A fitting cause indeed! That the empire might be great, why ought it to be restless?

Is it not, in the bodies of men, better to have a moderate stature with health than to attain to some gigantic mass by perpetual afflictions, and, when you have attained it, not to rest, but, the larger the limbs, to be harassed by the greater evils? But what evil would there have been — nay, rather, how much good — if those times had endured which Sallust briefly described, where he says: 'Therefore in the beginning kings (for on earth this was the first name of power), differing among themselves, some exercised the mind, others the body; even then the life of men was passed without covetousness; each was well content with his own.' Or, that the empire might be so greatly enlarged, ought that to have come to pass which Virgil detested, saying:

'until, little by little, a worse and discoloured age succeeded, and the madness of war and the love of possessing'? But plainly, for so many wars undertaken and waged, there is a just defence of the Romans: that it was not the greed of acquiring human praise, but the necessity of protecting their safety and liberty, that compelled them to resist enemies violently rushing upon them at an inopportune time. So let it plainly be. For 'after their affairs,' as Sallust himself writes, 'increased in laws, in morals, in lands, seemed prosperous enough and powerful enough, then, as most things of mortals are held, envy arose out of their opulence. Therefore neighbouring kings and peoples assailed them in war; a few of their friends were of help, for the rest, struck with fear, held aloof from the dangers.'

'But the Romans, intent at home and in war, hastened to make ready, exhorted one another, went out to meet the enemy, defended with arms their liberty, their country, and their parents. Afterward, when they had by valour driven off the dangers, they carried aid to their allies and friends, and procured friendships more by giving than by receiving benefits.' Becomingly did Rome grow by these arts. But while Numa reigned, so that there was so long a peace, did wicked men rush upon her and assail her in war, or did none of these things happen, so that that peace could persist? For if even then Rome was harassed by wars, and arms were not borne against arms:

by whatever means it was brought about that the enemies, subdued by no battle, terrified by no martial onset, were quieted — by those same means it might always have been brought about, and Rome might always have reigned in peace with the gates of Janus closed. But if this was not in their power, then Rome had peace not so long as her gods, but so long as her neighbouring men, all around, willed it — men who provoked her by no war; unless perchance such gods will even dare to sell to a man that which another man willed or did not will. It matters indeed — now by their own vice — to what extent these demons are permitted either to terrify or to stir up evil minds;

but if they could always do this, and nothing else were often done otherwise, against their endeavour, by a more secret and higher power, they would always have in their power peaces and warlike victories, which almost always come about through the motions of human minds; yet that these for the most part happen against their will is confessed not only by the fables, which lie in many things and scarcely either indicate or signify anything of the truth, but even by Roman history itself. For it was from no other cause that Apollo of Cumae, when war was being waged against the Achaeans and King Aristonicus, was reported to have wept for four days;

and when the soothsayers, terrified by this portent, had thought that that statue must be cast into the sea, the elders of Cumae intervened and related that such a portent had appeared in the same image in the war of Antiochus and of Perses too, and that, because it had turned out fortunately for the Romans, by decree of the senate gifts had been sent to that same Apollo of theirs — so they testified. Then soothsayers reckoned more skilled were summoned, and answered that the weeping of the statue of Apollo was for this reason prosperous for the Romans: because the colony of Cumae was a Greek one, and Apollo, by his weeping, signified mourning and disaster to his own lands, whence he had been summoned — that is, to Greece herself.

Then soon afterward it was announced that King Aristonicus had been conquered and captured — whom Apollo certainly did not wish to be conquered, and grieved over it, and by the very tears of his stone he indicated this. Whence it is not everywhere unfitting that the manners of the demons should be described in the songs of the poets, fabulous indeed, yet resembling the truth. For Diana grieved for Camilla in Virgil, and Hercules wept for Pallas about to die.

Hence perhaps also Numa Pompilius, abounding in peace but not knowing by whose gift, nor inquiring, when at leisure he pondered to what gods he should commit the guarding of the Roman safety and kingdom — since he did not suppose that the true and almighty most high God cared for these earthly things, and recollected that the Trojan gods, whom Aeneas had brought, had been able to preserve for long neither the Trojan realm nor the Lavinian realm founded by Aeneas himself — thought that others must be provided, whom he might set over those former ones (which had either already crossed with Romulus to Rome, or were at some time to cross when Alba was overthrown), either as guards over fugitives, as it were, or as helpers over the feeble.

Nor yet did Rome deign to be content with these sacred rites, which Pompilius had there established in such numbers. For it did not yet have the chief temple of Jupiter himself; it was King Tarquinius who built the Capitol there. Aesculapius, moreover, came round from Epidaurus to Rome, that as a most skilled physician he might practise his art more gloriously in a most noble city; the mother of the gods too, from I know not where, from Pessinus — for it was unworthy that, while her son already presided over the Capitoline hill, she herself should still lie hidden in an ignoble place. But if she is the mother of all the gods, she not only followed to Rome certain of her sons, but even preceded others who were also to follow. I truly marvel if she herself bore Cynocephalus, who came from Egypt far later.

