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| That Not Even the Romans, When They Took Cities, Spared the Conquered in Their Temples.
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Chapter 6.—That Not Even the
Romans, When They Took Cities, Spared the 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;”46
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Sallust, Cat. Conj. ix. | 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 honor of any of their
enemy’s gods, they had shown this particular form of leniency,
that in any temple slaughter or captivity was
prohibited?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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