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| The Durations and Issues of War Depend on the Will of God.
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Chapter 22.—The Durations and
Issues of War Depend on the Will of God.
Thus also the durations of wars are
determined by Him as He may see meet, according to His righteous
will, and pleasure, and mercy, to afflict or to console the human
race, so that they are sometimes of longer, sometimes of shorter
duration. The war of the Pirates and the third Punic war were
terminated with incredible celerity. Also the war of the fugitive
gladiators, though in it many Roman generals and the consuls were
defeated, and Italy was terribly wasted and ravaged, was
nevertheless ended in the third year, having itself been, during
its continuance, the end of much. The Picentes, the Marsi, and
the Peligni, not distant but Italian nations, after a long and most
loyal servitude under the Roman yoke, attempted to raise their
heads into liberty, though many nations had now been subjected to
the Roman power, and Carthage had been overthrown. In this
Italian war the Romans were very often defeated, and two consuls
perished, besides other noble senators; nevertheless this calamity
was not protracted over a long space of time, for the fifth year
put an end to it. But the second Punic war, lasting for the space
of eighteen years, and occasioning the greatest disasters and
calamities to the republic, wore out and well-nigh consumed the
strength of the Romans; for in two battles about seventy thousand
Romans fell.226
| 226 Of the Thrasymene Lake and
Cannæ. | The first
Punic war was terminated after having been waged for
three-and-twenty years. The Mithridatic war was waged for forty
years. And that no one may think that in the early and much
belauded times of the Romans they were far braver and more able to
bring wars to a speedy termination, the Samnite war was protracted
for nearly fifty years; and in this war the Romans were so beaten
that they were even put under the yoke. But because they did not
love glory for the sake of justice, but seemed rather to have loved
justice for the sake of glory, they broke the peace and the treaty
which had been concluded. These things I mention, because many,
ignorant of past things, and some also dissimulating what they
know, if in Christian times they see any war
protracted a
little longer than they expected, straightway make a fierce and
insolent attack on our religion, exclaiming that, but for it, the
deities would have been supplicated still, according to ancient
rites; and then, by that bravery of the Romans, which, with the
help of Mars and Bellona, speedily brought to an end such great
wars, this war also would be speedily terminated. Let them,
therefore, who have read history recollect what long-continued
wars, having various issues and entailing woeful slaughter, were
waged by the ancient Romans, in accordance with the general truth
that the earth, like the tempestuous deep, is subject to agitations
from tempests—tempests of such evils, in various degrees,—and
let them sometimes confess what they do not like to own, and not,
by madly speaking against God, destroy themselves and deceive the
ignorant.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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