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The City of God

Chapter 14.--Of the Wickedness of the War Waged by the Romans Against the Albans, and of the Victories Won by the Lust of Power.

But what happened after Numa's reign, and under the other kings, when the Albans were provoked into war, with sad results not to themselves alone, but also to the Romans? The long peace of Numa had become tedious; and with what endless slaughter and detriment of both states did the Roman and Alban armies bring it to an end! For Alba, which had been founded by Ascanius, son of Aeneas, and which was more properly the mother of Rome than Troy herself, was provoked to battle by Tullus Hostilius, king of Rome, and in the conflict both inflicted and received such damage, that at length both parties wearied of the struggle. It was then devised that the war should be decided by the combat of three twin-brothers from each army: from the Romans the three Horatii stood forward, from the Albans the three Curiatii. Two of the Horatii were overcome and disposed of by the Curiatii; but by the remaining Horatius the three Curiatii were slain. Thus Rome remained victorious, but with such a sacrifice that only one survivor returned to his home. Whose was the loss on both sides? Whose the grief, but of the offspring of Aeneas, the descendants of Ascanius, the progeny of Venus, the grandsons of Jupiter? For this, too, was a "worse than civil" war, in which the belligerent states were mother and daughter. And to this combat of the three twin-brothers there was added another atrocious and horrible catastrophe. For as the two nations had formerly been friendly (being related and neighbors), the sister of the Horatii had been betrothed to one of the Curiatii; and she, when she saw her brother wearing the spoils of her betrothed, burst into tears, and was slain by her own brother in his anger. To me, this one girl seems to have been more humane than the whole Roman people. I cannot think her to blame for lamenting the man to whom already she had plighted her troth, or, as perhaps she was doing, for grieving that her brother should have slain him to whom he had promised his sister. For why do we praise the grief of Aeneas (in Virgil ¹ ) over the enemy cut down even by his own hand? Why did Marcellus shed tears over the city of Syracuse, when he recollected, just before he destroyed, its magnificence and meridian glory, and thought upon the common lot of all things? I demand, in the name of humanity, that if men are praised for tears shed over enemies conquered by themselves, a weak girl should not be counted criminal for bewailing her lover slaughtered by the hand of her brother. While, then, that maiden was weeping for the death of her betrothed inflicted by her brother's hand, Rome was rejoicing that such devastation had been wrought on her mother state, and that she had purchased a victory with such an expenditure of the common blood of herself and the Albans.

Why allege to me the mere names and words of "glory" and "victory?" Tear off the disguise of wild delusion, and look at the naked deeds: weigh them naked, judge them naked. Let the charge be brought against Alba, as Troy was charged with adultery. There is no such charge, none like it found: the war was kindled only in order that there

"Might sound in languid ears the cry

Of Tullus and of victory." ²

This vice of restless ambition was the sole motive to that social and parricidal war,--a vice which Sallust brands in passing; for when he has spoken with brief but hearty commendation of those primitive times in which life was spent without covetousness, and every one was sufficiently satisfied with what he had, he goes on: "But after Cyrus in Asia, and the Lacedemonians and Athenians in Greece, began to subdue cities and nations, and to account the lust of sovereignty a sufficient ground for war, and to reckon that the greatest glory consisted in the greatest empire;" ³ and so on, as I need not now quote. This lust of sovereignty disturbs and consumes the human race with frightful ills. By this lust Rome was overcome when she triumphed over Alba, and praising her own crime, called it glory. For, as our Scriptures say, "the wicked boasteth of his heart's desire, and blesseth the covetous, whom the Lord abhorreth." ⁴ Away, then, with these deceitful masks, these deluding whitewashes, that things may be truthfully seen and scrutinized. Let no man tell me that this and the other was a "great" man, because he fought and conquered so and so. Gladiators fight and conquer, and this barbarism has its meed of praise; but I think it were better to take the consequences of any sloth, than to seek the glory won by such arms. And if two gladiators entered the arena to fight, one being father, the other his son, who would endure such a spectacle? who would not be revolted by it? How, then, could that be a glorious war which a daughter-state waged against its mother? Or did it constitute a difference, that the battlefield was not an arena, and that the wide plains were filled with the carcasses not of two gladiators, but of many of the flower of two nations; and that those contests were viewed not by the amphitheatre, but by the whole world, and furnished a profane spectacle both to those alive at the time, and to their posterity, so long as the fame of it is handed down?