Whether the goddess Fever too was born of her, let Aesculapius, her great-grandson, look to it; but from wherever she was born, they will not, I think, dare to call her ignoble — she a Roman citizen goddess, when the foreign gods do not. Under the protection of so many gods (whom can anyone number — native and foreign, celestial and terrestrial, infernal and marine, of springs and of rivers, and, as Varro says, certain and uncertain, and, in all kinds of gods, as among animals, males and females?) — under the protection, then, of so many gods, Rome, so established, ought not to have been driven and afflicted by such great and horrible disasters, of which out of many I shall recall a few.

For it had, by its great smoke as by a given signal, gathered too many gods for its protection, whom, by instituting temples, altars, sacrifices, and priests, and by furnishing these, it offended the supreme true God, to whom alone these things duly performed are owed. And happier indeed it lived with fewer of them; but the greater it became — like a ship its sailors — the more gods it thought must be employed; believing, I suppose, that those fewer ones, under whom it had lived better in comparison with a worse life, did not suffice to succour its greatness, and despairing of them. For at first, under the very kings — except Numa Pompilius, of whom I have already spoken above — how great an evil of discordant strife there was, which compelled the brother of Romulus to be slain!

How was it that neither Juno, who with her Jupiter was already cherishing the Romans as lords of the world and the toga-wearing nation, nor Venus herself, could aid her own Aeneadae, so that by a good and equitable custom they might obtain marriages? And so great a calamity of this lack rushed in, that they seized the women by guile and were soon compelled to fight with their fathers-in-law, so that the wretched women, not yet reconciled to their husbands after the wrong, were already dowered with their parents' blood. But indeed the Romans conquered their neighbours in this conflict. At the cost of how many and how great wounds and deaths on both sides — of kinsmen and neighbours — did these victories stand!

On account of one father-in-law, Caesar, and one son-in-law of his, Pompey — Caesar's daughter, Pompey's wife, being now dead — with how great and how just a prompting of grief does Lucan cry out: 'Wars more than civil across the Emathian plains, and right conceded to crime, we sing.' The Romans conquered, therefore, so that from the slaughter of the fathers-in-law, with hands bloodied, they wrung wretched embraces from their daughters; nor did those women dare to weep for their slain fathers, lest they offend their victorious husbands — women who, while these men were still fighting, did not know for which of them to make their vows. To such nuptials it was not Venus but Bellona that gave the Roman people; or perhaps Allecto, that infernal Fury, with Juno now favouring them, had more licence against them than when she had been roused by Juno's prayers against Aeneas.

Andromache was more happily taken captive than those Roman brides were wedded. Slavish though it was, yet after her embraces Pyrrhus slew none of the Trojans; but the Romans slew their fathers-in-law in battle, whose daughters they were already embracing in the bridal chamber. She, subjected to the victor, could only grieve the death of her own, not fear it; those women, joined to combatants, feared their parents' deaths as their husbands went forth, grieved them as they returned, having neither their fear nor their grief free. For, on account of the destruction of citizens who were their kin, their brothers, their parents, they were either piously tormented, or cruelly gladdened by the victories of their husbands.

To this was added that, as the fortunes of war are alternate, some women lost their husbands by their parents' sword, some lost both parents and husbands by the sword of both. For neither among the Romans were those crises small, seeing that they came even to the siege of the city, and, the gates being shut, they defended themselves; when, the gates being opened by guile and the enemy admitted within the walls, in the very forum a wicked and all too atrocious battle was joined between sons-in-law and fathers-in-law, and those ravishers were even being overcome, and, often fleeing among their own houses, they more grievously defiled their former victories — though these too were shameful and to be lamented. Here, however, Romulus, now despairing of the valour of his own men, prayed Jupiter that they might stand; and he, on this occasion, found the name of Stator.

Nor would there have been any end to so great an evil, had not those ravished women, with disheveled hair, rushed out and, throwing themselves at their parents' feet, calmed their most just anger not by victorious arms but by suppliant devotion. Then Romulus was compelled to accept as partner in his kingdom Titus Tatius, king of the Sabines, though he was impatient of a colleague who was his own kin. But how long could he have tolerated even this man, he who did not endure his own twin brother? And so, when this one too was slain, that he might be the greater god, he obtained the kingdom alone. What sort of marriage rites are these, which are but provocations to wars? What covenants of brotherhood, of kinship, of fellowship, of divinity? What, in the end, was the life of the city under so many guardian gods?

