Was chosen leader. Him they served in war,
And him in peace for sake of warlike deeds
Rev’renced no less.........
...............
Thus kings were first invented.”
[6] “Among uncivilised nations, there is but one profession honourable, that of arms. All the ingenuity and vigour of the human mind are exerted in acquiring military skill or address.” Cf. Robertson’s History of Charles V., (Works, 1813, vol. V.) Sect. I. vii.
[7] Similarly we find that the original meaning of the Latin word “hostis” was “a stranger.”
[8] In Aristotle we find the high-water mark of Greek thinking on this subject. “The object of military training,” says he, (Politics, Bk. IV. Ch. XIV., Welldon’s translation—in older editions Bk. VII.) “should be not to enslave persons who do not deserve slavery, but firstly to secure ourselves against becoming the slaves of others; secondly, to seek imperial power not with a view to a universal despotic authority, but for the benefit of the subjects whom we rule, and thirdly, to exercise despotic power over those who are deserving to be slaves. That the legislator should rather make it his object so to order his legislation upon military and other matters as to promote leisure and peace is a theory borne out by the facts of history.” ... (loc. cit. Ch. XV.). “War, as we have remarked several times, has its end in peace.”
Aristotle strongly condemns the Lacedæmonians and Cretans for regarding war and conquest as the sole ends to which all law and education should be directed. Also in non-Greek tribes like the Scythians, Persians, Thracians and Celts he says, only military power is admired by the people and encouraged by the state. “There was formerly too a law in Macedonia that any one who had never slain an enemy should wear the halter about his neck.” Among the Iberians too, a military people, “it is the custom to set around the tomb of a deceased warrior a number of obelisks corresponding to the number of enemies he has killed.... Yet ... it may well appear to be a startling paradox that it should be the function of a Statesman to succeed in devising the means of rule and mastery over neighbouring peoples whether with or against their own will. How can such action be worthy of a statesman or legislator, when it has not even the sanction of law?” (op. cit., IV. Ch. 2.)
We see that Aristotle disapproves of a glorification of war for its own sake, and regards it as justifiable only in certain circumstances. Methods of warfare adopted and proved in the East would not have been possible in Greece. An act of treachery, for example, such as that of Jael, (Judges IV. 17) which was extolled in songs of praise by the Jews, (loc. cit. V. 24) the Greek people would have been inclined to repudiate. The stories of Roman history, the behaviour of Fabricius, for instance, or Regulus and the honourable conduct of prisoners on various occasions released on parole, show that this consciousness of certain principles of honour in warfare was still more highly developed in Rome.