Yet those gods, guardians of the Roman empire, and, as it were, theatric spectators of such contests as these, were not satisfied until the sister of the Horatii was added by her brother's sword as a third victim from the Roman side, so that Rome herself, though she won the day, should have as many deaths to mourn. Afterwards, as a fruit of the victory, Alba was destroyed, though it was there the Trojan gods had formed a third asylum after Ilium had been sacked by the Greeks, and after they had left Lavinium, where Aeneas had founded a kingdom in a land of banishment. But probably Alba was destroyed because from it too the gods had migrated, in their usual fashion, as Virgil says:

"Gone from each fane, each sacred shrine,

Are those who made this realm divine." ⁵

Gone, indeed, and from now their third asylum, that Rome might seem all the wiser in committing herself to them after they had deserted three other cities. Alba, whose king Amulius had banished his brother, displeased them; Rome, whose king Romulus had slain his brother, pleased them. But before Alba was destroyed, its population, they say, was amalgamated with the inhabitants of Rome so that the two cities were one. Well, admitting it was so, yet the fact remains that the city of Ascanius, the third retreat of the Trojan gods, was destroyed by the daughter-city. Besides, to effect this pitiful conglomerate of the war's leavings, much blood was spilt on both sides. And how shall I speak in detail of the same wars, so often renewed in subsequent reigns, though they seemed to have been finished by great victories; and of wars that time after time were brought to an end by great slaughters, and which yet time after time were renewed by the posterity of those who had made peace and struck treaties? Of this calamitous history we have no small proof, in the fact that no subsequent king closed the gates of war; and therefore with all their tutelar gods, no one of them reigned in peace.

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De civitate Dei (CCSL)

Caput XIV: De inpietate belli, quod Albanis Romani intulerunt, et de uictoria dominandi libidine adepta.

