Question XVIII. (marg.) What things followed the victory?

“A most beautiful and most opportune victory,” [Josephus] says, “do our ancestors win. For they overcame those who had rushed in with an army, and terrified the surrounding peoples, [being] enriched with great and splendid goods, which — after they had so greatly toiled — they obtained. For when they had also taken the enemy’s camp, they had great wealth, both public and private, whereas before they did not have even the necessary provisions. And it was for them a cause of goods not for the present only, but also for the future age — this battle, now narrated, which had succeeded rightly and after their heart’s wish. For not only did they reduce the enemies’ bodies into servitude, but also their very minds; and to all the surrounding [peoples], after this depression of those [Amalekites], they were formidable. And to themselves they joined a great force of riches. For much silver and gold had been left in the camp, and vessels of bronze, which they used for the daily use of life. And great and notable was the abundance of both kinds of things — those, namely, which were textiles, and the ornaments of arms; and there were also others, which pertain to the baggage of the attendants, and their furniture, and booty of every kind of cattle, and of all those [things] which are wont to follow a camp setting out on some expedition. And the Hebrews were also filled in spirit to act manfully thenceforth; and there was in them a great care of virtue, and they leaped forth to labor.” (For instead of ᾖσαν I read ᾖλσαν, from ἅλλω, which, with a smooth breathing, Chrysoloras notes in ἥλατο.) “By this reckoning [holding] that all [things] could be taken.” And this indeed was the end of this battle. But the same Josephus does not yet make an end. He adds still other [things], and those splendid. “On the next day,” he says, “Moses stripped the spoils from the dead enemies, and gathered the arms of those who had fled; those who had borne themselves bravely he honored with honors, and adorned the leader of the war himself, Jesus [Joshua], with encomiums, since, on account of the [things] he had done, he had a splendid testimony from the whole army. But of the Hebrews not even one died; but of the enemies, so many that their number could not be known.” I have chosen to render these [passages] from the Greek as [best] I could, because a new interpreter [translation] is not at hand for me — and [because], as St. Jerome once said to the old [translator], in the Apology against him: “The whole road of thy speech, without the art of Pallas [Athena], is broken up by ruggednesses and pits of faults.” But the same Josephus adds [that] Jesus [Joshua] was received at a banquet by Moses, [and that], the festival of the victories being completed [τὴν τῶν ἐπινικίων ἑορτήν], an altar [was] raised to God for perpetual thanksgiving — about which [more] afterward. And [that] after victories these and similar things are to be done, Onosander advises (in the book On Military Affairs).