conquered in their temples._
Why, then, need our argument take note of the many nations who have
waged wars with one another, and have nowhere spared the conquered
in the temples of their gods? Let us look at the practice of the
Romans themselves: let us, I say, recall and review the Romans,
whose chief praise it has been "to spare the vanquished and subdue
the proud," and that they preferred "rather to forgive than to
revenge an injury;"[41] and among so many and great cities which
they have stormed, taken, and overthrown for the extension of their
dominion, let us be told what temples they were accustomed to exempt,
so that whoever took refuge in them was free. Or have they really
done this, and has the fact been suppressed by the historians of
these events? Is it to be believed, that men who sought out with
the greatest eagerness points they could praise, would omit those
which, in their own estimation, are the most signal proofs of piety?
Marcus Marcellus, a distinguished Roman, who took Syracuse, a most
splendidly adorned city, is reported to have bewailed its coming
ruin, and to have shed his own tears over it before he spilt its
blood. He took steps also to preserve the chastity even of his enemy.
For before he gave orders for the storming of the city, he issued
an edict forbidding the violation of any free person. Yet the city
was sacked according to the custom of war; nor do we anywhere read,
that even by so chaste and gentle a commander orders were given that
no one should be injured who had fled to this or that temple. And
this certainly would by no means have been omitted, when neither
his weeping nor his edict preservative of chastity could be passed
in silence. Fabius, the conqueror of the city of Tarentum, is
praised for abstaining from making booty of the images. For when his
secretary proposed the question to him, what he wished done with the
statues of the gods, which had been taken in large numbers, he veiled
his moderation under a joke. For he asked of what sort they were;
and when they reported to him that there were not only many large
images, but some of them armed, "Oh," says he, "let us leave with
the Tarentines their angry gods." Seeing, then, that the writers of
Roman history could not pass in silence, neither the weeping of the
one general nor the laughing of the other, neither the chaste pity of
the one nor the facetious moderation of the other, on what occasion
would it be omitted, if, for the honour of any of their enemy's gods,
they had shown this particular form of leniency, that in any temple
slaughter or captivity was prohibited?