Commentaria in I Machabaeorum
3. AND WHAT THEY HAD DONE IN THE COUNTRY OF SPAIN (subduing it by many and long wars); AND THAT THEY HAD BROUGHT UNDER THEIR POWER THE MINES OF SILVER AND GOLD THAT ARE THERE.—For that in that age there were in Spain very rich mines of gold and silver, Pliny, Strabo and others testify. That there are silver mines there still, Mariana and other chroniclers and historians testify. See Pineda, book 4 On the affairs of Solomon, chap. 4, num. 6.
AND HAD GOTTEN POSSESSION OF EVERY PLACE (all the cities and strongholds of Spain) BY THEIR COUNSEL AND PATIENCE,—Greek makrothymia, that is, longanimity, which the Romans showed above all in subduing Spain: for they did not subdue the whole of it until after 230 years, in which continually, but progressing by degrees, they waged wars with its inhabitants; for other provinces they occupied much sooner. So Livy, Diodorus, Justin, Florus and others. Moreover in Spain Scipio Africanus, and his father and uncle, did famous deeds.
Morally, learn here from the Romans that all enemies, of body as of soul, and so all the desires and passions of the mind and all vices, are overcome by counsel and patience, that is, by longanimity and long-suffering constancy and perseverance in subduing them; for nothing is so unaccustomed, so powerful, so fierce that counsel and constancy will not tame it, as St. Basil, Cassian and others teach.
Mystically Hugo says: The saints possess heaven by counsel, that is, while they follow the counsel of Christ: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” Matt. v; but they possess the earth by patience, according to what Christ says in the same place: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the land.” Again, Martyrs obtain heaven by patience, Confessors by counsel.
4. AND THE PLACES THAT WERE FAR OFF FROM THEM (both in Asia and in Africa, and especially Carthage, the rival of Rome, etc.) THEY DESTROYED.—For the wars of the Romans with Hannibal and the Carthaginians were waged at this time by Q. Fabius Maximus and P. Scipio Africanus, and so Josephus explains this verse of them.
5. AND PHILIP, AND (his bastard son) PERSES (whom Livy calls Perseus), KING OF THE CETHIMS,—conquered by L. Aemilius Paulus, who after a war of four years led the captured Perseus to Rome in triumph, and subjected Macedonia and Epirus to the Romans, in the year of the city 982.
6. AND ANTIOCHUS THE GREAT (father of Seleucus and of Antiochus Epiphanes, grandfather of Demetrius and of Antiochus Eupator) CRUSHED BY THEM,—namely by the Romans under Scipio Asiaticus, the brother of Scipio Africanus. For, as Livy says, book XXXVII: “About fifty thousand foot are said to have been slain that day, four thousand horse, and one thousand four hundred were taken, and fifteen elephants with their drivers”; and it is no wonder that Antiochus led 120 elephants into the line against the Romans, since he led a hundred and two against Ptolemy Epiphanes, as Polybius testifies, book V.
7. AND BECAUSE THEY TOOK HIM ALIVE. (Appian, Livy and Justin do not assert this, but neither do they deny it; indeed they hint at it, when they relate that Antiochus was so hemmed in and shut up by the Romans that, as if captured, he gave himself into the hands of the victorious Scipio and conceded everything he demanded, and especially) A GREAT TRIBUTE, (two thousand talents every year, to be paid both by himself and by his posterity); AND THAT HE SHOULD GIVE HOSTAGES,—among whom the chief was Antiochus Epiphanes, his younger son.
AND AN APPOINTMENT,—in Greek a distinction and division, namely that, his kingdom being divided into two parts, he should give the better to Eumenes, king of Pergamus, his rival and a friend of the Romans, and keep the poorer for himself, and reign almost only in Syria and the places on this side of Mount Taurus; for this was, as it were, the assigned measure of his kingdoms that Antiochus was compelled to give to the Romans; and so, explaining it, he adds:
8. AND THE COUNTRY OF THE INDIANS,—so he calls the provinces beyond Mount Taurus, occupied by Antiochus, as Serarius shows from Procopius, Strabo and others.
