§ 1. At this point, indeed, I have the pseudo-politicians in agreement, for all teach that the strength and constancy of the inhabitants are the support of the city. Next, although they thrust forward hypocrisy in place of piety, cunning in place of prudence, and simulation in place of temperance, they nevertheless require true and genuine fortitude, which undertakes and repels dangers with reason. It was formerly said that the sons of the rich rightly learned two things: the art of throwing the javelin and of riding; flattery bestowed the rest upon them through blandishments. But if they wandered from the target or did not know how to cling to the horse, they could not flatter even themselves. So also now it is fortitude that is not accustomed to being counterfeited; or if at some time a cowardly ass puts on the skin of a lion, if Patroclus in Achilles’ armor terrifies the Trojans for a time, soon
he pays for the simulation with his blood. Fortitude is held in great honor. Aristotle asks in Problems, Section XXVII.5:
Διὰ τί μάλιστα τὴν ἀνδρείαν τιμῶσιν αἱ πόλεις, οὐ βελτίστην οὖσαν τῶν ἀρετῶν, ἢ ὅτι διατελοῦσιν ἢ πολεμοῦντες ἢ πολεμούμενοι; αὕτη δὲ ἀμφοῖν χρησιμωτάτη ἐστίν. Τιμῶσι δ’ οὐ τὰ βέλτιστα, ἀλλ’ αὐτοῖς τὰ βέλτιστα.
Why do cities honor fortitude most, although it is not the most excellent of the virtues? Is it because they are always either making war or being warred upon, and this virtue is most useful in either time? They honor not the things that are best, but the things that are best for themselves. And so in free cities and among kings, the greatest honors are decreed for those who have perished in war. Therefore, the fatherland requires not glass-like fortitude but true and solid fortitude.
§ 2. Fortitude is
μεσότης περὶ φόβους καὶ θάρρη,
a mean concerning fears and confidence, as Aristotle says in Book IV, Chapter IX of the Morals. Augustine, in Eighty-Three Questions: “Fortitude is the considered undertaking of dangers and the endurance of labors.” This is that very constancy concerning which the noble disputation of Justus Lipsius is in everyone’s hands. For it is an upright and immovable strength of mind, neither elevated by fortuitous things nor cast down. I also include patience, the voluntary endurance, without complaint, of all adversities which befall. These things concern fortitude taken strictly.
For just as in every virtue wisdom holds the helm as though its moderator, so fortitude binds and fortifies them all like a firm anchor in this stormy sea of life, for every virtue without constancy is widowed. Fear casts out counsels wisely established; take away Lucretia’s constancy, and fear, not lust, will make her an adulteress. Strike fear into a commander, and he will make a shameful treaty at the Caudine Forks. Therefore fortitude is the guardian of all virtues.
There are also other virtues which have the appearance of fortitude. Thus soldiers act bravely in battle through fear of cowardice and desire for glory. Here shame, flight from disgrace, and appetite for praise make a man brave.
Frequently even a greater fear compels one to be brave amid lesser pain. Mucius places his hand upon the brazier. If he did it from desire for what is honorable, it belonged to a brave man to provide an enemy king with a spectacle from himself so that the king might consider it most dangerous to wage war with brave men. If he did it from fear of death—for after the deed what else could he expect but to perish by a lingering death, tortured by the most exquisite torments?—not even thus does it cease to be fortitude. For it belonged to a brave mind to avert extreme punishments by a lesser danger. Indeed, that contracted gladiator who, ordered to represent Mucius on the stage with the present “troublesome tunic,” did not dare say, “I will not do it,” possessed a wretched and calamitous fortitude. For if a soldier fighting bravely in the battle-line prefers to meet a beautiful death through wounds rather than be led in an arrogant triumph, why should the wretched man whom the countenance of the threatening tyrant and the ardor of citizens cruelly commanding have seized not prefer to give his hand to be burned rather than blaze with his whole body in the flames? For here there is a measured endurance of pain according to right reason. Those who are driven into battle through fear of their commanders, although they are not brave, nevertheless, if they prefer to contend under an uncertain Mars rather than be surrendered to certain destruction with disgrace, have begun certain rudiments of fortitude. But because they do honorable things altogether unwillingly, they are distant from perfect virtue.