You see how much could be said on this theme, and how many things, were it not that our attention must attend to what remains and our discourse hastens on to other matters. What then came after Numa, under the other kings? With how great an evil—not only to themselves but also to the Romans—were the Albans provoked into war, merely because Numa's peace, being so prolonged, had grown cheap in their eyes! How frequent were the slaughters of the Roman and Alban armies, and the crippling of both cities! For that Alba, which Ascanius, son of Aeneas, founded—herself a nearer mother to Rome than Troy—being challenged by King Tullus Hostilius, joined battle; and in the fighting she was both stricken and gave stroke for stroke, until, in equal exhaustion, both sides grew weary of so many struggles. Then it pleased them to try the outcome of the war by means of triplet brothers on either side:

from the Romans came forth the three Horatii, and from the Albans the three Curiatii; by the three Curiatii two of the Horatii were overcome, but by the one surviving Horatius the three Curiatii were defeated and slain. Thus Rome emerged victorious in that carnage, though in the final combat, so that of six men one alone returned home. Whose was the loss on both sides, whose the mourning, but that of Aeneas's stock and Ascanius's posterity, of Venus's offspring and Jupiter's grandsons? For this too was more than a civil war, since a daughter city fought against her mother city. And to this last combat of the triplets there was added another atrocious and horrible evil. For as both peoples had formerly been friends (being indeed neighbors and kinsfolk), the sister of the Horatii had been betrothed to one of the Curiatii;

but afterward, when she beheld the spoils of her betrothed upon her victorious brother, she was slain by that very brother because she wept. To me the feeling of this one woman seems more human than that of the whole Roman people. She wept, I think, not blamably, for the man to whom she was already bound by a pledge already half-given—or perhaps she grieved even for her very brother, who had slain the man to whom he had promised his sister. For why, in Virgil, does the pious Aeneas laudably grieve for an enemy slain even by his own hand? Why did Marcellus, recalling the city of Syracuse, whose lofty splendor and glory a little before had suddenly fallen beneath his hands, pondering the common condition of mankind, pity it with tears?

I beg that we may obtain this from human feeling: that a woman should be allowed to weep without crime for her betrothed slain by her brother, if men wept even with praise for enemies vanquished by themselves. Therefore, at the very time when that woman was weeping for the death inflicted by her brother upon her betrothed, Rome was rejoicing that she had waged war against her mother city with such slaughter, and had conquered by so great an outpouring of kindred blood on this side and that. Why is the name of praise, the name of victory, held up before me? Let the obstacles of insane opinion be removed, and let the deeds be seen naked, weighed naked, judged naked. Let the case of Alba be stated, just as the adultery of Troy was alleged. No such case, none like it, is to be found; only that Tullus might rouse to arms men grown sluggish, and ranks now unused to triumphs.

By that vice, then, was perpetrated so great a crime of a war both allied and kindred—a vice which Sallust touches upon in passing as something great. For when, in praising them, he had briefly recalled more ancient times, when the life of men was passed without covetousness and each was well content with his own, he says: "But afterward, when in Asia Cyrus, and in Greece the Lacedaemonians and Athenians began to subdue cities and nations, to hold the lust of domination as a cause of war, to reckon the greatest glory to lie in the greatest empire," and the rest which he had set himself to say. For me let it suffice to have set down thus far his words. This lust of domination harasses and grinds down the human race with great evils.

By this lust Rome, then herself conquered, triumphed as though she had conquered Alba, and called the praise of her own crime 'glory'; for, as our Scripture says, "the sinner is praised in the desires of his soul, and he who does iniquity is blessed." Let the deceitful coverings, then, and the deceptive whitewashings be taken away from things, that they may be inspected by a sincere scrutiny. Let no one say to me: This or that man is great because he fought with such and such a one and conquered him. Gladiators also fight, and they too conquer, and that cruelty has the rewards of praise; but I think it better to pay the penalties of any sloth whatever than to seek the glory of those arms.

And yet, if gladiators were to advance into the arena to fight one another, of whom one were the son and the other the father, who could endure such a spectacle? Who would not put a stop to it? How, then, could the armed contest between two cities—the one a mother, the other a daughter—be glorious? Or was it different for this reason, that there was no arena there, and that the wider fields were filled not with two gladiators but with the many corpses of two peoples? That those combats were not encircled by an amphitheater, but by the whole world, and that an impious spectacle was set before both the living then and posterity, as far as that fame extends?

Yet those gods, presiders over the Roman empire, suffered violence to their zeal, and were as it were theater-spectators of such combats, until the sister of the Horatii, on account of the three slain Curiatii, was herself added as a third from the other side, by fraternal steel, to the two brothers—lest even Rome, which had conquered, should have fewer deaths. Then, for the fruit of victory, Alba was overthrown—Alba, where, after Ilium, which the Greeks destroyed, and after Lavinium, where Aeneas had established a foreign and fugitive kingdom, those Trojan divinities had dwelt in the third place. But after their custom, they had perhaps already migrated even from there, and therefore it was destroyed. "Departed indeed were all the gods, their shrines and altars forsaken, by whom that empire had stood."

