§ 1. For the most part, either unjust wars are waged or, if they are just, they are administered unjustly. When the fury of war blazes up between two peoples, justice stands on only one side. Whether someone attacks a just cause or defends an unjust one, victory never makes him innocent. No one deceives his own conscience so that the outcome may console it; an unjust cause holds him guilty.
§ 2. Among the unjust causes of war, I place first the corrupt judgment of certain prudent men, by which they think that their own state, because it has been prudently instituted and furnished with excellent morals, deservedly subjects barbarian peoples to itself in servitude.
They make a distinction among men, saying that some are slaves by nature, born, namely, to obey, but others born to command. Aristotle, Politics, Book I, chapter 5:
Καὶ εὐθὺς ἐκ γενετῆς ἔνια διέστηκε, τὰ μὲν ἐπὶ τὸ ἄρχεσθαι, τὰ δὲ ἐπὶ τὸ ἄρχειν.
And immediately from birth there is this difference, that some things were born to command and some to obey. He proves this in animals and then proceeds in this way to men who are slaves by nature:
Ἐπεὶ δὲ τὸ ἄρρεν πρὸς τὸ θῆλυ φύσει, τὸ μὲν κρεῖττον, τὸ δὲ χεῖρον· καὶ τὸ μὲν ἄρχον, τὸ δὲ ἀρχόμενον. Τὸν αὐτὸν δὴ τρόπον ἀναγκαῖον εἶναι καὶ ἐπὶ πάντων ἀνθρώπων. Ὅσοι μὲν οὖν τοσοῦτον διεστᾶσιν, ὅσον ψυχὴ σώματος, καὶ ἄνθρωπος θηρίου—διάκεινται δὲ τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον ὅσων ἐστὶν ἔργον ἡ τοῦ σώματος χρῆσις, καὶ τοῦτ’ ἐστὶν ἀπ’ αὐτῶν βέλτιστον—οὗτοι μέν εἰσι φύσει δοῦλοι, οἷς βέλτιόν ἐστιν ἄρχεσθαι ταύτην τὴν ἀρχήν, εἴπερ καὶ τοῖς εἰρημένοις. Ἔστι γὰρ φύσει δοῦλος ὁ δυνάμενος ἄλλου εἶναι, διὸ καὶ ἄλλου ἐστίν.
Furthermore, the male, compared with the female, is better, while the latter ought to submit to command. It is necessary that the matter be the same in all human beings. Therefore, all who are inferior and worse than other men by as much as the soul excels the body and man the beast—and such are those whose work is placed in the use of the body and from whom this alone is the best thing that can proceed—are slaves by nature, for whom it is better to submit to this rule, if indeed it is so also for the things stated above. For a slave by nature is one who is capable of belonging to another, and therefore does belong to another.
This opinion is both false and destructive of the human race. For from this the very arrogant wisdom of the Greeks thought it a right to subject barbarian nations to its command, and thought war just so that the worse might obey the better; but they judged themselves the better, although it is established that many barbarian nations lived more innocently and modestly than the Greeks. They thought that they had accomplished some great thing when they reduced the Lydians, Sarmatians, Scythians, and Indians under their power and, as wise men, made themselves masters of men whom they thought foolish.
First, indeed, it is excessively arrogant to raise themselves so high and press others so low. Second, one must first see whether he who undertakes war against barbarians born for servitude, so that he may govern them legitimately, also governs his own mind, house, and state according to virtue; otherwise he is more wicked than the barbarians. Third, the barbarians ought rather to be taught and admonished than subdued in war. For why should they serve you? Why should you possess the right of life and death over them because you are more cunning than they?
All nations have taught that this difference is not one of nature but of education. The Romans at first were barbarians, and afterward the Spaniards, Gauls, and Germans—πᾶν τὸ χείριστον, “the very worst of all”—but now they are regarded as the most cultivated of nations, while barbarism has migrated into Africa and Asia.
