That Joshua had by now given Jericho penalties enough, someone perhaps would believe — since its walls [were] torn down, its citizens slain, its houses burnt — and [that] therefore Joshua acted too cruelly, in that he imprecates so many evils on anyone who should ever exist and try to restore it. And to this [effect] many things can be brought from Cicero’s first [book] On Duties, from Alexander [of Hales?] bk. 5, consilium 132, and others. But I say briefly [that] Joshua did rightly and in due order when he detested the [would-be] rebuilder of Jericho, and devoted his children to destruction. First: because he did it by the command and authority of the Lord. For (1 Kings 16:34) this very detestation and devoting is called “the word of the Lord, which he had spoken by the hand of Joshua the son of Nun.” Secondly: because the Lord assented to the imprecation, as will be said below. Whence Rupert (ch. 20, on Joshua): “He said two [things]: first, ‘Let this city be anathema, and all that is in it.’ Then, ‘Cursed [be] the man before the Lord who shall raise up and build the city of Jericho.’ He said two [things], I say, and neither in bitterness of fury, nor from a motion of his own mind, but by the contemplation of the divine judgment: he condemned a city [that was] sinful and hateful to God. Finally, his sentence in both [cases] was immediately followed by the divine testimony.” Thirdly: because the causes were just and grave, on account of which Joshua took care that Jericho should not come to life again. First: that it might be a perpetual monument of the divine power and venge ance before the eyes of all, as Rambam [Maimonides] says. Secondly: that idolatry and impiety might be the more detestable to all, [when] they saw [it] so gravely punished in the first Canaanite city. Thirdly: lest, on account of the neighboring Jordan and the convenience of the place, some seed of war or of impiety should again arise thence. Fourthly: Abulensis (q. 60) adds — because the city had been condemned to the anathema, as [at] Deut. 13:16. But it is not to be thought that this [curse] was comprehended in the anathema simply [in the ban itself]. For otherwise it would have been enough to say beforehand, “the anathema was brought on this city.” But now, as if the sentence of the anathema being fulfilled and completed, something new, as it were, is subjoined: “At that time Joshua imprecated [a curse].” For this cause, then, I suppose a mystical [reason]: namely, that it might be signified that it is not enough to have once uprooted all wickedness from the soul, root and branch, through penance and confession; but that one must persevere in this, and diligently take care, lest anyone build for us a new Jericho — lay new foundations of wickedness and dissolution, raise new walls, set up new gates. Fifthly: we see also that, for various causes, other peoples have in the same way either destroyed, or willed not to be rebuilt, certain enemy cities. Zonaras (tome 2, on the destruction of Carthage): Πᾶσα, inquit, ἀνάστατος γέγονε, καὶ ἐπάρατον ἐψηφίσθη τὸ ἐπ’ αὐτὴν κατοικῆσαί τινα [“The whole [city],” he says, “was made desolate, and it was voted accursed that anyone should dwell upon it [the site].”]. And this Plutarch had handed down before, in the Gracchi; Appian, in the Punic [Wars]; and Orosius. [Velleius] Paterculus (bk. 2): “Carthage and Numantia being destroyed, Scipio delivered us from the fear of the one, [and] avenged us of the insults of the other.” Cicero, first [book] On Duties: “Our forefathers utterly destroyed Carthage and Numantia. I could wish [they had] not [destroyed] Corinth; but I believe they especially followed the convenience of the place, lest the place itself should at some time be able to invite [men] to make war.” And in [the speech] On his House: ”…[so that] we are wont to destroy the cities of enemies — and not of all enemies, but of those with whom we have undertaken a bitter and internal war — drawn not by plunder, but by hatred: because, against those toward whom our minds have been inflamed on account of their cruelty, some [continuing] war always seems to reside even in their roofs and dwellings.” In the Lyric [poet, Horace], bk. 3, Ode 3, Juno [speaks] thus:
“But to the warlike Romans I foretell [their] fates on this condition: that not, too dutiful and trusting in their fortunes, they should wish to rebuild the ancestral roofs of Troy. Troy, rising again under a mournful omen, shall be repeated in a sad disaster…” [Horace, Odes 3.3.57–62]
Moreover, we read a public decree [psephisma] of the Ionians, by which they cursed those who should rebuild the temples and shrines of the gods that had been set aflame by the fires of the Persians — that the sight, to the eyes, the recollection, to the minds, and the sense of grief, of so great an injury might never be absent — as [it is] in Isocrates, in the Panegyric. But see Pierre Faber, bk. 1 of the Semestria, ch. 8.