Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/280

 274 THE CITY. BOOK HI. cients a very definite and a very vivid belief, by reason of which each army took its gods along with it. Men believed that these gods took an active part in the bat- tle ; the soldiers defended them and they defended the soldiers. While fighting against the enemy, each one believed he was fighting against the gods of another city. These foreign gods he was permitted to detest, to abuse, to strike ; he might even make them prison- ers. Thus war had a strange aspect. We must pic- ture to ourselves two armies facing each other: in the midst of each are its statues, its altar, and its stan- dards, which are sacred emblems; each has its oracles, which have promised it success; its augurs, and its soothsayers, who assure it the victory. Before the bat- tle each soldier in the two armies thinks and says, like the Greek in Euripides, "The gods who fight for us are more powerful than those of our enemies." Each army pronounces against the other an imprecation like that which Macrobius has preserved — " O gods, spread fear, terror, and misfortune among our enemies. Let these men, and whoever inhabits their lands and cities, be deprived by you of the light of the sun. May their city, and their lands, and their heads, and their persons, be devoted to you." After this imprecation, they rush to battle on both sides, with that savage fury which the notion that they have gods fighting for them and that they are fighting against strange gods inspires in them. There is no mercy for the enemy ; war is im- placable; religion presides over the struggle, and ex- cites the combatants. There can be no superior rule to moderate the desire for slaughter; they are permit- ted to kill the prisoners and the wounded. Even outside the field of battle they have no idea of a duty of any kind towards the enemy. There are