§ 3. Many unjust wars have also been waged on account of women, even though there was no abduction. Darius the Persian brought war upon Iantinus, king of the Scythians, because his daughter had been refused to him in marriage. This was tyrannical, since he could not compel even a subject to give him his daughter in marriage against his will. It was indeed customary in ancient barbarism to abduct wives or to bring war on account of them. More subtle was the art of the French nobles, who incited the king to war against Charles the Bold so that, compelled by necessity, he might give his daughter in marriage to someone together with the very ample dowry of the Burgundian dominions. Antony did not indeed wage war on account of Cleopatra, for he enjoyed her love, but was driven into war by the ambition of a woman.
§ 4. Immense wars have often arisen from superstition, just as was said above concerning sedition. The cities of Egypt were accustomed to provoke one another to war on account of their gods. Once, when the Alans and Armenians had assembled for games, a dispute arose concerning the gods: which people had the better gods? That frenzy remained in them as they departed. For since each nation’s own divinities appeared sacred and its rites most honorable, after they had returned home, the more each man wished to appear pious, the more hostilely he pressed the war.
For this is the nature of superstition: to ridicule the things of another. “Everyone,” says Philo in Book II of The Life of Moses, “abhors foreign rites and thinks that so much more honor accrues to his own as he tramples those of others more deeply.” The source of this proceeds from innate malice and obstinacy. For men cannot honorably defend their own rites, since these contain many unspeakable and shameful things; but in ridiculing those of others, since they are equally absurd, they can be eloquent and witty. Now there is scarcely any war which is not said to be waged for the sake of religion.
§ 5. It is established that the greatest wars have had the most trifling causes:
Ἡ φαύλη τις αἰτία πολλάκις παρεμπεσοῦσα πολλῶν πραγμάτων ὠδίνησε μεταβολάς, καὶ συμφορὰς ἀπέτεκεν ὑπερόγκους.
And frequently a cause of no importance, intervening, has given birth to changes in many affairs and brought forth immense calamities, as Nicetas admonishes in his account of Manuel Comnenus. The greatest wars have often had the slightest and most contemptible beginnings. Cicero, On Ends, Book II, says that Xerxes would have attempted so much in vain if he were said merely to have wished to carry away honey from Hymettus. Yet frequently there is no greater cause or fruit of the bloodiest wars.
§ 6. Most unjust wars arise from a profound desire for wealth and honor. Even if other causes are also just, these nevertheless join themselves as companions. Desire for wealth was indeed more concealed among the earliest Romans, more visible among other nations. When the Persians sent ambassadors throughout Greece to ask for earth and water as a sign of subjection, avarice made them restless and judged it equitable that every land be annexed to their own. When Xerxes had tasted Attic figs, he swore that he would occupy the land which bore that fruit—not from gluttony, for he could have bought them, but from avarice, because although he had as great wealth and power as no one before him had possessed, he nevertheless did not have a mind content with present things.
Avarice and luxury together incited the Gauls to invade Italy. For when those who had been there offered wine to their countrymen, by its sweetness they aroused them all to the expedition; but most poured out their blood upon the land unhappily sought. Those who desired the property of others too eagerly lost all their own possessions and their life.
Afterward the same Italy, by the same pleasantness and felicity, invited the Lombards. For while they were in Pannonia, having heard that Italy abounded in sweet fruits, succulent meat, and fragrant wine and enjoyed, under a temperate sky, a variety of all things, they hastened there in great columns. Spain, however, armed the avarice of two peoples against itself and mutually against those very peoples. For the Spaniards, then a simple nation, were ignorant of the resources and riches that lay well hidden in the depths. Afterward the Romans sought them; but, inflamed by this matter, the Carthaginians moved arms against the Romans, which came to rest with the destruction of Carthage. Thus, while they gaped after Spanish gold and excavations, they demolished their own walls. For whatever cause they pretended, certainly:
Gold and purple trouble the lives of men with cares
And weary them with war.
Nowhere was this clearer than in the war which the Gauls waged against the Greeks. For Brennus exhorted his men to war by the hope of booty. When he had heard from captives that the Delphic offerings were not of solid gold but iron covered with gold, he ordered them to affirm that they were of solid gold, and thus used his men’s avarice for the battle. This cause of fighting seemed so legitimate that in Pausanias they said the Persians were foolish because, though rich, they fought with the poor. For they thought the reward of victory to be not justice but the resources of those oppressed.