They had departed, forsooth—behold, now for the third time—so that to them a fourth Rome might, most providently, be entrusted. For Alba too had displeased them, where Amulius reigned after driving out his brother, and Rome had pleased them, where Romulus reigned after slaying his brother. But before Alba was demolished, her people, they say, were transferred into Rome, that from the two one city might be made. Be it so; let it have been done thus. Yet that city, the kingdom of Ascanius and the third dwelling-place of the Trojan gods, was overthrown—a mother by a daughter city; and that the remnants of the war from the two peoples might make one, much blood of both was first shed, a pitiable cement.

Why should I now recount, one by one, under the remaining kings, those same wars so often renewed, which seemed to be ended by victories, yet were finished off again and again with such great slaughters, and again and again, after treaty and peace, taken up anew between fathers-in-law and sons-in-law and their stock and posterity? No small token of this calamity was that none of those kings closed the gates of war. None of them, therefore, under so many presiding gods, reigned in peace. And what ends did the kings themselves have? As to Romulus, let fabulous flattery see to it, whereby he is reported to have been received into heaven;

but let certain of their own writers see to it—those who said that he was torn to pieces by the senate on account of his ferocity, and that a certain Julius Proculus was suborned to say that Romulus had appeared to him and had charged him to bid the Roman people that he be worshiped among the divinities; and that in this way the people, who had begun to swell against the senate, were repressed and pacified. For there had occurred also an eclipse of the sun, which the ignorant multitude, not knowing that it was produced by the fixed law of the sun's course, attributed to the merits of Romulus. As if, forsooth, had that been the sun's mourning, he ought not rather on that account to be believed slain, and the very crime shown even by the aversion of the daily light; as indeed happened when the Lord was crucified by the cruelty and impiety of the Jews.

That this darkening of the sun did not happen from the regular course of the heavenly bodies is sufficiently shown by the fact that it was then the Passover of the Jews; for that is solemnly kept at the full moon, whereas a regular eclipse of the sun occurs only at the moon's waning. Cicero too sufficiently indicates that Romulus's reception among the gods was rather supposed than accomplished, when, in praising him in his books On the Republic, in the discourse of Scipio, he says:

"He achieved so much that, when he had suddenly failed to appear during an eclipse of the sun, he was thought to have been placed in the number of the gods—an opinion which no mortal was ever able to attain without an extraordinary glory of virtue." (But as for his saying that Romulus suddenly failed to appear, there is surely to be understood either the violence of a tempest or the secrecy of murder and crime;)

for other of their writers add to the eclipse of the sun also a sudden tempest, which assuredly either afforded occasion for the crime, or itself consumed Romulus. Concerning Tullus Hostilius too, who was the third king from Romulus, and who was himself likewise consumed by a thunderbolt, the same Cicero says in those same books that this man was for this reason not believed to have been received among the gods by such a death—because, perhaps, what had been proved (that is, made credible) in the case of Romulus, the Romans were unwilling to make common, that is, to make cheap, if it were readily attributed to another also. He says also openly in his invectives:

"Him who founded this city, Romulus, we have raised to the immortal gods by goodwill and by fame"—thus showing that it was not truly done, but that, on account of the merits of his virtue, it was benevolently bruited and spread abroad. But in the dialogue Hortensius, when he was speaking of the regular eclipses of the sun, he says: "That it may produce the same darkness which it produced at the destruction of Romulus, which came about by an eclipse of the sun." Here assuredly he was in no wise afraid to speak of the destruction of a man, because he was a debater rather than a eulogist. But the other kings of the Roman people—except Numa Pompilius and Ancus Marcius, who died of disease—what horrible ends did they have! Tullus Hostilius, as I said, the conqueror and overthrower of Alba, was consumed together with his whole household by a thunderbolt.

Priscus Tarquinius was slain by the sons of his predecessor. Servius Tullius was murdered by a nefarious crime through his son-in-law Tarquinius Superbus, who succeeded him in the kingdom. Nor did "the gods depart, forsaking their shrines and altars" when so great a parricide was perpetrated against the best king of that people—those gods who, they say, were moved by the adultery of Paris to do this to wretched Troy and to leave her to be demolished and burned by the Greeks; but, over and above, Tarquinius himself, having slain his father-in-law, succeeded him.

This man, a nefarious parricide reigning through the murder of his father-in-law, moreover glorying in many wars and victories, and building the Capitol from his spoils—these gods, not withdrawing but present and abiding, beheld; and they suffered their king Jupiter to preside and reign for them in that loftiest temple, that is, in the work of a parricide. For it was not while yet innocent that he built the Capitol and was afterward driven from the City for his ill deserts; but he came to that very kingship, in which he built the Capitol, by the perpetration of a most monstrous crime. And as for the Romans afterward driving him from the kingdom and shutting him out from the walls of the city, this was not on account of his own outrage upon Lucretia, but the sin of his son, committed while he not only knew nothing of it but was even absent.

