Concerning the simulation and guile of things [deeds] I have already answered (ch. 8, q. 2) — if indeed the war was just for them, as Abulensis thinks (q. 15), and [as] was disputed by me above (q. 3 on these wars, before ch. 6). But concerning the words, it is certain that they lied; and then it comes into question: Whether it is sometimes lawful to circumvent enemies by some lie? Albericus Gentili — [one] of the Innovators — answers (bk. 2, On War, ch. 5) [that] enemies can be circumvented by a lie in two ways. First: by not speaking to them. Secondly: by speaking to them; and this
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[can be done] again in two ways: for either we speak to them without any promise or contract, or with a promise and within a contract. [Gentili holds, then, that] it is lawful to impose a lie on enemies in every way outside a contract, but within a contract never. But —
First. The most certain and most received opinion of St. Augustine (in the books On Lying and Against Lying), which St. Thomas also proposes (2a2ae, q. 40, art. 3), is that no kind of lie is lawful. And therefore, whether we speak to our own [people] or to enemies, and whether contracting or not contracting, every lie whatsoever is always to be removed. The Innovator objects three [things]. First: All the Philosophers — as Plato, Xenophon, Lucian, the Jurisconsults, Physicians, Rhetoricians, and Theologians older than St. Augustine, as he himself testifies about them (q. 68 on Leviticus) — reckoned that some lie could sometimes be admitted. Second: By insidious deeds [ambushes] it is lawful to deceive enemies (above, ch. 8, q. 2); therefore also by lies. For in simulated works too there is a lie, as St. Thomas says (2a2ae, q. 111, art. 1); [so also] St. Ambrose, Aristotle (in the treatise On Truthfulness), Archidamus in Stobaeus (serm. 62), and Clement of Alexandria (bk. 3, Paedag., ch. 3) — when he exclaimed about that man who dyed his hair lest he seem grey: “What would he say truly who has a lie even upon his head?” He concludes thus: “It could be called the lie of David, who sometimes acted the madman.” Third: He collects the examples of those who seem to have lied — Elisha (4 Kings [2 Kings] 6), Rahab (above, ch. 2).
To the first: I deny [it] concerning all Theologians. For neither the Prophets, nor the Apostles, nor so many others conceded any lie. Concerning the Philosophers and the like, it is no wonder that they erred here, who erred in greater [matters]; and so [did] those Christians who followed them, as Origen and others (see Molanus, bk. 1, On Keeping Faith with Heretics, ch. 5). To the second: I deny the consequence, because words by their nature are referred to indicating the mind’s meanings, but deeds are not — [only] by accident; and so there is some lie in them, yet improperly and by accident. To the third: Concerning the individual [examples], [it] has been said, or is to be said, in its own place.
Secondly. Even if it were lawful to circumvent enemies by a lie, yet it would not be lawful for all, but only for those whose war was just — as [was] expounded above concerning ambushes (ch. 8, q. 2).
Thirdly. From all contracts with an enemy, every lie and guile of words ought to be entirely absent; and this the same Jurisconsult [Gentili] there rightly hands down (also ch. 4). Pericles, therefore, [was] wicked (Frontinus, Stratagems bk. 4) — who, having covenanted [that] the future enemies [would be] unharmed if they laid down their iron [weapons], slew those same [men], because they had kept iron clasps on their cloaks: here the word “iron” [was meant] of arms. “By iron, not by gold, let us both decide life,” says Pyrrhus in Ennius. (Thucydides, bk. 2:) The Plataeans [were] wicked, who, having covenanted to give back captives, gave them back slain — as if the captives were corpses, and a dead man were [still] a man. Wicked [was] Alexander, who granted the defenders a safe departure from the city, but ordered them, when they had advanced a little on the way, to be killed — by which an inexpiable stain clung to the warlike deeds of Alexander, as [men] write. And deservedly, if only this is asked: whether, if it was covenanted that they might safely leave the city, they could thus be captured and killed after they had left. For there is no one who would so covenant, and no reason why he would.