Accordingly, in this cause they did not deny themselves to be so unjust that King Antigonus was not ashamed to say to a certain sophist who offered him a book written on justice: “You are foolish: although you see me harassing the cities of others with arms, you nevertheless discourse on justice in my presence.” Antigonus laughed at these things, professing injustice and great robberies. But more shamefully, the Roman people occupied Cyprus without any pretext, and lest anything be lacking to the unworthiness of so great a crime, Porcius Cato was the commander.
Florus, Book IX, narrates the matter thus: “The fate of the islands was at hand; therefore Cyprus too was taken without war. Ptolemy ruled the island, which abounded in ancient riches and was for that reason sacred to Venus. So great was the fame of its wealth, and not falsely, that the people which had conquered nations and was accustomed to give away kingdoms, under the leadership of Publius Clodius the tribune, commanded the confiscation of an allied and living king. He indeed anticipated his fate with poison at the report of the matter. But Porcius Cato carried the Cyprian wealth in Liburnian ships through the mouth of the Tiber, and this affair filled the treasury of the Roman people more broadly than any triumph.”
With similar desire but greater madness Crassus moved against the Parthians. Florus, Book III, chapter 11: “While it was subduing the Gauls through Caesar in the north, meanwhile in the east the Roman people received a grievous wound from the Parthians. Nor can we complain of fortune. The disaster lacks consolation. With both gods and men opposed, the desire of the consul Crassus, while he gaped after Parthian gold, was punished by the slaughter of eleven legions and by his own head. Metellus, tribune of the plebs, had devoted the departing commander with hostile curses. When the army had crossed Zeugma, the Euphrates swallowed the standards torn away by sudden whirlwinds. And when he had placed camp near Nicephorium, ambassadors sent by King Orodes warned him to remember the treaties struck with Pompey and Sulla. Gaping after royal treasures, he answered that he would make his answer at Seleucia, without even an imaginary right.”
§ 7. Avarice is frequently a cause of war, but ambition and the lust for domination joined to the praise of complete victory are more obstinate in it. For when enemies, having bargained for life, are ready to surrender everything, why are their prayers not accepted, but the exactor of vengeance presses on until despair of pardon drives the wretched to prefer destroying their possessions and themselves besides rather than being a cruel mockery to the enemy? Is it not because pride, desiring an absolute victory, outweighs avarice? This, therefore, is a cause of waging war, as all histories show. Lucan, Book I:
You, Rome, made common to three masters, were the cause
Of the evils, and never did the deadly compact of rule
Among a multitude succeed. O men badly united
And blinded by excessive desire, what pleasure is it
To mingle your strength and hold the world
In common?
For although his own causes seize each man and drag him into criminal battles, nevertheless the lust for domination holds first place. Ninus is said to have been the first to do this. Augustine, The City of God, Book IV, chapter 6: “Justin, who, following Pompeius Trogus, wrote in Latin, as Trogus had, but also briefly, a Greek—or rather, a foreign—history, begins the work of his books thus: ‘At the beginning of affairs, command over peoples and nations was in the hands of kings, whom not popular ambition but moderation approved among good men advanced to the summit of this majesty. The peoples were held by no laws; the judgments of princes stood for laws. It was customary to guard rather than extend the boundaries of command. Each man’s kingdom ended within his own country. Ninus, king of the Assyrians, was the first of all to change the ancient custom, as though ancestral among the nations, by a new desire for empire. He was the first to bring wars upon his neighbors and subdued peoples still untrained in resistance as far as the boundaries of Libya.’”
And a little afterward, he says: “‘Ninus confirmed the magnitude of the dominion he had acquired by continual possession. Therefore, after his neighbors had been subdued, when he passed with an accession of strength, now more powerful, against others, and each succeeding victory was an instrument of the next, he subjected the peoples of the whole East.’ And in Book III, chapter 14, Sallust touched in passing upon that vice”—of fighting for the sake of exercise and from love of praise—“as a great one. For when in praise he had briefly recalled more ancient times, when the life of men was passed without desire and each man was sufficiently pleased with his own, he said: ‘But afterward, when Cyrus in Asia, and the Lacedaemonians and Athenians in Greece, began to subdue cities and nations, to hold the lust for domination as a cause of war, and to think that the greatest glory lay in the greatest command,’ and the other things he had undertaken to say.”
