[332] CHAPTER V.

Of Ravaging and Pillaging Property.

I. CICERO says it is not against nature to despoil him whom it is honourable to kill. Wherefore it is not to be wondered at if the Laws of Nations permit the property of enemies to be destroyed and ravaged, when it has permitted them to be killed. Polybius says that by the Laws of War, all munitions of enemy, ports, cities, men, ships, fruits, and anything of like kind, may be either plundered or destroyed. And in Livy we read; There are certain rights of war which may be exercised and must be submitted to; as to burn crops, to destroy buildings, to drive off booty of cattle and men. Indeed you find in every page of history, whole cities destroyed, walls levelled with the ground, lands depopulated, conflagrations raised. And it is to be noted that these measures are allowed also against those who have surrendered. The townsmen, says Tacitus, opened their gates and put themselves at the mercy of the Romans, which was their safety; Artaxatæ was burnt.

II. 1 The mere Law of Nations, setting aside the consideration of other duties, of which we shall afterwards speak, does not except sacred edifices, that is, those which are dedicated to God or to gods. When places are taken by the enemy, all ceases to be sacred, as Pomponius the Jurist says. The sacred places of Syracuse were desecrated by victory, as Cicero says. The cause of this is that the places which are called sacred are not really abstracted from human uses; but are called sacred in consideration of the end to which they are destined. A sign of this is that when a people gives itself up to another people or king, it gives up also what are called sacred edifices, as appears by the formula which we have elsewhere cited from Livy. So Plautus in the Amphitruo.

2 And therefore Ulpian says that public law includes sacred things also. Pausanias says that it is a practice common to Greeks and barbarians, that sacred things should be at their disposal who have taken the city. So when Troy was taken, the image of Hercæan Jove was granted to Sthenelus; and Thucydides mentions many examples of this usage: that they who rule the land possess the temples. And Tacitus’s account is not really different, that in the Italic towns all the ceremonies, temples, images, are under the Roman authority.

3 Wherefore the people may change its will, and make a sacred building into a profane one; as Paulus and Venuleius not obscurely 333imply; and we see that, by the necessity of the times, sacred things are sometimes converted to the use of war by those who had consecrated them; as by Pericles, under the promise of restoring as much; by Mago in Spain; by the Romans in the Mithridatic war; by Sulla, Pompey, Cæsar, and others. In Plutarch, Tiberiuis Gracchus says; Nothingis so sacred as what is dedicated to the honour of the gods; yet this may be used and removed by the people. So Seneca says, that for the service of the public, temples are stripped, and dedicated objects turned into money. So Trebatius in the time of Cæsar. And Germanicus used this right of war, when in his war against the Marsians he destroyed the celebrated temple at Tanfana. So Virgil. And Pausanias notes that objects dedicated to the gods are taken by the victors; and Cicero calls this the law of war, speaking of P. Servilius. So Livy, speaking of the ornaments of the temples brought by Marcellus from Syracuse to Rome. So C. Flaminius in Livy, and Fulvius in Polybius, and Cæsar in Sallust.

4 It is however true, that if there be any image in which a divine virtue is supposed to exist, it is wicked that it should be violated or destroyed by those who agree in that persuasion. And in this sense they who commit such acts are accused of impiety, or even of breaking the Laws of Nations; that is, on the assumption of such an opinion. It is another matter if the enemies do not so think. Thus the Jews were not only permitted, but commanded to destroy the idols of the Gentiles. For their being forbidden to take and keep them was for this reason; that the Hebrews might the more defeat the superstition of the Gentiles, being warned that there was defilement in the very touch of them; not as if they spared the sacred objects of other nations, as Josephus expounds the fact; no doubt speaking with a view to gain favour with the Romans: as he does also in the explanation of another precept, the prohibition of naming the gods of the Gentiles: which he explains as if they were forbidden to speak evil of them; whereas in reality the law did not permit Jews to speak of them with honour or without abomination. For the Hebrews knew, by the undoubted instruction of God, that these idols were not occupied either by the Spirit of God, or by good angels, or by astral influences, as the misguided heathen thought, but by evil demons, the enemies of the human race: as Tacitus said rightly in describing the institutions of the Jews; All things are profane to them which are sacred to us. Thus when Xerxes destroyed the images of the Greeks, he did nothing contrary to the laws of nations, although the Greek writers greatly exaggerate his acts for the sake of throwing odium upon him. For the Persians did not believe that there was any divinity in idols, but that the Sun was God, and that fire was a portion of him.

5 By the Hebrew Law, as Tacitus also rightly says, All except the priests were excluded from the threshold of the temple. But Pompey, as the same writer relates, entered the temple by the right of victory, 334or, as Augustine says, not with the devotion of a worshipper, but with the claim of a conqueror: and he did well in sparing the temple and the things therein, although, as Cicero plainly says, not through religion, but shame and the fear of obloquy; but ill in that he entered, doing so out of contempt for the true God; as also the Chaldeans are condemned by the prophets for doing. And some think that it was on this account that, by a peculiar providence of God, Pompey was slain almost within sight of Judea, at Casius, a promontory of Egypt. But if you regard the opinion of the Romans, there was in what he did nothing contrary to the Law of Nations. So the same temple was consigned to destruction by Titus, as Joephus says, by the Laws of War.

III. What we have said of sacred places is also to be understood of burial-places; for these do not belong to the dead but the living, either a people or a family. And thus as sacred places taken by the enemy cease to be sacred, so do places of burial; as Paulus and Pomponius write: The sepulchres of enemies are not objects of religion to us; and therefore we may convert to any use stones therein taken. Which however is to be understood in such a way that the bodies of the dead are not to be ill-treated; for that is against the rights of burial, which is part of the Law of Nations, as we have elsewhere shown.

IV. I will briefly again notice that by the Law of Nations, our property may not only be rescued from the enemy’s hands by force, but also that deceit which involves no perfidy is allowed, and even the procurement of perfidy in others. In fact the Law of Nations has begun to connive at these smaller and frequent offenses, as the Civil Laws connive at prostitution and usury.