Appian: The fate of all great military empires

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

Greek and Roman writers on war and peace

Appian: Selections on war

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Appian
Punica
Translated by W. R. Paton

Scipio, when he looked upon the city (Carthage) as it was utterly perishing and in the last throes of its complete destruction, is said to have shed tears and wept openly for his enemies. After being wrapped in thought for long, and realizing that all cities, nations and authorities, like men, meet their doom, that this happened to Ilium, once a prosperous city, to the empires of Assyria, Media and Persia, the greatest of their time, and to Macedonia itself, the brilliance of which was so recent, either deliberately or the verses escaping him, he said:

A day will come when sacred Troy itself will perish,
And Priam and his people shall be slain. (Homer, The Iliad)

And when Polybius speaking with freedom to him, for he was his teacher, asked him what he meant by the words, they say that without any attempt at concealment he named his own country, for which he feared when he reflected on the fate of all things human. Polybius actually heard him and recalls it in his history.