Let it suffice me to have set down his words thus far. That lust for domination assails and wears down the human race with great evils. Conquered by this lust, Rome then triumphed that it had conquered Alba and called the praise of its own crime glory.
§ 8. Many wars arising from the sudden and unjust ferocity of kings have crushed the world. Seneca, On Anger, Book III, chapter 20: “For my purpose is not to write of the cruelty of Gaius but of the evil of anger, which does not rage merely against individual men but rends whole nations, cities, and rivers, and lashes things safe from every sensation of pain. Thus the king of the Persians cut off the noses of an entire people in Syria; hence the name Rhinocolura for the place. Do you judge that he spared them because he did not cut off their whole heads? He delighted in a new kind of punishment.
“The Ethiopians, who are called Macrobians because of the very long span of their life, would have suffered something of this kind. Cambyses raged against them because they had not received slavery with upturned hands and had given free answers through the ambassadors he sent—answers which kings call insulting. Without provisions having been prepared and without the routes having been explored, he dragged the whole multitude useful for war through pathless and arid places. During the first part of the journey it lacked necessities, nor did the barren and uncultivated region, unknown to human footsteps, furnish anything. At first they sustained hunger with the tenderest leaves and the tops of trees; then with hides softened by fire and whatever necessity had made food. After roots and grasses also had failed amid the sands and there appeared a solitude destitute even of animals, they chose every tenth man by lot and had food more savage than famine. Anger still drove the king headlong when he had lost a part of his army, until he feared that he himself might be called to the lot; then at last he gave the signal for retreat. Meanwhile, choice birds were being preserved for him, and the instruments of banquets were being carried on camels, while his soldiers drew lots as to who should perish badly and who live worse.”
This man was angry at a nation unknown and undeserving, though one capable of feeling it; Cyrus was angry at a river. For when he hastened to the war in order to attack Babylon—a war whose greatest moments lie in opportunities—he attempted to cross by a ford the whole broadly spread Gyndes, something scarcely safe even when it has felt the summer and has been reduced to its lowest level. I spoke of this matter when I treated tyranny and cruelty.
§ 9. I judge it unjust to declare war on account of receiving those who have fled from enemies, unless they themselves are authors of the evils. For why, once their country has been destroyed, should its remnants be pursued? The Israelites indeed spared six hundred Benjaminites and even gave them wives, in the final chapter of Judges.
Florus, Book II, chapter 18, confesses the wicked hatred of his own people: “If it is permitted to confess it, there was scarcely ever a more unjust cause of war. The Segidenses had received allies and kinsmen who had escaped the hands of the Romans. An intercession made on their behalf had no force. Although they removed themselves from every contagion of wars, they were ordered to lay down their arms as the price of a lawful treaty. This was received by the barbarians as though their hands were being cut off. Therefore, immediately turning to arms under Megara, a most courageous man, they attacked Pompey in battle. Nevertheless, although they could have completed the war, they preferred a treaty. Then they attacked Hostilius Mancinus. They so subdued this man too by continual slaughter that no one could sustain even the eyes or voice of a Numantine man. Nevertheless, with this man too they preferred a treaty, content with the spoils of arms although they could have proceeded to annihilation.”
It is altogether permissible to confess that an injury was done to the Numantines, not only because the beginning of the war was without cause, but also because treaties were violated and cruelty was repaid for clemency. For they wished to surrender if conditions tolerable to men were commanded. But when Scipio desired a true and unconditional victory, they were reduced to such misery that, after battle, a sortie, and flight had been attempted, they finally killed themselves. I shall conclude with the remarkable answer of a barbarian nation. If war is not just, it is brigandage. The ambassador of the Scythians said this freely to Alexander: “You who boast that you come to pursue robbers are the robber of all the nations you have approached.”