They also call those whom anger has made furious brave:
ἰτητικώτατον γὰρ ὁ θυμὸς πρὸς τοὺς κινδύνους.
For anger rushes in and casts itself headlong into dangers.
σθένος ἔμβαλε θυμῷ,
it casts strength into the spirit;
μένος καὶ θυμὸν ἔγειρε, ἔζεσεν αἷμα.
It aroused rage and anger; the blood boiled. Anger indeed assists an impulse, but it does not increase virtue when it diminishes reason.
Nor are those brave who trust in strength and, because they have often conquered, presume altogether the best. But the foolish and drunken hope most of all; yet when the matter turns out otherwise, they immediately flee and withdraw themselves from danger. Thus, when the Argives thought they were going with great boldness against the soft and timid Sicyonians, but had fallen upon Spartans, in a disorderly flight they furnished laughter to their enemies.
Therefore fortitude endures pains and troubles when it is honorable to endure them, and because it is honorable—or when not to endure them is shameful.
The dignity of fortitude lies in the fact that it is difficult and arduous to tolerate tortures, troubles, and death. This is more difficult than to resist pleasure. Nevertheless, we perceive the bravest men to be those who at the same time resisted both pleasures and fears.
§ 3. Fortitude renders the spirits of individuals unconquered, and consequently the whole commonwealth. Nothing is impregnable to the brave; nothing is fortified against the spirited. Ambrose speaks excellently in Book II of On Duties: “Fortitude is no ordinary strength of mind. It alone defends the ornaments of all the virtues and guards justice; it contends in inexpiable battle against all vices, unconquered by labors, brave amid dangers, sterner against pleasures, so as to flee avarice like a certain stain which effeminates virtue.” And Cicero in the Rhetoric: “Fortitude is a glorious brilliance of mind, immovable amid adversities, administering arduous affairs beautifully, which is neither broken by adversities when they assail nor raised up by prosperities when they flatter.”
Nor does it collapse through another’s malice. It stands above its own punishment. “Fortitude is useful,” says Seneca in Book IV, Chapter XXII of On Benefits, “both upon the rack and in the fire, which may be applied to individual limbs and gradually make its way around a living body. Although the very body full of good conscience should drip away, the fire through which good faith will shine shall please him.”
Therefore fortitude is a despiser of things to be feared. It despises, challenges, and breaks terrible things and those that place our liberty beneath the yoke.
§ 4. Fortitude renders the commonwealth safe because it terrifies enemies by reputation alone. Recently, four Spanish ships afflicted two hundred ships of the barbarians; thirty thousand human beings fell. At the voice of the lion all animals tremble; the grim brow of bulls, although tame, is feared. Boldness against the brave is not safe. On the contrary, nothing is safe for the fearful. If enemies are lacking, they will fear their own shadow. Therefore they are attacked by all. The hare is the prey of all; the lion of none.
ἀλλὰ γὰρ ἀθυμοῦντες ἄνδρες οὔπω τρόπαιον ἔστησαν.
But men weak in spirit have never erected a trophy.
Therefore those helmeted hares invite the enemy; they do not terrify him, and though present they are absent. Let no king count bodies, but spirits.
δειλοὶ γὰρ ἄνδρες οὐκ ἔχουσιν ἐν μάχῃ
ἀριθμόν, ἀλλ’ ἄπεισι, κἂν παρῶσιν ὁμῶς.
Fearful men are of no account in the battle-line, for they are absent although they are present together.
I do not wish to produce as an example Pisander, who is said to have been terrified lest, when dead, he should see his own shadow; nor Antemon, above whose head two little slaves always held a bronze
shield lest he be injured by the fall of anything. The commonwealth has no need of so prodigious a fear that it should possess arms against itself and preserve resources for the enemy.
Unless it possesses fearless spirits within its ramparts and walls, all things fall as prey to the enemy. If men obtain the name and reputation of the brave, many seek their alliance; no one dares inflict injury, any more than pluck a lion’s beard. By the reputation of fortitude alone David cast off danger and escaped the parricidal hands of his son.