Quid deinde post Numam sub aliis regibus? quanto malo non solum suo, sed etiam Romanorum in bellum Albani prouocati sunt, quia uidelicet pax Numae tam longa uiluerat. quam crebrae strages Romani Albanique exercitus fuerunt et utriusque comminutio ciuitatis. Alba namque illa, quam filius Aeneae creauit Ascanius, Romae mater proprior ipsa quam Troia, a Tullo Hostilio rege prouocata conflixit, confligens autem et adflicta est et adflixit, donec multorum taederet pari defectione certaminum. tunc euentum belli de tergeminis hinc atque inde fratribus placuit experiri; a Romanis tres Horatii, ab Albanis autem tres Curiatii processerunt; a Curiatiis tribus Horatii duo, ab uno autem Horatio tres Curiatii superati et extincti sunt. ita Roma extitit uictrix ea clade etiam in certamine extremo, ut de sex unus rediret domum. cui damnum in utrisque, cui luctus, nisi Aeneae stirpi nisi Ascanii posteris, nisi proli Veneris nisi nepotibus Iouis? nam et hoc plus quam ciuile bellum fuit, quando filia ciuitas cum ciuitate matre pugnauit. accessit aliud huic tergeminorum pugnae ultimae atrox atque horrendum malum. nam ut erant ambo populi prius amici - uicini quippe atque cognati - , uni Curiatiorum desponsata fuerat Horatiorum soror; haec posteaquam sponsi spolia in uictore fratre conspexit, ab eodem fratre, quoniam fleuit, occisa est. humanior huius unius feminae quam uniuersi populi Romani mihi fuisse uidetur adfectus. illa quem uirum iam fide media retinebat, aut forte etiam ipsum fratrem dolens, qui eum occiderat cui sororem promiserat, puto quod non culpabiliter fleuerit. unde enim apud Vergilium pius Aeneas laudabiliter dolet hostem etiam sua peremptum manu? unde Marcellus Syracusanam ciuitatem recolens eius paulo ante culmen et gloriam sub manus suas subito concidisse communem cogitans condicionem flendo miseratus est? quaeso ab humano inpetremus adfectu, ut femina sponsum suum a fratre suo peremptum sine crimine fleuerit, si uiri hostes a se uictos etiam cum laude fleuerunt. ergo sponso a fratre inlatam mortem quando femina illa flebat, tunc se contra matrem ciuitatem tanta strage bellasse et tanta hinc et inde cognati cruoris effusione uicisse Roma gaudebat. quid mihi obtenditur nomen laudis nomenque uictoriae? remotis obstaculis insanae opinionis facinora nuda cernantur, nuda pensentur, nuda iudicentur. causa dicatur Albae, sicut Troiae adulterium dicebatur. nulla talis, nulla similis inuenitur; tantum ut resides moueret Tullus in arma uiros et iam desueta triumphis agmina. illo itaque uitio tantum scelus perpetratum est socialis belli atque cognati, quod uitium Sallustius magnum transeunter adtingit. cum enim laudans breuiter antiquiora commemorasset tempora, quando uita hominum sine cupiditate agitabatur et sua cuique satis placebant: postea uero, inquit, quam in Asia Cyrus, in Graecia Lacedaemonii et Athenienses coepere urbes atque nationes subigere, libidinem dominandi causam belli habere, maximam gloriam in maximo imperio putare, et cetera quae ipse instituerat dicere. mihi hucusque satis sit eius uerba posuisse. libido ista dominandi magnis malis agitat et conterit humanum genus. hac libidine Roma tunc uicta Albam se uicisse triumphabat et sui sceleris laudem gloriam nominabat, quoniam laudatur, inquit scriptura nostra, peccator in desideriis animae suae et qui iniqua gerit benedicitur. fallacia igitur tegmina et deceptoriae dealbationes auferantur a rebus, ut sincero inspiciantur examine. nemo mihi dicat: magnus ille atque ille, quia cum illo et illo pugnauit et uicit. pugnant etiam gladiatores, uincunt etiam ipsi, habet praemia laudis et illa crudelitas; sed puto esse satius cuiuslibet inertiae poenas luere quam illorum armorum quaerere gloriam. et tamen si in harenam procederent pugnaturi inter se gladiatores, quorum alter filius, alter esset pater, tale spectaculum quis ferret? quis non auferret? quomodo ergo gloriosum alterius matris, alterius filiae ciuitatis inter se armorum potuit esse certamen? an ideo diuersum fuit, quod harena illa non fuit, et latiores campi non duorum gladiatorum, sed in duobus populis multorum funeribus inplebantur, nec amphitheatro cingebantur illa certamina, sed uniuerso orbe et tunc uiuis et posteris, quousque ista fama porrigitur, inpium spectaculum praebebatur? uim tamen patiebantur studii sui di illi praesides imperii Romani et talium certaminum tamquam theatrici spectatores, donec Horatiorum soror propter Curiatios tres peremptos etiam ipsa tertia ex altera parte fraterno ferro duobus fratribus adderetur, ne minus haberet mortium etiam Roma quae uicerat. deinde ad fructum uictoriae Alba subuersa est, ubi post Ilium, quod Graeci euerterunt, et post Lauinium, ubi Aeneas regnum peregrinum atque fugitiuum constituerat, tertio loco habitauerant numina illa Troiana. sed more suo etiam inde iam fortasse migrauerant, ideo deleta est. discesserant uidelicet omnes adytis arisque relictis di, quibus imperium illud steterat. discesserant sane ecce iam tertio, ut eis quarta Roma prouidentissime crederetur. displicuerat enim et Alba, ubi Amulius expulso fratre, et Roma placuerat, ubi Romulus occiso fratre regnauerat. sed antequam Alba dirueretur, transfusus est, inquiunt, populus eius in Romam, ut ex utraque una ciuitas fieret. esto, ita factum sit; urbs tamen illa, Ascanii regnum et tertium domicilium Troianorum deorum, ab urbe filia mater euersa est; ut autem belli reliquiae ex duobus populis unum facerent, miserabile coagulum multus ante fusus utriusque sanguis fuit. quid iam singillatim dicam sub ceteris regibus totiens eadem bella renouata, quae uictoriis finita uidebantur, et tantis stragibus iterum iterumque confecta, iterum iterumque post foedus et pacem inter soceros et generos et eorum stirpem posterosque repetita? non paruum indicium calamitatis huius fuit, quod portas belli nullus clausit illorum. nullus ergo illorum sub tot dis praesidibus in pace regnauit.