He was then besieging the city of Ardea, waging war on behalf of the Roman people; we do not know what he would have done, had the outrage of his son been brought to his notice; and yet, with his verdict unexamined and untried, the people took away his sovereignty; and, having recalled the army, which had been bidden to desert him, then, with the gates shut, they did not permit him to enter as he returned.

But he, after most grievous wars, by which he wore down those same Romans with his neighbors stirred up against them, afterward, being deserted by those on whose aid he had relied and unable to recover the kingdom, spent, it is said, fourteen years of private life in quiet in the town of Tusculum near Rome, and grew old with his wife—perhaps with a more desirable end than his father-in-law, who, by the crime of his son-in-law, with even his daughter not unaware, as is reported, was done to death. Yet the Romans did not call this Tarquinius cruel or wicked, but Proud—perhaps because their own pride could not brook his royal haughtiness. For the crime of the best king, his father-in-law, slain by him, they so utterly despised that they made him their king;

wherein I marvel if they did not repay so great a reward for so great a crime by a still graver crime. Nor did "the gods depart, forsaking their shrines and altars." Unless perchance someone should defend these gods in such a way as to say that they remained at Rome for this reason: that they might the more punish the Romans with torments than aid them with benefits, seducing them with empty victories and grinding them down with most grievous wars. Such was the life of the Romans under the kings, during that praiseworthy period of that commonwealth, up to the expulsion of Tarquinius Superbus, for about two hundred and forty-three years, while all those victories, bought with so much blood and such great calamities, scarcely extended that empire to within twenty miles from the City;

a compass so small that it can by no means be compared even now with the territory of any Gaetulian city. To this period let us add also that time during which, Sallust says, affairs were conducted under a fair and moderate rule, so long as the fear of Tarquinius and the grievous war with Etruria lasted. For as long as the Etruscans lent aid to Tarquinius striving to return to the kingdom, Rome was shaken by grievous war. Therefore he says the commonwealth was administered under a fair and moderate rule, with fear pressing, not with justice persuading. In which very brief period, how deadly was that year in which the first consuls were created, when the royal power had been expelled! For they did not complete their year. For Junius Brutus expelled from the City his colleague Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, after depriving him of his honor;

then soon he himself fell in battle by mutual wounds with the enemy, having first slain his own sons and his wife's brothers, because he had learned that they had conspired to restore Tarquinius. And this deed, after Virgil had laudably commemorated it, he straightway humanely shuddered at. For when he had said, "The father shall summon to punishment his sons stirring up new wars, for the sake of fair liberty," he presently thereupon exclaimed and said, "Unhappy man, however posterity shall bear those deeds." However posterity may bear those deeds, he says—that is, prefer and extol them—he who slew his sons is unhappy. And as if to console the unhappy man, he subjoined: "The love of country conquers, and the boundless desire for praise."

Does it not seem that in this Brutus, who both slew his sons and, struck down by the son of Tarquinius whom he himself had struck, could not survive—so that Tarquinius rather outlived him—the innocence of his colleague Collatinus was avenged? For Collatinus, a good citizen, suffered upon the expulsion of Tarquinius the same thing that the tyrant Tarquinius himself suffered. For this same Brutus too is reported to have been a blood-relation of Tarquinius; but Collatinus, forsooth, the likeness of his name pressed hard, because he too was called Tarquinius. He should therefore have been compelled to change his name, not his country; or, in the end, in his name this word should have been dropped, and he should have been called merely L. Collatinus. But he did not lose that which he might have lost without any detriment, so that he was bidden to be deprived both of the honor of being first consul and of his citizenship as a good citizen.

Is this too glory—the detestable iniquity of Junius Brutus, in no way useful to the commonwealth? Was it also "the love of country and the boundless desire for praise" that conquered, in order to perpetrate this? When the tyrant Tarquinius had been expelled, Lucretia's husband, Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, was created consul together with Brutus. How justly did the people regard character in a citizen, not his name! How impiously did Brutus deprive of both country and honor the colleague of that first and new power—a man whom, if he was offended by this, he could have deprived of his name only! These evil deeds were done, these adversities befell, when in that commonwealth "affairs were conducted under a fair and moderate rule." Lucretius too, who had been substituted in Brutus's place, was carried off by disease before that same year came to an end.

Thus Publius Valerius, who had succeeded Collatinus, and Marcus Horatius, who had been substituted in place of the deceased Lucretius, completed that funereal and hellish year, which had five consuls—the year in which the Roman commonwealth inaugurated the new honor and power of the consulship itself. Then, the fear being now somewhat diminished—not because the wars had subsided, but because they no longer pressed with so grievous a weight—the time being ended, that is, during which affairs were conducted under a fair and moderate rule, there followed the things which the same Sallust briefly sets forth: "then the senators exercised the plebs with a servile despotism, disposed of their life and person after the manner of kings, drove them from their land, and, all others being excluded from the soil, held sway alone."

