[36]
As for war, humane laws touching it are drawn1
up in the fetial code of the Roman People under all
the guarantees of religion; and from this it may be
gathered that no war is just, unless it is entered upon
after an official demand for satisfaction has been submitted or warning has been given and a formal declaration made. Popilius was general in command of
a province. In his army Cato's son was serving on
his first campaign. When Popilius decided to disband one of his legions, he discharged also young
Cato, who was serving in that same legion. But
when the young man out of love for the service
stayed on in the field, his father wrote to Popilius to
say that if he let him stay in the army, he should
swear him into service with a new oath of allegiance,
for in view of the voidance of his former oath he
could not legally fight the foe. So extremely scrupulous was the observance of the laws in regard to the
conduct of war.
1 The humanity of Rome's laws of war.
M. Tullius Cicero. De Officiis. With An English Translation. Walter Miller. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1913.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.