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 Æneas, 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 Æneas, 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
neighbours), 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 Æneas (in Virgil[137]) 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."[138]
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;"[139] 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."[140]
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 carcases 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 Æneas 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."[141]
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.