The book of Joshua contains the things done under his leadership over the people of Israel.
Chapter 1 relates that Joshua, appointed by the Lord as leader of the people after Moses, was encouraged by Him not to fear, because He would assist him in leading the people into the Promised Land. The Lord commanded him to observe God’s law and imitate Moses’ footsteps. All the people declared that they wished to obey him.
In chapter 2 Joshua sent scouts to explore Jericho. Rahab the prostitute received and concealed them in her house. They promised immunity to her, her household, and her family if she placed a scarlet sign in the window. She secretly let them depart.
Chapter 3 relates that they crossed the Jordan after a way had been made miraculously, with the Levites carrying the ark in front. Chapter 4 relates that after they had left the Jordan, Joshua caused twelve stones to be taken from the river and placed at Gilgal, and twelve others to be placed in the middle of the Jordan, as a memorial of the deed.
In chapter 5 circumcision was performed at Gilgal, because those born in the desert had not yet been circumcised. They celebrated Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month. They ate from the fruits of the land, and the manna by which they had been fed for forty years ceased.
Joshua saw an angel with a drawn sword, who told him that he had come to assist him. At God’s command the fighting men circled the closed city of Jericho, sounding trumpets: once on each of six days, and seven times on the seventh. Jericho’s walls fell entirely. Entering, they killed everyone and consigned the possessions to fire, except for Rahab’s house and those with her.
Chapter 7 relates that when they proceeded to battle against Ai, they were put to flight and some were killed. When Joshua prayed because of this, it was revealed that something from what had been put under the ban at Jericho had been taken. When the culprit was sought by lots, Achor was found. He confessed the theft and was stoned by the people.
Chapter 8 relates that they obtained Ai through an ambush, pretending to flee so that they might lead everyone out of the city. When all had been killed, they captured the city and hanged its king.
Chapter 9 relates that the Gibeonites, pretending that they came from distant regions, entered into a covenant of peace with the Israelites and confirmed it with an oath. When the pious deception was uncovered, the Israelites preserved them because of the oath, although they subjected them to a certain servitude.
Chapter 10 relates that five kings came to besiege the Gibeonites because they had entered into a covenant with Israel. When the Gibeonites asked Joshua for aid, Joshua proceeded with his men against the five kings and defeated them. While he pursued them in flight and the sun approached its setting, at his prayer and request the sun and moon remained fixed in heaven for a great space of time. Finally, Joshua caused those five kings to be brought out from a cave in which they had hidden and hanged upon wood.
Chapter 11 relates that he captured many cities, killed the peoples and their kings, and subjected many places to fire and sword. Chapter 12 relates that he defeated and killed thirty-one kings who reigned in various cities in the Promised Land and captured their cities.
From chapter 13 through chapter 20 it is contained how Joshua and Eleazar the high priest, with the twelve princes of the tribes, divided the Promised Land among nine tribes and half the tribe of Manasseh, assigning to each its portion of cities and places. The land beyond the Jordan had already been given by Moses to the other two tribes—Reuben and Gad—and half of Manasseh.
Chapter 15 relates that Achsah, daughter of Caleb and betrothed to Othniel, at her own sighing and request received from her father the upper and lower watered ground. Chapter 20 designates the cities of refuge to which a person who had killed someone by accident could flee and remain safe until the death of the high priest.
In chapter 21 cities with suburbs but no other territory are assigned to the Levites, because in place of territory they were to have tithes, first fruits, and offerings.
In chapter 22 Joshua gave the two and a half tribes permission to return to the land granted to them beyond the Jordan. Near the Jordan they made an altar of immense size. Because of this, Joshua and the others suspected them of idolatry and sent messengers. When they learned from them that they had made the altar not for sacrificing, but as a memorial that they belonged to the people of Israel, they were pacified.
In chapters 23 and 24 Joshua, now old, gathered the people and encouraged them to observe the law and worship the true God, recalling the benefits God had bestowed upon them. They pledged themselves to obey God. Joshua then died at the age of 110 years. According to Vincent’s History, he held the leadership of the people and governed them for twenty-six years. Cariatha, or Thana-saxa, was given to him as a possession, and according to Josephus, Shechem also. Joseph’s bones, which the children of Israel had brought with them from Egypt, were placed in Shechem.