2 Samuel 17:8: “You know your father and the men who are with him to be most brave and of armed spirit, like a bear raging in the forest when her cubs have been taken; moreover, your father is a warrior and will not remain with the people. Perhaps he now lies hidden in pits or in whatever place he has chosen; and when any one man has fallen at the beginning, whoever hears it will hear and say: ‘A slaughter has been made among the people who followed Absalom.’ Then even the bravest man, whose heart is like that of a lion, will be dissolved by fear; for all the people of Israel know that your father is brave and that all who are with him are strong.”
Most things in war are accomplished by reputation and fear; few by the hand. But these matters must be treated more fully when military fortitude, which is a distinguished part of fortitude, is to be discussed.
§ 5. The reason fortitude is always unconquered, and contempt of death conquers all things, is that it is a natural fortification, the armor of nature, not taken from elsewhere. For he who has despised all terrible things is most free, is loved by all, and is feared even by the evil. Seneca, Epistle CXIII: “Teach me not whether fortitude is an animal, but that no animal is happy without fortitude unless it has grown strong against fortuitous things and subdued all accidents by meditation before receiving them. What is fortitude? An impregnable fortification of human weakness; the man who has surrounded himself with it endures secure in this siege of life. For he uses his own strength and his own weapons. At this point I wish to report to you the opinion of our Posidonius: ‘There is no reason for you ever to think yourself safe with the weapons of fortune. Fight against fortune with your own. Fortuitous things do not arm us; therefore men are equipped against enemies but unarmed against fortune herself.’”
And in Chapter VIII of On Firmness: “If we receive with an equal and placid spirit that greatest thing, beyond which angry laws or the most savage masters have nothing to threaten, in which fortune consumes her power, and if we know that death is not an evil and therefore not even an injury, we shall much more easily tolerate other things: losses, pains, disgraces, changes of place, bereavements, and dissensions, which do not submerge a wise man even if they surround him all at once, much less does he grieve at their individual impacts. And if he bears the injuries of fortune moderately, how much more those of powerful human beings, whom he knows to be the hands of fortune?”
Fortitude furnishes all these things by despising just dangers, or through knowledge and the spirit for repelling, receiving, and challenging dangers.
§ 6. Nothing protects and strengthens the commonwealth so much as good counsels; but when dangers surround it, those counsels generally arise from fortitude alone. Fear first disturbs the counsels themselves; next, even if the senate has resolved bravely and the people has commanded, fear will nevertheless impede the action to be performed. It is decreed that war must be waged in Spain, but no one among the chiefs of the Quirites whose spirit was equal to so great a danger can be found. Had Scipio been absent, Rome would not have recovered Spain; moreover, it would have lost Italy. Valerius, Book III, Chapter VI: “After Publius and Gnaeus Scipio in Spain, together with the greater part of the army, had been crushed by the Punic battle-line, and all the nations of that province had followed the friendship of the Carthaginians, none of our commanders daring to set out there to correct the matter, Publius Scipio, then in his twenty-fourth year, promised that he would go. That confidence indeed gave the Roman people hope of safety and victory, and he employed the same confidence in Spain itself. For when he was besieging the town of Badia, he ordered those approaching his tribunal to enter recognizances for the next day in the temple which was within the enemy’s walls. Having immediately gained possession of the city, at the time and place which he had foretold, he placed his curule chair and administered justice to them. Nothing was more noble than this confidence, nothing truer than the prediction, nothing more effective than the speed, and nothing more worthy even than the dignity.”
Counsels are so certain for fortitude that at times they do not fear to disclose them to enemies, so that the enemies may be rendered more fearful. Scipio Africanus, after scouts of Hannibal were detected in his camp, took care that they be led most diligently through all the maniples; thereafter, having received them at dinner and asked whether they had sufficiently considered the things for which they had been ordered to come, he sent them away unharmed. By this confidence he crushed the spirits of the enemy. Weak and very small commonwealths frequently regulate their military counsels from necessity, suspicion, and fear. And therefore fortitude is the most diligent guardian of itself, because it employs not only undisturbed counsel but also deed and hand. Two gladiators were once present with eyes closed, and thereby unconquered; and no army was ever conquered unless some fear was in it. For the three hundred Lacedaemonians, and any who were like them, were wearied by conquering and lay down upon their own trophies.
