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The City of God

Chapter 5.--Caesar's Statement Regarding the Universal Custom of an Enemy When Sacking a City.

Even Caesar himself gives us positive testimony regarding this custom; for, in his deliverance in the senate about the conspirators, he says (as Sallust, a historian of distinguished veracity, writes ¹ ) "that virgins and boys are violated, children torn from the embrace of their parents, matrons subjected to whatever should be the pleasure of the conquerors, temples and houses plundered, slaughter and burning rife; in fine, all things filled with arms, corpses, blood, and wailing." If he had not mentioned temples here, we might suppose that enemies were in the habit of sparing the dwellings of the gods. And the Roman temples were in danger of these disasters, not from foreign foes, but from Catiline and his associates, the most noble senators and citizens of Rome. But these, it may be said, were abandoned men, and the parricides of their fatherland.

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De civitate Dei (CCSL)

Caput V: De generali consuetudine hostium uictas ciuitates euertentium quid Cato senserit.

Quem morem etiam Cato, sicut scribit Sallustius, nobilitatae ueritatis historicus, sententia sua, quam de coniuratis in senatu habuit, conmemorare non praetermittit: rapi uirgines pueros, diuelli liberos a parentum conplexu, matres familiarum pati quae uictoribus conlibuisset, fana atque domos spoliari, caedem incendia fieri: postremo armis cadaueribus cruore atque luctu omnia conpleri. hic si fana tacuisset, deorum sedibus solere hostes parcere putaremus. et haec non ab alienigenis hostibus, sed a Catilina et sociis eius, nobilissimis senatoribus et Romanis ciuibus, Romana templa metuebant. sed hi uidelicet perditi et patriae parricidae.