"The plebs, oppressed by these cruelties and especially by usury, while at the same time enduring tribute and military service in continual wars, took up arms and occupied the Sacred Mount and the Aventine, and then procured for themselves tribunes of the plebs and other rights. The end of the discords and struggles on both sides was the Second Punic War." Why, then, should I endure such long delays, whether in writing them, or should I inflict them on those about to read? How wretched that commonwealth was, throughout so long an age, over the whole span of years down to the Second Punic War—with wars from without not ceasing to disquiet it, and within with discords and civil seditions—has been briefly intimated by Sallust.

Accordingly, those victories were not the solid joys of the blessed, but the empty solaces of the wretched, and enticing incitements to men by no means at rest, to undergo yet other and other barren evils. And let not good and prudent Romans be angry with us because we say this; although concerning this matter they need neither to be entreated nor admonished, since it is most certain that they will in no wise be angry. For we say nothing more grievous, nor anything more grievous, than their own authors—far inferior to whom we are both in style and in leisure—yet whom they themselves have labored to learn thoroughly, and compel their sons to labor at. But those who are angry—how would they bear me, if I were to say what Sallust says?

"Very many disturbances, seditions, and at last civil wars arose, while a few powerful men, into whose favor most had yielded, under the honorable name of senators or of plebs, aimed at domination; and good and bad citizens were so called, not for their merits toward the commonwealth—all being equally corrupt—but according as each was most wealthy and mightier in doing injury, because he defended the present state of things, he was reckoned as good." Now if those writers of history judged it to pertain to honorable liberty not to keep silent about the evils of their own city—which in many places they were compelled to praise with great proclamation, since they had no other, truer city, into which the eternal citizens are to be chosen:

what does it befit us to do, whose hope in God is so much better and more certain, that our liberty ought to be by so much the greater, when they impute present evils to our Christ, in order that weaker and more ignorant minds may be alienated from that city in which alone one must live perpetually and blessedly? Nor do we say things more horrible against their gods than do their own authors, again and again, whom they read and proclaim—since indeed we have received the very things we would say from those authors themselves, and are in no way able to say either such things or all of them. Where, then, were those gods who are thought worthy of worship for the sake of the scanty and deceitful felicity of this world, when the Romans—to whom, by most mendacious cunning, they vaunted themselves as worthy of worship—were harassed by such great calamities?

Where were they, when the consul Valerius was slain while defending the Capitol, set on fire by exiles and slaves—and he himself was more easily able to profit the temple of Jupiter than that throng of so many divinities, with their greatest and best king, whose temple he had freed, was able to come to his aid? Where were they, when the city, wearied by the densest evils of seditions, while it awaited, a little at rest, the envoys sent to Athens to borrow laws, was laid waste by grievous famine and pestilence? Where were they, when again the people, laboring under famine, first created a prefect of the corn-supply, and when, as that famine grew strong, Spurius Maelius, because he lavished grain upon the hungry multitude, incurred the charge of aiming at kingship, and, at the insistence of that same prefect, through the dictator, Lucius

Quintius, decrepit with age, he was slain by Quintus Servilius, the master of the horse, amid the greatest and most perilous tumult of the city? Where were they, when a very great pestilence having arisen, the people—long and greatly wearied by the useless gods—resolved to exhibit new lectisternia (couch-spreadings), which it had never done before? Now couches were spread in honor of the gods, whence this rite—or rather this sacrilege—received its name. Where were they, when for ten continuous years, by fighting badly, the Roman army had received frequent and great defeats at Veii, unless at last help was brought through Furius Camillus, whom the ungrateful city afterward condemned? Where were they, when the Gauls took Rome, despoiled it, burned it, and filled it with slaughter?

Where were they, when that notable pestilence gave so vast a slaughter, in which that Furius Camillus too was carried off—he who had both defended the ungrateful commonwealth against the Veientes before, and afterward avenged it upon the Gauls? In this pestilence they introduced scenic games, a new plague, not upon the bodies of the Romans, but—what is far more pernicious—upon their morals. Where were they, when another grievous pestilence was believed to have arisen from the poisonings of matrons, whose morals, beyond belief, in the case of many and noble women, were found out to be graver than any pestilence?

Or when, at the Caudine Forks, both consuls with their army, besieged by the Samnites, were compelled to make a shameful treaty with them, such that, six hundred Roman knights being given as hostages, the rest, having lost their arms and being stripped and deprived of their other coverings, were sent under the enemy's yoke each in a single garment? Or when, amid a grievous pestilence with the rest laboring, many even in the army perished, struck by lightning? Or when, likewise in another intolerable pestilence, Rome was compelled to summon and employ Aesculapius from Epidaurus as a physician-god, since the many debaucheries in which Jupiter, king of all, who had long sat in the Capitol, had indulged in his youth had perhaps not allowed him to learn medicine?

