Revelation by means of trial is also of two kinds. It is given either by casting lots, or by combat; for "to strive" (certare), is derived from a phrase which means "to make certain" (certum facere). It is clear that the judgment of God is sometimes revealed to men by casting lots, as in the substitution of Matthias in the Acts of the Apostles.
Again the judgment of God is revealed to men by combat in two ways: either it is by a trial of strength, as in the duels of champions who are called "duelliones," or it is by the contention of many men, each striving to reach a certain mark first, as happens in the contests of athletes who run for a prize. The first of these methods was prefigured among the Gentiles by the contests between Hercules and Antæus, which Lucan mentions in the fourth book of his Pharsalia, and Ovid in the ninth book of his Metamorphoses. The second is prefigured by the contest between Atalanta and Hippomenes, described in the tenth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses.[251]
Moreover, it ought not to pass unnoticed concerning these two kinds of strife, that while in the first each champion may fairly hinder his antagonist, in the second this is not so; for athletes must not hinder one another in their strife, though our poet seems to have thought differently in the fifth Æneid where Euryalus so receives the prize.[252] But Cicero has done better in forbidding this practice in the third book of the De Officiis, following the opinion of Chrysippus.[253] He there says: "Chrysippus is right here, as he often is, for he says that he who runs in a race should strive with all his might to win, but in no way should he try to trip up his competitor."
With these distinctions, then, we may assume that there are two ways in which men may learn the judgment of God, as we have on this point stated; first by the contests of athletes, and secondly by the contests of champions. These ways of discovering the judgment of God I will treat of in the chapter following.
IX.—That people then, which conquered when all were striving hard for the Empire of the world, conquered by the will of God. For God cares more to settle a universal strife than a particular one; and even in particular contests the athletes sometimes throw themselves on the judgment of God, according to the common proverb: "To whom God makes the grant, him let Peter also bless."[254] It cannot, then, be doubted that the victory in the strife for the Empire of the world followed the judgment of God. The Roman people, when all were striving for the Empire of the world, conquered; it will be plain that so it was, if we consider the prize or goal, and those who strove for it. The prize or goal was the supremacy over all men; for it is this that we call the Empire. None reached this but the Roman people. Not only were they the first, they were the only ones to reach the goal, as we shall shortly see.
The first man who panted for the prize was Ninus, King of the Assyrians; but although for more than ninety years (as Orosius tells[255]) he, with his royal consort Semiramis, strove for the Empire of the world and made all Asia subject to himself, nevertheless he never subdued the West. Ovid mentions both him and his queen in the fourth book of the Metamorphoses, when he says, in the story of Pyramus:[256] "Semiramis girdled the round space with brick-built walls;" and, "let them come to Ninus' tomb and hide beneath in its shade."
Secondly, Vesoges, King of Egypt, aspired to this prize; but though he vexed the North and South of Asia, as Orosius relates,[257] yet he never gained for himself one-half of the world; nay, when, as it were, between the judges[258] and the goal, the Scythians drove him back from his rash enterprise.
Then Cyrus, King of the Persians, made the same attempt; but after the destruction of Babylon, and the transference of its Empire to Persia, he did not even reach the regions of the West, but lost his life and his object in one day at the hands of Tamiris, Queen of the Scythians.[259]
But after that these had failed, Xerxes, the son of Darius and king among the Persians, assailed the world with so great a multitude of nations, with so great a power, that he bridged the channel of the sea which separates Asia from Europe, between Sestos and Abydos. And of this wonderful work Lucan makes mention in the second book of his Pharsalia:[260] "Such paths across the seas, made by Xerxes in his pride, fame tells of." But finally he was miserably repulsed from his enterprise, and could not attain the goal.
Besides these kings, and after their times, Alexander, King of Macedon, came nearest of all to the prize of monarchy; he sent ambassadors to the Romans to demand their submission, but before the Roman answer came, he fell in Egypt, as Livy[261] tells us, as it were in the middle of the course. Of his burial there, Lucan speaks in the eighth book of his Pharsalia,[262] where he is inveighing against Ptolemy, King of Egypt: "Thou last of the Lagæan race, soon to perish in thy degeneracy, and to yield thy kingdom to an incestuous sister; while for thee the Macedonian is kept in the sacred cave...."