§ 7. The endurance of injuries and insults pertains to fortitude. It is altogether necessary to accustom the spirits of citizens to this. No one was superior to Augustus in this matter, if we look among the unbelievers. Cato indeed plainly appeared ἀπαθής, impassible, but falsely. When someone had spat into Socrates’ face while he was in bonds, Socrates said that the man should be admonished by the magistrate not to yawn so disgracefully. Yet the ancients judged Socrates to have surpassed three hundred Catos. I judge this virtue to be the bond of peace and charity in the commonwealth. The reason is taken from experience itself. Their own ages did not value the best men, the pillars of their own commonwealth, the fathers of the fatherland. They repelled Cato from the praetorship, afflicted him with insults, and defiled him with spittle; they envied the Scipios, their liberators, as I explained in the chapter on gratitude. And if we consider our own examples, they agitated Moses with seditions, rejected Samuel, and attacked David. In the commonwealth there are many adversaries, slanderers, and rivals, against whom there is one shield: patience. The man who is weak in spirit is rendered liable to all of them. If he can suffer and keep silent, he will conquer. The invulnerable man is not he who is not struck, but he who is not injured. So many evils strike and beat from every side; the brave and patient man alone is greater than injury and repels the things that come against him with solid strength. History has taught that the causes of civil wars are generally tender spirits, impatient of the most trifling things.
But in what manner shall the commonwealth train its citizens in fortitude? Those who judge this question superfluous because boldness cannot be handed over to the timid through discipline, but this good is a gift of nature, wander far from the truth and do not sufficiently distinguish a human being from beasts. The lion is fearless by nature, the tiger wrathful, the horse high-spirited, the doe timid, the sheep placid, and the ape servile. Those dispositions belong to their natures, which training nevertheless often changes and corrects. In the human being, reason, the mistress of all things, and virtue can do all these things. And thus both boys and tender
girls, to whom fear is peculiar and who are accustomed to cry out even at masks and frightful objects, have laughed at the threats and torments of tyrants. Sacred history teaches this concerning the Maccabees; the Christian Church glories in thousands of martyrs. Therefore true fortitude consists in an unconquered, persevering, and unchangeable purpose of mind. The mind of the most timid virgin can be so strengthened and made solid that it bears all blows of fortuitous things and all torments with inviolable hardness.
§ 8. Therefore, God is the foundation of fortitude and constancy. This seemed true even to the ancient idolaters, to such an extent that they ranked conquerors of tortures and death among the gods. Therefore those who forsake God are wrongly brave, as Saint Augustine admonishes: “He alone is brave who is brave not in himself but in the Lord.” Sermon III to the Brothers in the Desert: “O my brothers and the joy of my heart, consider how great fortitude was in the martyrs, who, as though incapable of suffering, despise torments, crush tyrants, and despise all things that belong to the world; who, although flayed, although burned, although afflicted in all their limbs, although cast down in the whole body, nevertheless we do not read that they were changed in mind. But you ought to know, my brothers, that fortitude is spoken of in many ways: namely, that of hypocrites, philosophers, and good faithful persons. In short, the hypocrite sustains many things, bears many things, and appears brave in all things.”
And: “O fortitude! You empty out all cruelty, reject prison, do not fear the cross, embrace the rack, desire chains, and always run spontaneously to death. O monk, your course for the prize is worth nothing, your work is worth nothing unless it is strengthened by the column of fortitude; the edifice of a good work is worth nothing unless you embrace the column of fortitude. But if the column of fortitude is taken away, the whole edifice of good works falls.”
And Cyprian, To Quirinus, Book III: “One must glory in nothing, since nothing is ours; in the Gospel κατὰ John: ‘No one can receive anything unless it has been given him from heaven.’ Likewise in the First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians: ‘For what do you have that you have not received? But if you have received it, why do you glory as though you had not received it?’ Likewise in First Βασιλειῶν: ‘Do not glory, nor speak lofty things, and let boastful speech not proceed from your mouth, because God is the Lord of knowledge.’ Likewise: ‘The bow of the powerful has been weakened, and the weak have been girded with strength.’ Concerning this very thing in Maccabees: ‘It is just to be subject to God and for a mortal not to think himself equal to God.’ Likewise there: ‘And do not fear the words of a sinful man, because his glory shall be in dung and worms. Today he shall be exalted, and tomorrow he shall not be found, because he has been turned into his earth and his thought has perished.’”