Or when, the enemies conspiring at one time—the Lucanians, the Bruttii, the Samnites, the Etruscans, and the Senonian Gauls—the envoys were first slain by them, and then an army was overwhelmed together with its praetor, seven tribunes perishing along with him and thirteen thousand of the soldiers? Or when, after long and grievous seditions at Rome, in which at last the plebs had seceded to the Janiculum in hostile separation, so dire was the calamity of this evil that, for the cause of this matter—as was wont to be done in extreme perils—Hortensius was created dictator, who, having recalled the plebs, expired in that same magistracy—which had befallen no dictator before, and which, now that Aesculapius was present, was a graver charge against those gods?

But then so many wars grew rife everywhere that, through a scarcity of soldiers, those proletarians—who, because they were free for begetting offspring (proles) but, on account of their poverty, were unable to serve as soldiers, had received this name—were enrolled for military service. Pyrrhus too, king of Greece, then celebrated with vast glory, was summoned by the Tarentines and became an enemy of the Romans. To him, indeed, consulting about the future outcome of events, Apollo delivered an ambiguous oracle urbanely enough, so that, whichever of the two should come to pass, he himself might be held divine (for he said: "I say that you, Pyrrhus, can conquer the Romans"); and thus, whether Pyrrhus were conquered by the Romans or the Romans by Pyrrhus, the prophet might securely await either outcome. What then, and how horrible, was the slaughter of both armies!

In which, nevertheless, Pyrrhus came off the superior, so that he might now be able to proclaim Apollo divine according to his own understanding, had not the Romans, in the very next battle, come off superior. And amid so great a slaughter of wars, a grievous pestilence of women also arose. For before they brought forth their offspring at the due term, the pregnant women were dying. Here Aesculapius, I suppose, excused himself, on the ground that he professed to be a chief physician, not a midwife. Cattle also were likewise perishing, so that the race of animals too was believed to be about to fail. What of this?

That memorable winter, raging with such incredible severity that, with the snows remaining at a horrible depth even in the forum for forty days, the Tiber too was hardened with ice—if it had happened in our times, what and how great things would these men have said! What of that likewise huge pestilence—how long it raged, how many it destroyed! And when it stretched into another year far more grievously, in vain with Aesculapius present, recourse was had to the Sibylline books. In which kind of oracles, as Cicero recalls in his books On Divination, it is customary to give credence rather to the interpreters, who conjecture doubtful things as they can or as they will. Then, therefore, it was declared that the cause of the pestilence was this: that many held for private use very many sacred edifices they had occupied;

thus for the time being Aesculapius was freed from a great charge of ignorance or of negligence. But why had those edifices been occupied by many, with no one forbidding, except because so great a throng of divinities had long been supplicated in vain, and thus little by little the places were being deserted by their worshipers, so that, as though empty, they might, without any offense to anyone, be claimed at least for human uses? For unless those edifices—then, as though to allay the pestilence, diligently sought out again and repaired—had afterward, being neglected and usurped in the same way, lain hidden, it would not have been attributed to Varro's great learning that, writing about sacred edifices, he records so many as unknown. But then, for the time being, an elegant excusing of the gods, not an averting of the pestilence, was procured.

But now, in the Punic Wars, when victory long hung doubtful and uncertain between the two empires, and two most powerful peoples urged their bravest and most opulent onsets against one another, how many lesser kingdoms were crushed! What ample and noble cities were destroyed, how many afflicted, how many ruined communities! How far and wide were so many regions and lands laid waste! How often were the conquerors on this side and that themselves conquered! What a multitude of men was consumed, whether of soldiers fighting or of peoples free from arms! What a force of ships was overwhelmed even in naval battles, and sunk by the variety of diverse storms! If we should attempt to narrate or to recount it, we ourselves should be nothing else than writers of history.

Then the city of Rome, thrown into confusion by great fear, ran to empty and preposterous remedies. On the authority of the Sibylline books the Secular Games were restored, whose celebration had been appointed once every hundred years and, in happier times, had lapsed because the memory of them was neglected. The pontiffs likewise renewed the sacred games in honour of the powers below, games which had themselves been abolished in better years gone by. And no wonder: for when they were renewed, the powers below, enriched by so great a throng of the dying, took delight even in the sport, since assuredly those wretched men, by their very frenzied wars and bloody feuds and funereal victories on this side and on that, were staging grand games for the demons and rich banquets for the gods of the underworld.