[Whoever] is captured in a temple is to be released — and so released that his pursuit be difficult. This is the best law here, unless something else has been agreed. Dercylidas, Thibron, [and] Paches [were] wicked, who, having promised the besieged a return into the besieged city if they came to them, then threatened those coming with death unless they surrendered the city; and so they granted a return [only] into a surrendered [city] — but that surrendered [city] was not the [one] into which they had covenanted a return. Wicked [were] the Samnites, who, having covenanted with the enemy about removing a stone throughout the whole circuit of the wall, remove [it] from the lowest part, and so remove the whole wall — but if a stone had to be removed from the wall, the wall assuredly did not have to be removed. Wicked [were] the Campanians, who were [bound] to leave half the arms to the enemy, but cut all the arms in two and left the half of the cut [pieces]. And equally wicked [was] that Roman who cut all of Antiochus’s ships [in two], because the King had to hand over half the ships by the treaty; and here [he] is called by Valerius a wicked trickster. For this is not a division, but a ruin of everything. As Cascellius wittily [says] in Macrobius (bk. 2, Saturnalia, ch. 6): “If thou dividest the ship, neither thou nor thy partner will have [it].” And the Interpreters [comment] on the ridiculous deed of him who had thus bought half a fig-tree, and wanted the middle of each [fruit] (Jason and Alciatus, [on] L. 12, 13, “if a certain [thing] be sought”). And Labeo and Sabinus [hold] that if a torn garment be given back, or the thing be returned corrupted, the thing seems to be absent [not returned] — which Decius, and Ulpian, and Paulus approve (L. 13, 14, On the Meaning of Words). The Romans, again, [were] wicked, who, promising that Carthage should be free, transferred the word of the promise to the citizens — of whom the community consisted — not to the walls and buildings, which they ordered destroyed (Appian, Punica). For although there be this difference between “urbs” [city] and “civitas” [community] — that “urbs” [is] the buildings, “civitas” the inhabitants — yet [that] is a wholly sinister and far-fetched interpretation, which does not sound right to the ears of the common [people]; for this subtler [distinction], neglected everywhere, does not agree with the [true] difference. Nor even is a “free” community left, which is ordered to migrate elsewhere: a command to migrate from one’s own dwellings is nothing short of captivity. Nor is a community without a city, buildings, and walls, in which much of the community’s nature consists. But indeed in several [passages] of that Third Punic [War] you could scarcely defend the Romans. Wicked too, in the Second [Punic War], [were] those Roman soldiers who, captured by Hannibal and so released on [the terms] that, if the senate would not exchange the captives, they themselves should return to Hannibal — and [who] said they were freed from the [oath’s] obligation because, when they had gone out from Hannibal, they had returned by a contrived plan on the same day, and so, the oath about returning being [thus] fulfilled, they had departed bound by no condition. This fraudulent cunning of theirs was reckoned so base that there was no one who did not brand it with reproaches, decrees, [and] marks [of infamy]. And Cicero [judges] concerning this deed [that] one must always consider what thou hast meant in [good] faith, not what thou hast said (Gellius, bk. 8, ch. 18; Cicero, bk. 3, On Duties). And generally the Theologians [say], concerning an oath: “By whatever art of words each may swear, yet God, who is the witness of conscience, so takes this [oath] as he understands [it] to whom it is sworn,” etc. (ch. 9, q. 22, causa 5). The same fraud [was] in these soldiers; and yet far more monstrous was [that] of Otho, Bishop of Mainz, than others narrate and note (Sabellicus, bk. 12; Ennen, bk. 8; Alciatus, On Presumptions, ch. 17; bk. 4 of the Deeds of the Archbishops of Mainz, [Archbishop] 10, where [it is] written not “Otho,” but — more correctly — “Hatto”). Wicked [were] Agnon, Cleomenes, and the Thracians, who, having covenanted a truce for some days with the enemy, meanwhile did something hostile in some night — as if night were not contained under the appellation of “day,” although [the truce] had been said not of one day but of several. And when that which is transacted [is treated] not in mid-daylight, but in darkness — [it is] even noted by a proverb, this “Thracian device.” Also the pacts of the Pharisees concerning
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[the pacts of the Pharisees concerning the sabbath] they relate to have been said insidiously: because, when they had landed in Libya, and had obtained from the inhabitants of the place that they might be there a night and a day, they afterward would never depart — as if safe by this pact, [taking it] as if it meant, and as if it had been agreed, that [the pact] should last until [there] be day, and [there] be night, forever. And perhaps the Phoenician tongue, likewise the Libyan, more nearly favors this fraud (nay, without the “perhaps” — because HADIOM [“the day”] or LAILA [“night”] can signify either) — which [fraud] is detected more manifestly and impudently in the Latin. So too the other above-mentioned [tricks] of the Greeks, the Opicans, the Scythians, and others. Those same Phoenicians brought in that other device about the ox-hide, having bought only “AS MUCH [LAND] AS THEY COULD SURROUND WITH AN OX-HIDE.” And another device the same [Phoenicians] devised elsewhere, in Athenaeus (bk. 8). But they too were then caught by the Greeks with equal arts. For the Greeks, who owed them ships, hand [them] over without rudder, oars, [and] sails — as though these were [real] ships: insidiously, but against insidious [men]. Wicked [were] the Locrians, who, having covenanted a perpetual friendship “while they should tread that land, and carry those heads upon [their] shoulders” — [then], the earth which they had before put into [their] shoes, and the heads of garlic which they had secretly placed on [their] shoulders, being shaken out, moved war. These most futile devices — which perhaps thou couldst use, as Numa and Brutus are reported to have used [them], to avert some savagery, but here thou couldst not use. Wicked [was] Ariandes; wicked the Persians, who likewise, having covenanted friendship “while that land should stand [remain],” — the ditch made beforehand, and the earth which covered [it] and on which they were standing, being opened up, pressed down, and cast down beneath, — thus vaunted themselves freed by the pact, that land not standing [remaining]. And such [was] the device of the Perugians, disapproved even by the Perugian Jurisconsults: that there should be peace between the Pope and the Perugians “so long as they should have upon [their] body [something] of the vite” — which word in Italian signifies both “lives” [vitas] and “vines” [vites]. But the Perugians understood [it] of themselves concerning the vine, which they carried hidden in [their] bosom, and which they afterward cast away; and so they ceased to have [it] on [their] body, and renewed war with the Pontiff — who, trusting the treaty, where he had understood “life,” was now acting securely. These are devices so rotten and putrid that, in recounting and refuting them, I could seem excessive.
Fourthly. Abulensis holds (q. 15) [that] the sin of the Gabaonites was very small, because [it] was a dutiful [officious] sin, for preserving life; therefore, he says, [it is] as it were of no fault. But for the Israelites, unless much had followed to counter [it], [it] would have been pernicious. And [that] these — in 1 Chron. 2:22 — are called, on account of this lie, “men of Cozeba,” or “of the lie,” in the Hebrew and Greek text, the Rabbis and Talmudists agree (ch. 5, in Bababathra [Bava Batra], fol. 916).