This, therefore, is the fortitude of the martyrs, to which nothing is equal or second. It made the cross desirable to Peter; it strengthened Andrew so that, standing upon the nails themselves, fixed and clinging, he feared to be released. In God, Julius, Martinianus, and Processus, while their faces were being crushed with stones, cried: “Glory to God in the highest.” A public voice sounding from heaven showed that it was the gift of God. For when Saint Polycarp entered the stadium, it was said by an angel: “Be brave, Polycarp, and conduct the matter with a lofty spirit.”
When the torturers had determined to fasten him with nails so that he might be burned alive, he said: “There is no need of nails; I shall sustain the fire willingly.” The flame itself revered so great a constancy and surrounded the unconquered martyr in the manner of an arch; for God wished to erect for his servant a triumphal arch of fire and to show the instrument through which he conquered. There was equal fortitude in an unequal age. Live coals and incense were placed in the hand of Justus, a young man, and he was ordered to extend it above the altar, so that if, conquered by pain, he shook off the fire and incense, he might appear to have sacrificed. But lest he leave anything even for calumny, he preferred his limbs to be burned rather than shake off the fire without sin. Cyrilla, a woman of heroic spirit, accomplished the same thing. What similar thing could Mucius, or anyone among the ancients, do here? Mucius endured the brazier of the altar, but he was deservedly brave, so that by the wonder of his endurance he might stupefy the king whom he could not kill. Here no fear of a greater torment instilled patience under a lighter pain. If Justus had shaken off the coals and pain by a slight movement of his right hand, he could then have hoped for praise and honors.
How great was the perseverance in Theodore, a young man, who, after passing the whole day in most bitter torments as though among roses, when the judge urged him to provide for his own safety, answered with a joyful and brave voice: “Let all who adore graven images be confounded, and those who glory in their idols.” But in these very years the constancy of a Japanese boy was incredible and beyond the human. He was thirteen years old, not yet his own master, but a precocious herald of the divine majesty. He was bound with others to a stake so that he might be burned alive for Christ. When he felt that the slow flame had loosened the tow bonds and, released, approached his mother burning at another stake as her exhorter and consoler, she said to him: “Is it thus, my son, that you desert your station?” Struck by this saying, although he had by no means departed as a deserter, he returned to his place. Without any bond he endured and conquered the fires raging within his entrails. Constancy was in place of ropes and chains. Fearless, this recruit of Christ looked upon his half-burned limbs and enjoyed his own torments as though delights. Japanese letters and the Indian Histories report many more deeds according to this manner and pattern, emulating the primitive Church.
But how great was the spirit of James the Anchorite! When demons attacked him in the appearance of Isaurians, as though they were robbers, he, fearless before death because he judged them robbers, immediately gathered up the hair flowing over his neck and shoulders so that he might present a bare neck prepared for the sword; and in this posture throughout the whole night he awaited the coming blow. With a great spirit he challenged death. These things are divine, and they are fortifications of the spirit from heaven, with which the history of the Christians is full.
§ 9. Therefore, those defenses must be sought from God and drawn from the divine sacraments. Cyprian, Epistle LIV, shows that the arms of our fortitude must be sought from God: “But now peace is necessary not for the weak but for the brave, and communion must be given by us not to the dying but to the living, so that we may not leave unarmed and naked those whom we arouse and exhort to battle, but fortify them with the protection of the blood and body of Christ. And since the Eucharist is made for this purpose, that it may be a protection for those who receive it, let us arm with the fortification of the Lord’s abundance those whom we wish to be safe against the adversary. For how do we teach or provoke them to shed their blood in confession of the name if we deny the blood of Christ to those about to fight? Or how do we make them fit for the cup of martyrdom if we do not first admit them by right of communion to drink the cup of the Lord in the Church?”