Assuredly nothing more pitiable befell in the First Punic War than that the Romans were so utterly defeated that even the famous Regulus was taken captive—the man of whom we made mention in the first and second books—a truly great man, and formerly the conqueror and subduer of the Carthaginians, who would even have brought that first Punic War itself to an end, had he not, out of an excessive greed for praise and glory, imposed upon the exhausted Carthaginians harsher terms than they could bear. If that man's utterly unforeseen captivity, his most shameful servitude, his most faithful keeping of his oath, and his most cruel death do not compel those gods to blush, then it is true that they are of air and have no blood. Nor, at that time, were the gravest calamities lacking within the walls.

For when the river Tiber overflowed far beyond its wont, almost all the low-lying parts of the city were laid waste, some places dashed down by its onrush as by a torrent, others soaked and undermined as by a long-standing marsh. Then followed a still more destructive plague of fire, which, seizing upon all the higher buildings about the Forum, did not spare even the temple of Vesta, its most familiar haunt, where those virgins, not so much honoured as condemned, were wont to grant it as it were perpetual life by most diligently replacing the wood. There, however, the fire not only lived; it even raged.

Terrified by its onrush, the virgins, since they could not rescue from that conflagration those fateful sacred objects which had already been the safeguard of three cities in which they had been kept, the pontiff Metellus, forgetting in a manner his own safety, rushed in and snatched them away half-burned. For neither did the fire recognize even him, nor indeed was there any deity present there—which, even had it been present, would not have failed to flee. Thus a man was able to be of more use to the sacred things of Vesta than they to a man. But if they could not repel the fire from themselves, what could they avail against those floods and flames to help the city, whose safety they were supposed to guard? As indeed the very outcome made plain that they could avail nothing whatever.

These things we would by no means cast in their teeth, if they were to say that those sacred rites had been instituted not for the safeguarding of these temporal goods, but for the signifying of eternal ones; and that therefore, when it happened that these objects perished because they were bodily and visible, nothing was thereby diminished of those realities for the sake of which they had been instituted, and that they could be restored anew for the same uses. But as it is, in a strange blindness they suppose that, through those sacred objects which could perish, it could come to pass that the earthly welfare and temporal felicity of the city could not perish. Accordingly, since it is shown that even while the sacred things remained, either ruin of welfare or misfortune broke in, they blush to change an opinion which they cannot defend.

[XIX] But as for the Second Punic War, it would be too long to recount the disasters of the two peoples fighting each other so far and so wide, so that, even by the admission of those who set out not so much to narrate the Roman wars as to praise the Roman empire, he who conquered was more like one conquered. For when Hannibal rose up from Spain, and, having surmounted the Pyrenees, having overrun Gaul, and having burst through the Alps, poured down like a torrent upon the passes of Italy, with forces increased through so long a march, laying waste or subduing everything—how bloody were the battles fought, how often were the Romans overcome! how many towns went over to the enemy, how many were taken and crushed! how dread were the combats, and so often glorious for Hannibal through Roman disaster!

And as for the wondrously horrible calamity at Cannae, what shall I say, where Hannibal, cruel as he was, is nevertheless reported to have given orders that mercy be shown, sated with so vast a slaughter of his most bitter foes? Whence he sent three pecks of golden rings to Carthage, by which men understood that so great a dignity of the Roman order had fallen in that battle that a measure could reckon it more easily than a count; and hence the carnage of the rest of the throng—all the more numerous as it was of lower rank, which lay there without rings—was reckoned rather to be guessed at than reported. In short, so great a scarcity of soldiers followed that the Romans enrolled men guilty of crimes by promising them impunity, gave freedom to slaves, and thereby not so much replenished as newly constituted a shameful army.

Thus for slaves—or rather, that we may do them no wrong, now freedmen—about to fight for the Roman commonwealth, weapons were lacking. They were taken down from the temples, as though the Romans were saying to their gods: 'Lay aside what you have so long held to no purpose, in case our chattels can perhaps make some useful thing of it, whereof our deities could make nothing.' Then also, when the treasury had failed for the meeting of the soldiers' pay, private wealth came into public use, everyone contributing what he had, so that, apart from single rings and single bullae—the pitiable insignia of rank—the Senate itself, much less the other orders and tribes, left themselves no gold at all.

Who could endure these men, if in our times they were reduced to such want, when we can scarcely endure them even now, since for the sake of superfluous pleasure more is given to actors than was then contributed to the legions for the sake of ultimate safety? [XX] But among all these evils of the Second Punic War, nothing was more pitiable, nor more worthy of a pitiable lament, than the destruction of the people of Saguntum. For this city of Spain, most friendly to the Roman people, while keeping faith with that same people, was overthrown. For it was from here that Hannibal, having broken the treaty, sought pretexts by which to provoke the Romans to war. He was therefore fiercely besieging Saguntum; and when this was heard at Rome, envoys were sent to Hannibal to make him withdraw from the siege of it.