From the foregoing it appears that the rights of the firstborn consisted principally of three things: the firstborn possessed the kingdom, the priesthood, and the right to divide the inheritance.
The first, namely the kingdom, was given to the tribe of Judah. This appeared most fully in David, and much more in Christ, who reigns over all things. Judah merited this at the Red Sea, because when the others hesitated, Judah was the first tribe to enter the sea after Moses. The second, namely the priesthood, was given to the tribe of Levi. The third, namely the right to divide, was given to the tribe of Ephraim, because Joshua, who divided the land, belonged to the tribe of Ephraim.
§ I: After Moses and Joshua
The judges succeeded as leaders among the people. They possessed no regular jurisdiction over them and did not rule as Moses and Joshua had done. Rather, in their tribulations the people employed the judges’ counsel and prudence.
It should be known that in the chronology of the Judges, a period of Jewish affliction is often placed between two judges. According to the Hebrews, the durations of these afflictions are added to the years of the later judges so that one may obtain precisely the number of 480 years from the departure from Egypt until the building of the temple, which is counted in the Third Book of Kings.
Thus, after Joshua’s death foreigners held the Jews in subjection for eight years. According to the Hebrews, those years are joined to the time of Othniel, the first judge. Again, eighteen years of servitude are read between Othniel and Ehud, and according to them these are counted within Ehud’s time. Similarly there are twenty years after Ehud, seven after Deborah, eighteen after Jair, and forty after Abdon. All these years counted together make 111.
Finally, if they are numbered separately from the years of the judges and together with them, there are 601 years from the departure from Egypt until the foundation of the temple. This count includes the ten years of Abialon, which are not contained in the Septuagint. We, however, following Eusebius the chronographer and in part the Hebrews, will number the years of the judges so as to obtain precisely the smaller number read in the Third Book of Kings. Thus Vincent’s History.
Josephus says that the history of Micah’s idol and of the Levite’s violated wife, on account of which war followed and the tribe of Benjamin was almost destroyed, is narrated at the end of the book of Judges, but that these things happened after Joshua’s death and before Othniel.
In the time of Joshua, Jupiter—who was regarded as a god among the pagans—shamefully united with Europa, daughter of the Phoenician king of Tyre and Sidon.
In Othniel’s time Cadmus reigned at Thebes. From his daughter Semele was born Dionysius, Father Liber, under whom Linus the Theban was a musician. The things told of Demeter, whom they say was Isis, and of Danae, from whom Perseus was born, also happened in these times.
In the time of the judge Ehud, Erechtheus reigned at Athens as its sixth king. Boreas the Thracian carried away his daughter Orithyia; the fable invents that Boreas was a wind. The fable of Proserpina also belongs to this time.
In the time of the judge Deborah, Midas reigned in Phrygia. Ilium was founded by Ilus. The kingdom of the Argives came to an end and was transferred to Mycenae, where Perseus first reigned in the time of Gideon, judge of Israel.
Orpheus the Thracian was famous; his disciple was Musaeus. Linus also, the teacher of Hercules, became known to everyone. Hercules completed his contests, killed Antaeus, and laid Ilium waste. Varro, in Book IV of Divine Things, thinks that Hercules is called “victor” because he conquered every kind of animal.
But Hercules, the son of Jupiter, who was unconquered by other men, was subjected to the woman Omphale, who made him spin wool and perform women’s tasks. Albert says of the same man that, after defeating Geryon and coming to Italy, Hercules was received by Evander, who was then king. When Hercules said that he was Jupiter’s son and proved his valor by the death of Cacus, he was regarded as a divinity and earned the altar called the Great Altar, which was given to him. The Delphic Apollo had foretold that this would be his in Italy.
At last Hercules fell into a pestilential disease and, to remedy his pain, cast himself into the flames and so died. Hence Seneca, in his final tragedy, calls Hercules “Oetaean,” from Mount Oeta, upon which he was burned. Behold what kind of god the Gentiles had: effeminate and utterly unable to endure suffering.
The fabulous poets also hand down that this Hercules killed the serpent Hydra, which had nine heads and possessed the property that, when one was cut off, seven arose. Hence Hercules burned it. But the truth of the matter is that Hydra was a place that discharged waters and laid waste a neighboring city. When one channel was closed, many other channels broke out. Seeing this, Hercules burned those places and thus closed the channels of the water. For Hydra is named from water. According to Ambrose, it signifies heresy. Hercules lived until or about the time of Jephthah, judge of Israel. Thus Vincent’s History.
