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Book II, Chapter IX

That people then, which conquered when all were striving hard for the Empire of the world, conquered by the will of God. For God cares more to settle a universal strife than a particular one; and even in particular contests the athletes sometimes throw themselves on the judgment of God, according to the common proverb: "To whom God makes the grant, him let Peter also bless."1 It cannot, then, be doubted that the victory in the strife for the Empire of the world followed the judgment of God. The Roman people, when all were striving for the Empire of the world, conquered; it will be plain that so it was, if we consider the prize or goal, and those who strove for it. The prize or goal was the supremacy over all men; for it is this that we call the Empire. None reached this but the Roman people. Not only were they the first, they were the only ones to reach the goal, as we shall shortly see.

The first man who panted for the prize was Ninus, King of the Assyrians; but although for more than ninety years (as Orosius tells2) he, with his royal consort Semiramis, strove for the Empire of the world and made all Asia subject to himself, nevertheless he never subdued the West. Ovid mentions both him and his queen in the fourth book of the Metamorphoses, when he says, in the story of Pyramus:3 "Semiramis girdled the round space with brick-built walls;" and, "let them come to Ninus' tomb and hide beneath in its shade."

Secondly, Vesoges, King of Egypt, aspired to this prize; but though he vexed the North and South of Asia, as Orosius relates,4 yet he never gained for himself one-half of the world; nay, when, as it were, between the judges5 and the goal, the Scythians drove him back from his rash enterprise.

Then Cyrus, King of the Persians, made the same attempt; but after the destruction of Babylon, and the transference of its Empire to Persia, he did not even reach the regions of the West, but lost his life and his object in one day at the hands of Tamiris, Queen of the Scythians.6

But after that these had failed, Xerxes, the son of Darius and king among the Persians, assailed the world with so great a multitude of nations, with so great a power, that he bridged the channel of the sea which separates Asia from Europe, between Sestos and Abydos. And of this wonderful work Lucan makes mention in the second book of his Pharsalia:7 "Such paths across the seas, made by Xerxes in his pride, fame tells of." But finally he was miserably repulsed from his enterprise, and could not attain the goal.

Besides these kings, and after their times, Alexander, King of Macedon, came nearest of all to the prize of monarchy; he sent ambassadors to the Romans to demand their submission, but before the Roman answer came, he fell in Egypt, as Livy8 tells us, as it were in the middle of the course. Of his burial there, Lucan speaks in the eighth book of his Pharsalia,9 where he is inveighing against Ptolemy, King of Egypt: "Thou last of the Lagæan race, soon to perish in thy degeneracy, and to yield thy kingdom to an incestuous sister; while for thee the Macedonian is kept in the sacred cave...."

"Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!" Who will not marvel at thee here? For when Alexander was trying to hinder his Roman competitor in the race, thou didst suddenly snatch him away from the contest that his rashness might proceed no further.

But that Rome has won the crown of so great a victory is proved on the testimony of many. Our poet in his first Æneid says:10 "Hence, surely, shall one day the Romans come, as the years roll on, to be the leaders of the world, from the blood of Teucer renewed; over the sea and over the land they shall hold full sway."11 And Lucan, in his first book, writes: "The sword assigns the kingdom; and the fortune of that mighty people that rules o'er sea and land and the whole earth, admitted not two to rule." And Boethius, in his second book,12 speaking of the Roman prince says: "With his sceptre he ruled the nations, those whom Phoebus beholds, from his rising afar to where he sinks his beams beneath the waves; those who are benumbed by the frosty Seven Stars of the north, those whom the fierce south wind scorches with his heat, parching the burning sands." And Luke, the Scribe of Christ, bears the same testimony, whose every word is true, where he says: "There went out a decree from Cæsar Augustus that all the world should be taxed;" from which words we must plainly understand that the Romans had jurisdiction over the whole world.

From all this evidence it is manifest that the Roman people prevailed when all were striving to gain the Empire of the world. Therefore it was by the judgment of God that it prevailed; consequently its Empire was gained by the judgment of God, which is to say, that it was gained by right.

Footnotes

  1. Witte only gives a query (?). The saying expresses the Ghibelline view of the relation of the Empire to the Pope; it may have originated with the coronation of Charles the Great. ↩

  2. I. 4.--(W.) ↩

  3. Metam. iv. 58, 88.--(W.) ↩

  4. Oros. i. 14.--(W.) ↩

  5. "Athlothetæ." The judges or umpires in the Greek games, whose seats were opposite to the goal at the side of the stadium. Vide Smith's Dictionary of Antiquities, s.v. "stadium." ↩

  6. Oros. ii. 7.--(W.) ↩

  7. Phars. ii. 692.--(W.) ↩

  8. Not Livy. Cf. ix. 18, 3, where, speaking of Alexander and the Romans, he says: "Quem ne famâ quidem illis notum arbitror fuisse." The story is Greek in origin, coming from Cleitarchus (according to Pliny, Hist. Nat. iii. 9), who accompanied Alexander on his Asiatic expedition. Cf. Niebuhr, Lectures on the History of Rome, lect. 52, Grote, History of Greece, vol. xii. p. 70, note, who argue for its truth, and Mommsen, History of Rome, vol. i. p. 394, who argues against it. Dante, says Witte, used legends about Alexander now lost. Cf. Inf. xiv. 31. ↩

  9. VIII. 692. ↩

  10. I. 234.--(W.) ↩

  11. I. 109.--(W.) ↩

  12. De Consol. Phil. ii. 6.--(W.) ↩

Chapter 25 of 45