Libanius: War in time of peace

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

Greek and Roman writers on war and peace

Libanius: Rulers more popular for granting mercy than possessing multitudes of soldiers

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Libanius
From Oration 30
Unknown translator

[T]he husbandman is impoverished, and the revenue suffers. For, be the will ever so good, impossibilities are not to be surmounted. Of such mischievous consequence are the arbitrary proceedings of those persons in the country, who say, ‘they fight with the temples.’ But that war is the gain of those who oppress the inhabitants: and robbing these miserable people of their goods, and what they had laid up of the fruits of the earth for their sustenance, they go off as with the spoils of those whom they have conquered…[T]hese also are your subjects, and so much more profitable than those who injure them, as laborious men are than the idle: for they are like bees, these like drones…Others glory and boast, and tell their exploits to those who are ignorant of them, and say they are more deserving than the husbandmen. Nevertheless, what is this but in time of peace to wage war with the husbandmen? For it by no means lessens these evils that they suffer from their countrymen. But it is really more grievous to suffer the things which I have mentioned in a time of peace, from those who ought to assist them in a time of trouble.