§ II: The Judges after Joshua
The first judge was Othniel, Caleb’s brother. But before his time, chapter 1 of the book of Judges relates that the tribe of Judah and the tribe of Simeon went up together into battle against the Canaanites and defeated them. They captured King Adoni-bezek and cut off the extremities of his hands and feet. He said that the Lord had justly done this, because he himself had held seventy captured kings, with the extremities of their hands and feet cut off, beneath his table.
Achsah, Othniel’s wife, received from her father Caleb the upper and lower watered ground, as she had requested. It is also related there that the children of Israel did not entirely destroy those peoples in the Promised Land, but made many of them tributaries. The Lord permitted them not to be wholly destroyed so that He might train Israel through them.
Chapter 2 relates that an angel of the Lord appeared, rebuked them for transgressing the law, reproached them with the benefits bestowed upon them by the Lord, and moved them to weeping. There it is related generally how they repeatedly withdrew from God and for this reason were handed over in servitude to various tyrants; when they repented, they were freed by different judges, but after their deliverance they often relapsed into evil.
The first judge who freed them from the hand of Chushan-rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia, whom Israel had served for eight years, was Othniel. The land rested for forty years.
When they returned to evil, they were handed over for eighteen years into the hands of Eglon, king of the Moabites, and also into the hands of the Ammonites and Amalekites. But when they cried out to the Lord, they were freed by Ehud. Pretending that he wished to speak to King Eglon in a private chamber, Ehud killed him with a sword. Escaping through a rear door, he gathered an army and killed very many Moabites. The land rested for eighty years.
In chapter 4 Shamgar, the third judge, killed six hundred Philistines who wished to enter their territory, using a plowshare.
After this, when the children of Israel did evil, they were handed over into the hands of Jabin, king of Canaan, whose commander of the army was Sisera. Barak engaged him in battle at the persuasion of the prophetess Deborah and with her accompanying him. The Lord terrified Sisera’s army. Sisera fled from the battle and hid in the house of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite. While he slept, Jael drove a nail through his temples. Chapter 5 contains Deborah’s song, which she made in thanksgiving to the Lord for the victory of His people.
In chapter 6, when they returned to their former iniquities, they were handed over for seven years into the hands of the Midianites, whose princes were Oreb, Zeb, Zebah, and Zalmunna. But they were freed through Gideon, the fifth judge.
An angel appeared to Gideon while he was threshing wheat and foretold the deliverance that would be accomplished through him. The angel touched with his staff the meat, broth, and unleavened bread Gideon had placed upon a rock, and kindled a fire that consumed them. After this, as a sign of the future victory, Gideon asked that a fleece placed on the threshing floor be filled with dew while the floor remained dry, and then, in turn, that the opposite occur. All this was done.
Chapter 7 relates that, from the army gathered with Gideon, twenty-two thousand first withdrew because they were fearful. Second, the ten thousand who remained with him were led to the river to drink. Only those who did not kneel but brought water to their mouths with their hands while drinking were chosen. These were only three hundred, and with them Gideon waged war against the Midianites.
He was strengthened by a dream that he heard recounted in the enemy camp, namely that someone had seen a hearth-baked loaf strike the camp of Midian. When those three hundred sounded their trumpets, broke their earthen vessels against one another, and revealed the lighted lamps, the Midianites awoke from sleep and fled, killing one another in mutual slaughter.
Chapter 8 relates that the Israelites pursued them in flight. The men of the tribe of Ephraim quarreled with Gideon because he had not called them to the battle, but he placated them with humble and courteous words.
After 120,000 Midianites, together with Oreb and Zeb, had been killed, the five thousand who had escaped with Zebah and Zalmunna were resting as though secure. The Israelites killed these also. After plunder had been taken from the spoils, Gideon made an ephod from the golden rings given to him, and in it the people fornicated away from God. Gideon judged for forty years.
Chapter 9 relates that Abimelech, Gideon’s illegitimate son, persuaded the men of Shechem to kill his seventy brothers, Gideon’s legitimate sons, so that he alone might rule. They did so, beheading them upon a single stone, except for the youngest, named Jotham, who hid.