And a little afterward: “First, he cannot be fit for martyrdom who is not armed by the Church for battle; and the mind which the received Eucharist does not raise up and kindle fails. For the Lord says in his Gospel: ‘But when they deliver you up, do not consider what you shall speak; for it shall be given to you in that hour what you shall speak. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.’”
§ 10. Perhaps the politician will say that commonwealths have no need of this fortitude, but rather of that other fortitude
which expends blood in defense of the fatherland, which runs amid flying javelins secure from death, which plunges into the enemy battle-line and seeks a beautiful death through wounds. As though it were not one and the same virtue which despises the swords and javelins of enemies and the racks and devices of executioners. A man prepared to die, if justice and the public safety command him to fight, will be unconquered through contempt of death. For the sole cause why men fight languidly is fear of death. Tertullian once terrified the pagans by this argument and showed that Christians could do all things and reduce the Gentiles themselves beneath their dominion, being so many and so prepared to die. When the imperial prefect Arius raged inhumanly, nevertheless the eagerness of the Christians to endure torments and death was greater. Therefore, they eagerly professed themselves Christians and offered themselves to slaughter in so great a number that the governor, weary with cruelty, said:
ὦ δειλοί, εἰ θέλετε ἀποθνῄσκειν, κρημνοὺς καὶ βρόχους ἔχετε.
“O wretched men, if you wish to die, you have precipices and nooses.” Thus indeed the bloody slave of a tyrant interpreted the Christian fortitude which he was torturing more criminally than before. Nevertheless, it is incumbent upon us to weigh how great a defense such men could be to their commonwealth if they were lawfully led against an enemy by a legitimate magistrate. No one would draw back his foot; no one would desert the ranks through fear; all would strive to protect a fellow soldier by their own death. With great effort, individuals would ascend the enemy’s wall and rampart at a swift rush, not from an empty desire for donatives but from hope of eternal remuneration. Therefore our fortitude is in God and from God. Zion is the city of our fortitude; its wall and bulwark is the Creator himself. “I have hoped in God,” says David in Psalm 55:5; “what shall flesh do to me?” “The Lord is the protector of my life; before whom shall I tremble? If camps stand together against me, my heart shall not fear.” “The Lord is my strength and my praise, and he has become my salvation.” And thus in 1 Maccabees 5:61, those priests whom the Lord had not chosen to liberate Israel fell in battle while they considered themselves to be acting bravely. Therefore, the highest fortitude is to have hope fixed in God. A beautiful exhortation occurs in Sozomen, Book II, Chapter VIII, addressed to Ananias the old man as he trembled at the atrocious deaths of his fellow martyrs, by which the prefect of the royal craftsmen encouraged him to constancy: “For a little while, O old man, close your eyes and be of good spirit, for immediately you shall see the light of God.”
§ 11. The second thing which renders citizens brave is zeal for sobriety and temperance. For delights enervate and effeminate spirits; indeed, the luxurious man and the brave man are entirely opposed. Truculent, bitter, and terrifying things are conquered by fortitude; fortitude is armed against pains and death itself; luxury pursues sweetnesses. Therefore, since delights flee every labor, they cannot behold fortitude, which enjoins hard things, even from afar. Next, softer education, which dissolves spirits into luxury, violently inflames the desire to preserve life which is naturally implanted in all; and therefore they are terrified at the smallest suspicion of danger. For the delights that accompany life, which is already exceedingly dear, render it still dearer. Thus, when those whose whole life has been passed in shade and banquets are summoned to arduous things, they tremble as though they must die twice. For when delights are denied they grieve as though at death, and they fear death as cowards. The Laconians held command for a long time through hardness of life. The Greeks, broken by delights, became slaves. The Egyptians, accustomed to delights, were the slaves of all kings. Camps themselves have experienced delights as poison. They broke Hannibal at Capua. Nor did the poets invent Hercules drawing wool under a woman’s command for any other reason than to show that the brave cannot exist amid delights. I shall say more concerning these matters when military discipline is to be treated.