AND THE MEDES, AND THE LYDIANS, OF THEIR BEST COUNTRIES, (that is, Antiochus was forced to yield to the Romans the regions situated beyond Taurus, likewise Media and Lydia, which were the best of his regions, and of his fathers and descendants, and which) HAVING TAKEN FROM HIM (the Romans) GAVE TO KING EUMENES—a friend of the Romans, but an enemy of Antiochus. Daniel foretold this, chap. xi, ver. 8. See what is said there.
9. AND THAT THEY WHO WERE AT HELLAS (in Greek, “in Hellas,” that is, in Greece; for Hellenes means Greeks) WOULD HAVE GONE AND TAKEN THEM AWAY—secretly, and by ambush slain the legions of the Romans dwelling in their neighbourhood. It also looks to the Aetolians, who were the first of the Greeks to make war with the Romans. For their leader Damocritus, when T. Quintius Flamininus asked, replied that he would give his answer in Italy, when the Aetolians should have pitched camp on the Tiber.
10. AND THEIR DESIGN CAME TO KNOWLEDGE (the plot of slaughter) OF THEM (that is, to the Romans).
AND THEY SENT (the Romans) AGAINST THEM (the Greeks) ONE COMMANDER,—Nabis, and afterwards others, who by various conflicts gradually tamed and subdued all the Greeks, as Livy and others relate.
12. BUT WITH THEIR FRIENDS, AND THEM THAT RELY UPON THEM, (in Greek, who will rest in the Romans, accommodating themselves faithfully to their commands or demands) THEY KEPT AMITY,—they raised up with resources and honours, as has already been said of Eumenes. The same happened to Gelo, king of Syracuse, and to Masinissa, king of Numidia, and to the Ptolemies Philometor and Physcon, kings of Egypt.
14. NEITHER DID ANY ONE WEAR THE PURPLE,—that is, the purple robe, as the king or general of the rest. For otherwise the Roman Senators were adorned with the purple toga. The consular purple, then, was one thing, the royal another; indeed consuls properly had not purple togas, but only a purple border on the toga praetexta, as Salianus teaches from Livy.
15. AND THAT (because) THEY MADE A SENATE-HOUSE,—that is, ver. 15, a senate of old and wise men, namely of the Patricians, and built them a senate-house, that they might assemble in it daily to bring their counsels and votes on the commonwealth.
AND DAILY THEY CONSULTED (deliberated among themselves) THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY MEN,—the senators, or patricians. Romulus first appointed a hundred senators; soon, as the Roman commonwealth grew, he increased their number to two hundred; then Tarquinius Priscus, says Halicarnassensis, to three hundred, indeed 320, as is said here; and when Gracchus caused tumult it grew to six hundred.
16. THEY COMMIT THEIR GOVERNMENT TO ONE MAN,—for in dangers the Romans created one dictator who should preside over the whole commonwealth. At other times they created two consuls, but so that one waged wars abroad, the other alone administered the commonwealth at home. But if several wars threatened in different places, one presided over one army and province, the other over another. Indeed even if both consuls were in the same camp, they commanded on alternate days, so that one on one day held the fasces and gave orders, the other on the next, as is evident from the defeat at Cannae, which happened about this time for this reason, that on that day Consul Varro was in command of the camp, who, without hearing his colleague the consul Paulus, engaged Hannibal most unhappily. So the generals in Greece, the Epistates at Athens, and the Decemvirs at Rome had the right of command on alternate days: for these each administered justice to the people on the tenth day, says Livy, book III, Diodorus, Plutarch and others. Emmanuel Sa thinks that Judas, deceived by the narration of some, supposed that there was at Rome a single magistracy, an opinion to which the Dictatorship had given occasion, although it was neither annual nor an ordinary magistracy, as the Consulship was.