Jotham told the Shechemites a parable about the trees that went to the vine, the fig tree, the olive tree, and finally the bramble—that is, a thorn—to make one of them their king. Later, when Abimelech entered into conflict with the Shechemites, he set fire beneath the tower of Shechem, causing a thousand people to die. Finally, while Abimelech himself was besieging Thebez, a woman threw a fragment of a millstone from the wall and struck him on the head. So that he would not appear to have been killed by a woman, he caused his armor-bearer to kill him completely.
In chapter 10 the sixth judge was Tola, of the tribe of Issachar, who judged Israel for twenty-three years. After him the seventh was Jair, who judged for twenty-three years. He had thirty sons who rode upon asses and were princes of thirty cities, to whom he gave wives. After them the Israelites sinned against the Lord and were afflicted in many ways by the Ammonites and Midianites.
In chapter 11 Jephthah, an illegitimate man and a leader of robbers, was made commander of the army by the Gileadites so that he might fight against the Ammonites. Jephthah first sent messengers to the king of Ammon, showing by reason that they unjustly wished to usurp the lands the Lord had granted to Israel. When the king was unwilling to listen to him, Jephthah vowed to offer whatever first came from his house to meet him upon his victorious return. He then advanced against the Ammonites and defeated them.
As Jephthah returned, his virgin daughter came to meet him with a tambourine. To keep his vow, he sacrificed her: foolish in vowing, impious in fulfilling.
In chapter 12 a sedition arose between Ephraim and the Gileadites because Jephthah had not called the Ephraimites to battle against Ammon. Quarreling, they fought one another. The Gileadites occupied the fords of the Jordan. When scattered fugitives from the tribe of Ephraim wished to cross, the Gileadites, in order to learn whether they were Ephraimites, made them say “Shibboleth.” When they could not pronounce it but said “Sibboleth,” they killed them. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites were killed.
Jephthah, the seventh judge, judged Israel for six years. After him Ibzan of Bethlehem, the eighth judge, judged for seven years and had thirty sons and the same number of daughters. After him Elon the Zebulunite, the ninth, judged for ten years. After Elon, Abdon, the tenth judge, who had forty sons, judged for eight years.
Adding evils to evils, the children of Israel were handed over into the hands of the Philistines for forty years, but they were aided by Samson, the eleventh judge, from the tribe of Dan.
Chapter 13 relates that an angel of the Lord first appeared to Manoah’s barren wife and afterward to Manoah himself, signifying to them that they would have a son who would be a Nazirite and would begin to free the people from the hand of the Philistines. When they offered the angel a cooked kid, a fire was kindled and the angel cast himself into the flame and disappeared. Manoah was terrified by this, but his wife comforted him.
Chapter 14 relates that when Samson had grown up, he took a wife from among the Philistines. As he went with his parents to see the Philistine city from which he took his wife, he turned away from his parents and killed a lion. On another occasion he found honey made by bees in the mouth of its corpse.
When the wedding was celebrated, he proposed a riddle to the seven companions who had been given to him. They did not know how to solve it, but Samson’s wife importunately extorted its explanation from him. Through their entreaties and threats, the companions induced her to teach it to them.
Chapter 15 contains the account that Samson’s father-in-law had given Samson’s wife to another man. Because of this, Samson took three hundred foxes, tied them together in pairs by their tails, placed burning torches there, and sent them through the Philistines’ fields. They burned all the crops.
Because of this the Israelites bound Samson and handed him over into the Philistines’ hands. The Spirit of God suddenly broke his bonds. Taking up an ass’s jawbone from the ground, Samson killed a thousand Philistines with it. When he became extremely thirsty from his labor, water came forth from that same jawbone after it had been thrown to the ground, and he drank from it.
Chapter 16 relates that Samson was shut within Gaza, the city to which he had gone down at night. Around midnight he arose, carried away the gates of the city with their bars upon his shoulders, and bore them up a mountain.
Afterward he loved a woman named Delilah in Sorek. At the Philistines’ request and promise of money, she investigated through him the source of his great strength. At first he said that it lay in seven fresh sinews if he were bound with them; afterward, in new ropes; and after this, in the seven locks of his head woven into a web and fastened with a pin fixed into the ground. When all these things were tried, he suddenly broke them all.