§ 12. Practice in dangers and the examples of others also sharpen fortitude marvelously. All unforeseen things seem greater, especially amid dangers. A man inexperienced in sailing cries out at the first blow of the storm, but a prudent helmsman does not pale even at the tenth wave. In undertaking dangers the first step is the most difficult; when examples have gone before, many follow willingly. Seneca in On Tranquility of Mind: “Unless you regard whatever can happen as something that will happen, you give adverse things strength against you—a strength which anyone who has first seen them has broken, but much more anyone who has experienced them.” And Saint Ambrose, Book I, Chapter XXXVIII of On Duties: “This, therefore, belongs to diligence, that a man prepare himself in this way; that belongs to natural ability, if anyone can foresee by vigor of mind the things which will happen and place them, as it were, before his eyes; determine what can occur and what he ought to do if it occurs; sometimes turn two or three possibilities together in his mind which he conjectures can occur either individually or conjointly, and arrange actions for either the individual or conjoined events which he understands will be advantageous. Therefore, it belongs to a brave man not to dissemble when something threatens but to anticipate it and, as though from a certain watchtower of the mind, explore it, and to meet future events with provident thought, lest perhaps he afterward say: ‘I fell into these things because I did not think they could happen.’ In short, unless they are quickly forestalled, just as in war an unforeseen enemy is scarcely sustained and, if he finds men unprepared, easily crushes them, so unexplored evils break the mind more greatly.”
§ 13. Let great rewards be proposed for fortitude, not so that men may act rightly from hope of advantage and honors—although this too pertains to government—but so that the magnitude of the rewards may show the excellence of virtue to tender spirits. Therefore, those who have persisted with a brave spirit in sudden and grave crises and have repelled enemies must be treated with great honor. For in these cases fortitude especially shines forth. Aristotle, Book III, Chapter VI of the Ethics: “That man is properly called brave who is fearless concerning an honorable death and all those things which occur suddenly and bring it.”
And Cicero, Book I of On Duties: “It belongs to a brave and steadfast spirit not to be disturbed in harsh circumstances nor, as is said, to be cast from its position while in tumult, but to employ the counsel of a present mind and not depart from reason. Although this belongs to a great spirit, that also belongs to a great natural ability: to anticipate future things in thought, determine beforehand what can happen on either side and what must be done when anything has happened, and not to commit anything such that at some time it must be said, ‘I had not thought it.’”
Therefore, virtue of this kind has always been cultivated with the highest honor. Thus Mattathias killed the royal prefect who compelled men to adore idols and the apostate who was sacrificing. Eleazar went beneath the beast, killed it after piercing its belly, and was thus buried in his own triumph. Another Eleazar, the Ahohite, one of David’s mighty men, by no means gave himself as a companion to the fleeing; rather, after all the others had scattered in immense terror, he alone persisted and struck the Philistines until his hand stiffened with the sword. The Lord wrought a great salvation on that day, and the people who had fled returned to strip the spoil from the slain. 2 Samuel 23:11. And Shammah the son of Agee protected the fleeing people and struck the Philistines. Behold the spirit: in a sudden event the whole army flees, and one soldier defends it as it flees; and, what is more marvelous, one man delays and puts to flight the victors as they rush forward. And in verse 18, Abishai raised his spear against three hundred and killed them.
Finally, “love is strong as death, jealousy hard as
hell.” Love of God renders citizens brave. Song of Songs 8:6. “For who shall separate us from the charity of Christ? Tribulation, or distress, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or persecution?” Augustine, Chapter XLVII of On True Religion: “That man is most truly and certainly unconquered who clings to God, not so that he may merit some good external to him from God, but because for him nothing is good except to cling to God himself. As long as this man is in this life, he uses a friend to repay a kindness; he uses an enemy for patience; he uses those whom he can for beneficence; he uses all for benevolence.” And a little afterward: “But amid all dutiful labors he is not broken in his expectation of future rest. For what will harm him who can make good use even of an enemy? By the defense and fortification of him by whose precept and gift he loves his enemies, he will not fear enmities. For this man it is too little not to be saddened amid tribulations unless he even rejoices, knowing that tribulation works patience, patience trial, trial hope, and hope does not confound, because the charity of God has been poured forth in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”
Therefore, let the commonwealth train its citizens in the true and constant love of God. For if the love of creatures renders men furious and contemptuous of all dangers, why should not love of the divinity, resting upon the highest reason, render them unconquered?