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Book II, Chapter III

My answer then to the question is, that it was by right, and not by usurpation, that the Roman people assumed to itself the office of Monarchy, or, as men call it, the Empire, over all mankind. For in the first place it is fitting that the noblest people should be preferred to all others; the Roman people was the noblest; therefore it is fitting that it should be preferred to all others. By this reasoning I make my proof; for since honour is the reward of goodness, and since to be preferred is always honour, therefore to be preferred is always the reward of goodness. It is plain that men are ennobled for their virtues; that is, for their own virtues or for those of their ancestors; for nobleness is virtue and ancestral wealth, according to Aristotle in his Politics; and according to Juvenal, "There is no nobleness of soul but virtue,"1 which two statements refer to two sorts of nobleness, our own and that of our ancestors.2

To be preferred, therefore, is, according to reason, the fitting reward of the noble. And since rewards must be measured by desert, according to that saying of the Gospel, "with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again;" therefore to the most noble the highest place should be given. The testimonies of the ancients confirm our opinion; for Virgil, our divine poet, testifies throughout his Æneid, that men may ever remember it, that the glorious king, Æneas, was the father of the Roman people. And this Titus Livius, the famous chronicler of the deeds of the Romans, confirms in the first part of his work, which takes its beginning from the capture of Troy. The nobleness of this most unconquerable and most pious ancestor not only in regard to his own great virtue, but also to that of his forefathers and of his wives, the nobleness of whom was combined in their descendant by the rightful law of descent, I cannot unfold at length; "I can but touch lightly on the outlines of the truth."3

For the virtue then of Æneas himself, hear what our poet tells us when he introduces Ilioneus in the first Æneid, praying thus: "Æneas was our king; in justice and piety he has not left a peer, nor any to equal him in war." Hear Virgil in the sixth Æneid, when he speaks of the death of Misenus, who had been Hector's attendant in war, and, after Hector's death, had attached himself to Æneas; for there Virgil says that Misenus "followed as good a man;" thus comparing Æneas to Hector, whom4 Homer ever praises above all men, as the Philosopher witnesses in his Ethics, in what he writes to Nicomachus on habits to be avoided.

But, as for hereditary virtue, he was ennobled from all three continents both by his forefathers and his wives. From Asia came his immediate ancestor, Assaracus, and others who reigned in Phrygia, which is a part of Asia. Therefore Virgil writes in the third Æneid: "After that it had seemed good to Heaven to overthrow the power of Asia, and the guiltless race of Priam." From Europe came the male founder of his race, who was Dardanus; from Africa his grandmother Electra, daughter of the great king Atlas, to both which things the poet testifies in the eighth Æneid, where Æneas says to Evander: "Dardanus, the father of our city, and its founder, whom the Greeks call the son of Atlas and Electra, came to the race of Teucer--Electra, whose sire was great Atlas, on whose shoulders rests the circle of heaven." But in the third Æneid Virgil says that Dardanus drew his origin from Europe. "There is a land which the Greeks have named Hesperia, an ancient land, strong and wealthy, where the Ænotrians dwell; it is said that now their descendants have named the country Italy, from the name of their king. There is our rightful home; from that land did Dardanus come." That Atlas came from Africa, the mountain called by his name, which stands in that continent, bears witness; and Orosius says that it is in Africa in his description of the world, where he writes: "Its boundary is Mount Atlas, and the islands which are called 'the happy isles.'" "Its"--that is, "of Africa," of which he was speaking.5

Likewise I find that by marriage also Æneas was ennobled; his first wife, Creusa, the daughter of king Priam, was from Asia, as may be gathered from our previous quotations; and that she was his wife our poet testifies in the third Æneid, where Andromache asks Æneas: "What of the boy Ascanius, whom Creusa bore to thee, while the ruins of Troy were yet smoking? Lives he yet to breathe this air?"6 The second wife was Dido, the queen and foundress of Carthage in Africa. That she was the wife of Æneas our poet sings in his fourth Æneid, where he says of Dido: "No more does Dido think of love in secret. She calls it marriage, and with this name she covers her sin." The third wife was Lavinia, the mother of Albans and Romans alike, the daughter of king Latinus and his heir, if we may trust the testimony of our poet in his last Æneid, where he introduces Turnus conquered, praying to Æneas thus: "Thou hast conquered, and the Ausonians have seen me lift my hands in prayer for mercy; Lavinia is thine."7 This last wife was from Italy, the noblest region of Europe.

And now that we have marked these things for evidence of our assertion, who will not rest persuaded that the father of the Romans, and therefore the Romans themselves, were the noblest people under heaven? Who can fail to see the divine predestination shown forth by the double meeting of blood from every part of the world in the veins of one man?

Footnotes

  1. Arist. Pol. iii. 12; Juv. viii. 20.--(W.) ↩

  2. Witte refers to Dante's commentary on his own Canzone in the Convito iv. 3, and the Parad. xvi. 1. ↩

  3. "Sed summa sequar vestigia rerum." Virg. Æn. i. 342 ("fastigia" in all good MSS. and edd.). ↩

  4. Æn. i. 544, vi. 170. Il. xxiv. 258, quoted in Aristotle, Ethics, vii. 1.--(W.) ↩

  5. Æn. iii. 1, viii. 134, iii. 163; Oros. i. 2.--(W.) ↩

  6. III. 339. The best MSS. of Virgil omit "peperit fumante Creusa." ↩

  7. Æn. xii. 936.--(W.) ↩

Chapter 19 of 45