At last, worn down by her importunity, he revealed that his strength lay in the hair of his head. When it was shaved while he slept in her lap, he was captured and blinded by the Philistines, who kept him in prison.
When a feast arrived in the temple of Dagon, the god of the Philistines, they brought Samson before the people to dance. By then the hair of his head had grown again. Touching the temple’s columns, he first prayed and then said, “Let my soul die with the Philistines.” The temple collapsed, killing him and a great many Philistines. Samson judged Israel for twenty years.
Chapter 17 relates that a certain man named Micah, from Mount Ephraim, restored to his mother the eleven hundred pieces of silver that she had given him for safekeeping. From them she caused a carved image and certain priestly ornaments to be made, together with a little shrine or chapel in her house.
In chapter 18 the children of Dan, wishing to enlarge their borders, sent messengers or scouts to investigate places more suitable for them. When they turned aside for lodging into Micah’s house, the priest explained to them how he came to be staying there. When they returned on another occasion, they took that priest with them and carried away Micah’s idol and the other objects. Coming with an army to Laish, they captured its inhabitants, who lived securely and had no alliance with anyone.
Chapter 19 tells of a certain Levite who went to his father-in-law in order to reconcile to himself his wife, who had left him in anger. He was received amicably and departed kindly from him with his reconciled wife. When evening came, they turned aside for lodging at the city of Gibeah.
After a certain man brought him into his house, the city’s most wicked men pounded upon the house and demanded that the man be brought out to them so that they might abuse him. When they would not yield to the host who prohibited this with entreaties, the Levite finally sent out to them his concubine—that is, his wife. She is called a concubine because perhaps she had not been taken with the lawful solemnity. They abused her for the entire night, and in the morning she fell dead before the door of the house.
The Levite placed her upon an ass and returned home. He divided her corpse into twelve parts and sent one part to each tribe.
Chapter 20 relates that, abhorring so great a crime, all the tribes gathered and sent messengers to the men of the tribe of Benjamin, demanding that they hand over the men of Gibeah to be punished. The Benjaminites refused and instead gathered to help them, so all the other tribes made war against them.
In the first engagement, the men of Benjamin killed twenty-two thousand of the remaining Israelites. In the second battle the Benjaminites again killed eighteen thousand Israelites; this happened because the Israelites trusted in their multitude. In the third battle, after prayer and humiliation, the Israelites deliberated and killed twenty-five thousand from the tribe of Benjamin. They burned the city of Gibeah and Benjamin’s other cities.
Chapter 21, the last, contains the account that the children of Israel gathered at Shiloh and made lamentation for the destruction and extermination of the tribe of Benjamin. Only six hundred men had remained and escaped from them; these had fled into the desert.
When it was discovered that the men of Jabesh-gilead had not obeyed the edict commanding everyone to assemble, but had remained within their own territory, the Israelites sent fighting men against them. They put them to the sword, preserving only the virgins, who numbered four hundred. They gave these as wives to four hundred Benjaminites. They provided for the other two hundred men by allowing them, at a certain solemnity attended by many people, including virgin girls, to take wives for themselves from among those girls. This was done.
But this history of the Levite and the preceding history of Micah are said to have happened between Joshua’s time and Othniel’s time, in the intervening period.
After the book of Judges comes the book of Ruth, containing seven chapters. It contains the history of an event that occurred in the time of one of the judges, namely Eli the priest, who will be treated below.
Elimelech of Bethlehem in Judah, because of a famine or scarcity, sojourned in the land of the Moabites with his wife Naomi and his two sons, Mahlon and Chilion. Elimelech died there, and his sons married Moabite wives, one named Orpah and the other Ruth.
When those sons, Mahlon and Chilion, had died, Naomi wished to return to Bethlehem. She told her daughters-in-law to return to their parents’ homes. Although both wished to follow her, Orpah finally left her. Ruth, however, with a steadfast heart, said that she would never depart from Naomi wherever she went.
Ruth therefore returned with her to Bethlehem. Because they were poor, Ruth went during harvest time into Boaz’s field, following the reapers in order to gather the ears that remained. When Boaz learned of her goodness, in the evening he gave her some of the grain that had been gathered.
