The Anatomy of Melancholy

I therefore acknowledge the complete truth of Cicero’s words: All our civil affairs, all our studies, all our pleading, industry, and distinction lie under the protection of military courage; whenever there is any fear of unrest, all our arts fall silent. Wars are most useful, and “soldiers are more useful to the state than farmers,” as Maximus of Tyre argues. Courage in a wise man deserves great praise. But people usually get this wrong: “Stealing, slaughtering, plundering—they give these the false name of virtue,” and so on. This was Calgacus’s observation in Tacitus. They wrongly call theft, murder, and plunder virtue; rapes, slaughters, massacres, and so on become “fun and games,” pleasant pastimes, as Juan Luis Vives observes.

As Pontus Heuterus complains in his history of Burgundy, they commonly call the most reckless bloodsuckers, the strongest thieves, the most desperate villains, treacherous rogues, inhuman murderers, rash, cruel, and dissolute scoundrels “courageous and noble spirits,” “heroic and worthy commanders”—brave men-at-arms, valiant and renowned soldiers, possessed by a brutish belief in false honour.

That is why so many volunteers offer themselves every day, leaving their dear wives, children, and friends to sell their lives and limbs for sixpence a day, if they can get it. They long to storm breaches, stand sentry, lie at an exposed outpost, make the first assault, stand in the very front of battle. They march splendidly onward to the cheerful sound of drums and trumpets, with such vigour and eagerness, so many banners streaming in the air, glittering armour, waving plumes, forests of pikes and swords, such varied colours, expense, and magnificence, as though already victorious and marching in triumph to the Capitol, with all the pomp of Darius’s army marching to meet Alexander at Issus.

Without a trace of fear they rush into immediate dangers, into the cannon’s mouth, and so on, “to blunt the enemy’s swords with their wounds,” as Barleti says, seeking a reputation for courage, honour, and applause. That does not last either: this fame is only a flash, and, like a rose, “dies within a single day”; it is gone in an instant. Of fifteen thousand common soldiers killed in a battle, scarcely fifteen are recorded in history, or perhaps just one, the general. After a while his name and theirs are erased as well, and the whole battle itself is forgotten.

Those Greek orators, “with all the power of their genius and eloquence,” describe the famous defeats at Thermopylae, Salamis, Marathon, Mycale, Mantinea, Chaeronea, and Plataea. The Romans record their battles at Cannae and on the fields of Pharsalus. But they merely record them, and we scarcely hear of them. Yet this supposed honour, popular applause, hope of immortality through war, pride, and vainglory often spur men rashly and thoughtlessly to destroy themselves and multitudes of others.