Read City of God (Penguin Classics) Online
Authors: Saint Augustine
19. The afflictions of the Second Punic War; both sides exhausted
It would take too long to recall the disasters suffered in the Second Punic War by two peoples engaged in battle over such a wide area. Even the historians who set out to sing the praises of the Roman Empire, rather than to recount Rome’s wars, have to admit that the victory resembled a defeat.
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Starting from Spain, Hannibal crossed the Pyrenees, dashed across Gaul, and thrust his way through the Alps. In the course of this long circuit he increased his resources by ravaging and subduing all the countryside as he passed, before rushing through the passes of Italy like a mountain torrent. And what bloody battles were waged then! How often the Romans were defeated! How many towns defected to the enemy, how many were captured and sacked! How frightful the battles were; and how often Rome’s disasters enhanced Hannibal’s glory! And what am I to say about the dreadful catastrophe at Cannae, where Hannibal, for all his savagery, was sated by such wholesale slaughter of his bitterest enemies and, it is said, ordered that quarter should be given? From that battle Hannibal sent to Carthage three pecks of gold rings,
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so that the people should realize that so many of the Roman nobility had fallen in that fight that it was easier to estimate the casualties by the peck than to count them. And from this evidence the carnage of the rest of the army – a crowd of slain who lay there without golden rings, more numerous because of lower rank – can be estimated by conjecture, not recorded in statistics. Such a shortage of soldiers followed that Rome gave impunity to convicted criminals and enlisted them, and granted freedom to slaves, and thus got together an army – for one cannot call them reinforcements. But it was no army to be proud of! And then these slaves – no, let us not insult them, those freedmen – who were to fight for the Roman republic, were in need of arms. The temples were ransacked, as if the Romans were saying to their gods, ‘Give up the arms which you have possessed this long time to no purpose. It may be that our slaves may be able to make good use of them, when you divinities of ours have not been able to turn them to account.’ Then there was not enough in the public treasury to pay the army, and private resources were called upon to support public expenses, so much so that individuals offered anything they had, their rings, their
lockets,
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the pitiable emblems of rank, and even the senators had no gold left for their own use, still less the members of the other orders, or mere members of the tribes. Who would be able to bear with our opponents, if they were forced into this kind of extremity in these times? As it is, we find them almost insupportable when more money is given to actors in payment for superfluous pleasure than was at that time collected to pay the legions for the defence of the very existence of Rome.
20.
The destruction of the Saguntines. They perished because of loyal friendship to Rome: but the Roman gods gave them no help
But in the midst of all the horrors of the Second Punic War nothing was more lamentable, nothing more deserving an outcry of compassion than the destruction of Saguntum.
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This Spanish city, a firm friend of the Roman people, was overthrown for keeping faith with Rome. For when Hannibal broke his treaty with Rome and was seeking occasion to provoke Rome to war, he began by laying fierce siege to Saguntum. When the news reached Rome, envoys were sent to Hannibal to induce him to abandon the siege. When they were scorned, they proceeded to Carthage, lodged a complaint about the breach of treaty, and returned to Rome without achieving the object of their mission. During those delays, that unfortunate city – a flourishing community, a cherished ornament of its country and a cherished ally of Rome – was exterminated by the Carthaginians, in eight or nine months. Even to read of its end fills one with horror, to say nothing of describing it in writing. Nevertheless, I will give a brief account of it, seeing that it is very relevant to my argument. At first the community was wasted by famine, it is even said that many of them ate the dead bodies of their dear ones. Then, when they were completely exhausted, the Saguntines, intending at all costs to avoid falling captive into the hands of Hannibal, erected a huge pyre in a public place, set it on fire and, in mutual slaughter, committed themselves and their fellows to the flames.
They might surely have done something about this, those contemptible gluttons of gods, who lick their lips at the fat of the sacrifices and deceive men by the murk of their lying prophesies. They might have done something to help that city, that firm friend of the
Roman people; they might have refused to allow it to perish because it kept faith.
For certainly they presided as mediators when Saguntum was linked with the Roman republic by a treaty of alliance. It was just because that city faithfully kept the compact into which it had entered by a decision taken under the presidency of the gods – a compact to which it had pledged faith and bound itself by oath – that it was besieged, overwhelmed, and annihilated by a conqueror who broke his faith. If it was those gods who later struck terror into Hannibal by storm and lightning, when he was close to the walls of Rome, and drove him far away, they might have done something of the sort on this earlier occasion. I make bold to say, indeed, that it would have been more honourable in them to have raged with their storms on behalf of those friends of theirs who were imperilling themselves rather than breaking faith, and who were then without any assistance, rather than on behalf of the Romans, who were only fighting for themselves, and who had great resources for their conflict with Hannibal.
If the gods had been the defenders of the happiness and glory of Rome they would have shielded Rome from the heavy guilt of the catastrophe that befell Saguntum. As it is, what folly to believe that Rome did not perish beneath a conquering Hannibal because of the protection of gods who had no power to save Saguntum from perishing as a reward for its friendship with Rome! If the people of Saguntum had been Christians, and had suffered any such calamity for the faith of the gospel, it would not have destroyed itself by sword and fire; but it would have suffered destruction for the gospel faith, and it would have suffered in the hope based on its faith in Christ, the hope not of a reward of a brief space of time, but of an endless eternity. We are told that the reason for the worship of those gods, the reason why their worship is demanded, is to safeguard men’s felicity in respect of things perishable and impermanent. What reply will the defenders and excusers of those gods give to us in the case of the annihilation of Saguntum? They can only repeat the reply they gave concerning the destruction of Regulus. There is, to be sure, the difference that he was a single man, while Saguntum was a whole community. Still, in both cases, the cause of extinction was keeping pledged faith. It was because of this that Regulus wished to return to the enemy, and Saguntum refused to cross over to the enemy’s side.