Finally, because Ruth’s former husband had no closer kinsman than Boaz, he freely acknowledged before witnesses that he wished to have her as his wife. The custom then observed in such a matter was kept, namely that the man who yielded his right took off his shoe. Boaz contracted marriage with Ruth the Moabitess, and Obed was born to them. Obed begot Jesse, or Ishai, the father of David.
§ III: On the War of the Greeks against the Trojans, the Destruction of Troy, and Its Cause
According to Book III, chapter 62 of Vincent’s History, and according to Helinand, Alexander—who was also called Paris, son of Priam—abducted Helen, wife of Menelaus, in the year in which Jephthah and Hercules died. On account of this a ten-year war arose.
From that year until the fourth year of Ahaz, king of Judah, which is the first year of the City—that is, of the founding of Rome—438 years are found in the chronicles. Nevertheless, according to Augustine, some wrote that Rome was founded under Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz.
Orosius says that 430 years before the City was founded, the Greeks formed a confederacy because of the abduction of Helen, assembled a thousand ships, and afterward conducted a ten-year siege. Dares the Phrygian, who wrote this history, says that there were forty-seven Greek leaders against Troy and that they brought 1,202 ships. Thirty-three leaders came to the aid of Priam, king of Troy.
The summary of the Trojan War from the history of Dares, which Cornelius translated, is as follows. When Castor and Pollux heard that their sister Helen, the most beautiful wife of Menelaus, brother of Agamemnon, had been abducted by Alexander or Paris, they boarded a ship and followed her. When they put out from the Lesbian shore, a very great storm arose, and they were never seen again. The Lesbians searched for them as far as Troy. When they did not find them, they believed that they had been made immortal gods.
The forty-seven Greek leaders therefore assembled at Athens with 1,202 ships. Diomedes and Ulysses were first sent as ambassadors to Priam so that satisfaction might be made for the injury. When the mission produced no result, they fought one another. In the first battle Hector, Priam’s son, killed Protesilaus.
In the second battle Hector would have killed Patroclus, Minon, and Ajax the Telamonian, had he not recognized Ajax as being of his own blood. For Ajax was born of Hesione, Priam’s sister. The first truce was granted at the Greeks’ request for two years.
In the third battle Hector killed the leaders Boechen, Archilochus, and Prothenor. In the fourth battle Alexander pierced Menelaus’s thigh with an arrow. In the fifth battle Hector killed seven very strong leaders, Aeneas two, Achilles four, and Diomedes two.
In the sixth war they fought for eighty continuous days. The Greeks asked for a second truce of three years. When it was completed, the fighting began again. In the first line of battle Hector killed four very strong leaders. Achilles, who was on the Greek side, killed two men from the Trojan side. They fought for thirty days.
Priam requested a third truce of six months. Agamemnon, who was on the Greek side, then requested a fourth truce of thirty days.
In the ninth war Andromache, Hector’s wife, wished to keep Hector back because she had seen in dreams that it was not expedient for him to go out to battle. When she could not do this, she placed their son Astyanax at his feet. But even in this way she did not restrain him.
Hector therefore went out to battle, killed three very strong leaders, and wounded two and a third, Achilles, by whom he was finally killed. The Greeks requested a fifth truce of two months. After the tenth war the Greeks requested a sixth truce for one year.
In the eleventh war Palamedes, who had been made king through an uprising, was killed. In the twelfth war Troilus killed many. In the thirteenth battle they fought for seven continuous days. Agamemnon requested a seventh truce of thirty days.
In the eighteenth war Troilus wounded Achilles, and they fought for seven continuous days. In the nineteenth war Troilus fell from his horse and was killed by Achilles. In the twentieth war Memnon, leader of the Persians, fell. Priam requested a tenth truce of thirty days.
In the twenty-first war Alexander killed Achilles in Apollo’s shrine, where he had called him to a conference while feigning a reconciliation. The Greeks therefore requested an eleventh truce. In the twenty-second battle Alexander wounded Ajax; Ajax wounded and killed Alexander, and immediately died from his own wound.
In the twenty-third and twenty-fourth wars Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons, manfully wounded Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, by whom she was finally killed. Antenor, Polydamas, and Aeneas told Priam to make peace. When he refused, they betrayed their homeland.
