In ancient times, there were two powers. One was ancient and powerful; one was a scrappy little place just starting to pull itself up by the bootstraps. The older was a hub of commerce, fat and wealthy. The other was famed mostly for the courage of its soldiers.
The smaller place worshiped a plethora of gods that grew constantly cozier and more homely: the god of doorways was important enough to have a month named after him, for instance, and the most respected of their pantheon was Vesta, goddess of house and home. The constant proliferation of their pantheon got a little ridiculous, but it was all concentrated around the home, and the protection of it.
The other power worshiped demons. There was no other word for them, and their names have since passed into infamy: Moloch, Baal, Astarte, Tanit. They requested only one sort of sacrifice: infants, burned alive.
Neither power liked each other; after all, in the ancient days, that's how it went. You couldn't have two superpowers in the world; one had to go down. And certainly the older power saw the scrappy new one as a decided nuisance. They attempted to crush it, like a bug underfoot. But to their annoyance, the bug fought back, and became stronger for the attempt to crush it.
I won't deny the other factors that made up the Punic Wars; wars, after all, are complicated things, and no one knows precisely what might motivate the ones higher up, the ones who suggest the wars and send their soldiers into battle. But G.K. Chesterton says, and I agree, that at their heart, the wars between Rome and Carthage were wars between gods and demons: a ferocious battle against a household pantheon, still strong in its time, and perhaps more closely aligned with Heaven, and unmasked demons from the pits of Hell. The repetition of Delenda est Carthago, Carthage must be destroyed, was not motivated by something so petty as "They're bigger than us and they're getting in our way." It was sheer horror at the monstrosities that went on in the Carthaginian temples--and given how bloodthirsty the demons are, I would imagine they took place every day.
The war of Gods and Demons ended the only way it really could, for the demons, no matter how hard or how viciously they fight, are ever fighting a losing battle. They may have their hour, but it is an hour only, and then they are flung back into their pit. And Carthage arguably destroyed itself. Rome was practically lost. Little household gods, no matter how sweet they may seem, aren't very strong, not without Someone else behind them. And it didn't seem that there was someone behind them as Hannibal thundered slowly toward Rome, the blessings of his hideous 'gods' behind him, no doubt gloating as they saw that which they hated falling before them in fire and ruin. It was their hour and they gloried in it...but the people back home betrayed them.
Hannibal never received any reinforcements. The people back home did not believe he needed them. After all, the Romans had nothing left but their city and their stubborn determination not to fall. The Carthaginians could not understand that they would still fight, even after their fire was down to an ember. Embers, after all, can do nothing but go out. So they returned to their money-counting and baby-burning, blithely ignoring the frantic reports coming back from Hannibal.
For the Romans did still fight, and they fought with all the strength that determination gave them. And surely, in their city, sacred as all cities are sacred that are truly loved by their people, they received there the breath of the Divine. Perhaps the little household gods were backed by angels; perhaps Vesta, a foreshadowing of the Woman who would bless hearth and home by providing one for the Son of God, had her hour, rising up in power against the false Queen of Heaven. But Hannibal was thrown back, lost the ground he had gained, and the Romans rose in fury, pursuing him back to the gates of Carthage itself. And Carthage was destroyed utterly: no stone left upon another, the fields about it sown with salt.
And now in modern times, there are two powers once again--three, if you consider the wild card which did not exist back then. And ironically, most of these two powers are concentrated in the same countries. We like to label them, to pin them down neatly between Left and Right, between Them and Us. And we waste a great deal of time screaming at each other, tearing each other apart over trivial things. Yet at our heart, we have again, very simply, the spirits of Rome and Carthage.
We have, mostly, replaced household gods with household policies, or household saints in many cases. And the temples of Moloch do not proclaim themselves as such, nor do they boast sneering statues or smoke-belching furnaces. But we have our household patrons and our temples of Moloch--and as before, they are locked in furious combat.
The combat has changed from days of yore: gone are the times when two men might hate each other, and let fly with sword and bill and bow. Now we are locked into 'civilized' methods, which, if one listens, quickly prove to be far less civilized than the swordfight. Now we argue over bills and rights. We fight tooth and nail to protect our household patrons, and resort to mob tactics when anyone dares to limit what goes on in the temples of Moloch.
And I wonder: does anyone else remember what went on in the past, when this first happened? Does anyone else recall how nearly crushed Rome was, and will anyone be willing to fight when the parallel comes around? And does anyone else wonder which will be America's equivalent: Carthage, a dim, bad memory of an evil place, where ghosts wail around the broken stones over the salted plain? Or the shining pillars of the glory days of Rome?
No comments:
Post a Comment