Are we to infer that keeping faith provokes the anger of the gods? Or is it that not only individuals, but entire communities can perish,
even when they enjoy the favours of the gods? Let our opponents make their choice! If the gods are enraged by the keeping of faith, let them seek the worship of perjurers. Whereas if men and communities can perish, with frightful suffering, even when the gods favour them, then their worship brings no fruit of temporal happiness. Therefore those who ascribe their misfortunes to the discontinuance of sacrifice must forgo their indignation. For they could have their gods still present with them, they could even have them looking with favour on them; and yet they might not merely have their present sorry plight to grumble at, but might, after indescribable sufferings, suffer the utter destruction which in time past befell Regulus and the people of Saguntum.
21.
Rome’s ingratitude to Scipio, its moral standard in its ‘best period’
The period between the Second Punic War and the last (to pass over many details, with a view to keeping within the limits of my projected task) was a time, according to Sallust, of sound morality and of a great measure of concord in Rome.
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But that period of morality and concord witnessed the accusation of the great Scipio. He was the saviour of Rome and Italy, he won the highest renown and admiration for bringing the Second Punic War to a successful end – that war fraught with so much horror, ruin, and peril – and he conquered Hannibal and brought Carthage to its knees. We have accounts of his dedicating his life to the gods in early manhood, and of his upbringing in the temples.
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Yet because of the accusations of his enemies he had to leave Rome, and thus deprived of his country, which he had restored to safety and freedom by his courage, he spent the rest of his life in the town of Linternum, where he ended his days. And after his glorious triumph he felt no homesickness for Rome, in fact it is said that he gave orders that even after his death no funeral service should be held for him in his ungrateful native city.
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Later on, Gnaeus Manlius, the proconsul, celebrated a triumph over the Gallo-Greeks;
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and the result of this victory was the first invasion of Rome by Asiatic luxury, which was more deadly than any human enemy. It was then, we are told, that the first bronze-plated beds and expensive coverlets made their appearance; and female lutanists
were introduced into banquets, as were other ingredients of licence and debauchery.
But it is my intention to deal with evils which men endure and revolt against, not with the evils they delight in creating. And so the facts I mention about Scipio, his departure, under pressure from his enemies, and his death, far from the country he had saved – are the facts that are relevant to my argument. My point is that the Roman divinities, when Scipio had defended their temples from Hannibal, did not defend him in return – though the only reason for their worship is to secure that kind of temporal blessing. Since Sallust speaks of that period as a time of high moral standards, I have thought it right to make this point about Asiatic luxury so that Sallust may be understood to have made this judgement only in comparison with other epochs, when morality deteriorated in times of grave disturbances in society. In that very period, between the Second and Third Punic Wars, the law called the
Lex Voconia
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was passed, forbidding the appointment of a woman, even an only daughter, as heir. I cannot quote, or even imagine, a more inequitable law. All the same, this whole inter-war period was a time of less intolerable misfortune. The army suffered only the exhaustion of foreign wars, and it had the consolations of victory; while at home there were none of the savage disturbances which marked other periods. But in the last Punic War Rome’s imperial rival was completely eliminated by a single sweep made by the second Scipio,
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who won the surname Africanus by this achievement; and after that the Roman commonwealth sank under a load of accumulated disasters. Those calamities mounted in consequence of the moral corruption brought on by a state of prosperity and security, and it can be shown that the swift overthrow of Carthage, which led to this state of affairs, did more harm than her long hostility.
The next period of Roman history takes us down to Caesar Augustus. It is clear that Augustus wrested from the Romans a liberty which was no longer glorious, even in their own estimation, but productive of strife and tragedy, and by now unmistakably listless and enfeebled; he brought everything under the arbitrary rule of a monarch, and by so doing he is regarded as having restored to health and strength a commonwealth prostrated by a kind of chronic sickness. I pass over the repeated military disasters of the whole of this period,
which were due to a variety of causes. I will not dwell on the treaty with Numantia, an agreement blotted with the marks of Rome’s terrible humiliation.
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The Romans ascribe this ignominy to the fact that the sacred chickens had flown out of their cage, a sinister augury for the consul Mancinus! During all those years, in which that tiny community had inflicted heavy losses on the besieging Roman army and had even begun to strike terror into the Roman republic itself, we are doubtless to suppose that other generals had taken over command of the attack with different auspices!
22.
Mithtridates’ massacre of Romans in Asia
As I said, I will not dwell on this. But I could not possibly keep silence about the massacre carried out in one day on the orders of Mithridates, king of Asia – the killing of all the Romans in that country.
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There were an immense number of Romans engaged on business in Asia. What a pitiable sight was presented! Wherever any Roman was found, in the country, on the road, in the town, in his house, in the street, in the forum, in the temple, in bed, or at a dinner-party, he was killed without warning and without pity. The dying groaned; the spectators wept, and so perhaps did the butchers. It was a cruel compulsion, that hosts should be forced not only to behold, but even to perpetrate, such unspeakable murders in their own houses, and to remove from their faces the expressions of courteous and kind civility and pass to the achievement, in time of peace, of the purpose of an enemy; when there was an exchange of deadly blows, the assailant being smitten in his soul, as his victim was smitten in his body!
Had all those victims failed to heed the auguries? Had they no domestic or public gods worth consulting, before they set out from their homes on that journey from which there was to be no return? If so, then our opponents have no call to complain of these present times in this regard; the Romans have long despised such nonsense. While if they did consult them, then let them tell me what help they were, at a time when no laws, or at least no human laws, restricted their activities, and no one was concerned to stop them.