After Troy had therefore been captured, Agamemnon divided all the booty equally. Thus the fighting at Troy lasted ten years, eight months, and twelve days. As Dares the Phrygian reports, 870,000 Greeks fell. Among the Trojans, 676,000 men fell before the city was betrayed; after it was betrayed, 276,000 Trojans were killed.
Aeneas was carried away in twenty-two ships, the same number with which Alexander had gone to Greece. A company of 3,400 Trojan men followed him. Two thousand five hundred followed Antenor. Helenus, with Cassandra, Andromache, and Hecuba, Priam’s wife, sought Crimusium with 1,700 persons.
Homer says that after Troy was captured, Menelaus and his wife Helen turned aside to Thecur, king of Egypt, whom he calls Polybus.
Augustine says as follows about Diomedes and Ulysses with their companions in Book XVIII of The City of God: “When the victorious Greeks left Troy destroyed, they were torn and crushed by various and terrible disasters, and nevertheless they increased the number of their gods from among themselves. For they made even Diomedes a god, though it is reported that, by a punishment divinely inflicted, he did not return to his own people and that his companions were changed into birds. This is confirmed not by a fabulous and poetic lie but by historical attestation. Yet neither he himself, though made a god as they suppose, was able to restore their human nature, nor did he, as a new inhabitant of heaven, obtain this from his king Jupiter.” Thus Augustine.
A little later Augustine adds: “In order to establish this, Varro recalls other things no less incredible about that great and most famous Circe, who changed Ulysses’ companions into beasts, and about Arcadians who, after being chosen by lot, entered a certain lake and were there changed into wolves. They lived with similar wild beasts in the wildernesses of that region. If they did not feed on human flesh, after nine years they returned to the same lake and were restored to human beings,” and so forth.
“When we were in Italy, we heard similar things about a certain region in those parts. They said that innkeeping women imbued with these evil arts customarily gave such cheese to whichever travelers they wished or could affect. The travelers were immediately changed into pack animals, carried whatever loads were necessary, and, after the work had been completed, returned to themselves again. Their minds, however, did not become bestial; their rational and human minds were preserved.
“Demons certainly do not create natures if they do any such thing. Rather, Circe changed Ulysses’ companions in appearance, that is, according to what appeared. In this way it seems to me that it could have occurred, if it occurred at all.” Augustine thus concludes that these transformations were produced by the work of demons according to an appearance presented to the senses, not according to the truth of the thing. This is confirmed in Cause 26, question 5, Nec mirum and chapter Episcopi.
After Troy’s destruction, which occurred in the third year of Abdon, judge of Israel, Aeneas was the first to reign among the Latins. Before him Janus, Saturn, Picus, Faunus, and Latinus had reigned for about 150 years. Aeneas reigned for three years, or, as some hold, for eight years, beginning three years after the captivity of Troy.
His son Ascanius reigned second for thirty-two years. After him thirteen others reigned successively, the last of whom was called Amulius. The period of the reigns of all these rulers from Aeneas to Amulius was about 423 years.
In the time of this King Amulius, Remus and Romulus were born from Mars and Ilia. They founded Rome. When it had been founded, the Latins were called Romans. Romulus was the first to reign over these Romans, after killing his brother Remus. He began to reign in the sixth year of Ahaz, king of Judah, and reigned for thirty-eight years.
After him six other kings reigned successively: Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Marcius, Tarquinius Priscus, Servius, and Tarquinius Superbus. These seven kings ruled for 240 years, or thereabouts.
When royal dominion among the Romans had ended, consuls began with Brutus. Afterward tribunes of the plebs and dictators, and again consuls, governed the republic for almost 464 years, until Julius Caesar, who was the first to seize sole command for himself and from whom later emperors were called Caesars.
Vincent’s History reports from a history of the Franks that Troy was built in the time of Ehud, judge of Israel, and, after standing for 185 years, was captured and destroyed in the time of Abdon, judge of Israel. After its overthrow a great multitude fled and divided itself into two peoples.
As regards those descended from Priam, one group followed Francus, grandson of King Priam and son of Hector; the other followed Turcus, son of Troilus, who was the son of King Priam. Some therefore hand down that the two peoples descended from these men were named the Franks and the Turks. Ascanius, son of Aeneas, founded Alba near Rome, but it was afterward destroyed by the Romans.