Commentaria in I Machabaeorum
Plutarch in the Laconics brings the following. The same Leonidas, asked by the Ephors whether he had resolved to do anything else, replied: “I do nothing else than to hinder the passage of the barbarians in word, but in truth to die for the Greeks.” The same, when the soothsayer said from the entrails that victory was portended to the army, but death to the leader, gladly entering upon a naval battle, fell conquering, and by his death won victory for his country. Codrus king of the Athenians did the same, provoking the enemy in a changed dress, and slain by him, by his death, according to the oracle, secured victory to the Athenians. Again, Leonidas, asked why brave men prefer a glorious death to an inglorious life, replied: “Because they hold the one to be proper to nature, the other peculiarly their own. For by the benefit of nature even the most cowardly live, and to die honourably falls to none but those endowed with virtue and the brave. For to flee is ignominious both to the leader and to his country when it stands firm, and either to die or to conquer is most honourable to both.”
The Lacedaemonians, says Plutarch, taught their youth nothing else than, obeying the magistrate and despising all dangers of life, either to conquer in battle or bravely to fall.
Agesilaus, asked by what means a leader is prepared—for nothing great can be done by one who fears for his life and takes counsel for it.
Bias, besieged by Iphicrates, asked what should be done in that strait, replied: “What else, he said, but that you be saved, and I die fighting?”
A Laconian woman, giving her son a shield: “Son, she said, either this, or upon this,” as if to say: So conduct yourself in battle that you either bring back the shield as victor, or be carried home dead upon it.
Pelopidas, about to go to battle, when his wife begged him to take care of his life, said that this was to be said to a private man, not to a leader. For it is a leader’s part to fall bravely fighting for his country. All this from Plutarch in the Laconics.
Epaminondas, says Valerius Maximus, book III, chap. ii, in the battle at Leuctra, pierced through with a spear, failing in blood and breath, when they tried to revive him, asked first whether his shield was safe; then whether the enemy were utterly routed. When he learned these things to his mind’s content: “This, he said, fellow soldiers, is not the end of my life, but a better and higher beginning comes. For now your Epaminondas is born, because he so dies. I see Thebes made by my leading and auspices the head of Greece, and the brave and spirited city of Sparta lies cast down by our arms; Greece has been freed from a bitter domination; I die also not merely childless: for I leave two wondrous daughters, Leuctra and Mantinea.” Then he ordered the spear to be drawn from his body, and expired of the wound. But if the immortal gods had suffered him to enjoy his victories, he would not have entered his country’s walls safe and more glorious.
These were the leaders of the world: what now should the leader and soldier of Christ do, who fights and contends not for vain and perishable glory, as they did, but for true and everlasting glory?
AND THE REST FLED,—as soldiers flee when the leader is slain, and sheep when the shepherd is struck, and as the Apostles fled when Christ was crucified, of whom Judas here was a type: for in him stood the whole strength of Israel.
You will ask: Whence so great a disaster to Judea and to the Jews, so brave and unconquerable? I answer. The first cause was the fear and perfidy of the soldiers, in that two thousand two hundred deserted Judas their leader, and there remained with him only 800, who by human strength could not long resist 22 thousand of the enemy. Add the soldiers’ plunderings, rapes and other crimes which God willed to punish.
The second cause was human weakness and inconstancy, through which it happens that even the most strenuous and most skilled in their art sometimes fail in it: as it is therefore impossible that an archer most skilled in shooting, so that his arrow almost always hits the mark, should not once miss the mark, if he shoots at it often, for instance a hundred times; so it is impossible that the most warlike leaders and soldiers should so always fight and conquer as never to be conquered. Hence as the most skilful swimmers perish swimming, so the best leaders and soldiers perish fighting.
The third, that battle is a most dangerous thing; for darts and arrows fly through the air like hail: so that now they touch this man, now that, and kill. For as Ecclus. iii, ver. 27, says: “He that loveth danger shall perish in it”; and as David said of Urias slain in the battle: “The sword devoureth now one, now another,” II Kings xi, 25. I knew in Belgium a most daring commander whose axiom was that a gallant soldier cannot live long; because exposing himself boldly to continual dangers of life, he can hardly escape being soon cut down by some deadly blow. Hence also the Poet:
Shameful is the aged soldier: shameful is old man’s love.
For God permits second causes to follow their course: and though he often protects his own, yet at last he permits them to the course of nature, especially because all must die once. He permits therefore each to die in his own work and exercise, as the soldier in war, the farmer in farming, the smith in smithing, the teacher in study, etc. So God preserved most martyrs unharmed from fire, lions, waters, etc., but at length permitted them to be slain by the sword, that he might crown them with the laurel of martyrdom.
The fourth was that Judas, seeing himself deserted by the flight of his men, being dismayed, would not flee, as he prudently might have done, but out of greatness of soul preferred to fall fighting. For this is becoming to a leader, and so this death is glorious to him: whence noble soldiers wish for no other death than to die in battle. This death of Judas, then, was glorious, as being one he met in a fight in which, with a few, he broke the right wing of very many of the enemy, and slew so many thousands of them, and pursuing the fugitives received a deadly wound from behind, and fell a victor. Wherefore this death of Judas was like a triumph, and the trophy of so many victories, as it was for Samson, Jonathan, Josias and the other heroes, says Serarius. The Talmudists add: “In this holy war, many, while they lived, were sons of the devil and of sin. But after death, sons of God, their martyrdom expiating their sins”; and Genebrardus adds on Psalm lxxvi: “You hear how great is the force of holy war against the Turks and heretics, that it makes the little upright, saints and martyrs: where to be conquered is salutary, to conquer glorious.” Yet this is to be understood fittingly, as the Prelates taught in reply to the Emperor Phocas, who wished that to all soldiers falling against the enemies of the faith the name and honour of martyrs be given, as Balsamon writes on Can. xi, and Baronius, vol. VIII of the Annals, in the year of the Lord 610. So Serarius.
The fifth, that Judas, broken in spirit, when he saw himself placed in such straits, did not expressly take refuge in God, nor implore his help, as he was wont to do, but prepared himself and his men wholly for the impending and pressing conflict. For although implicitly and virtually he placed all his confidence in God, yet explicitly and formally he did not beseech God: wherefore God left him to himself and to nature, according to which he alone succumbed to so many enemies. Hence learn that men placed in straits are often so absorbed in their difficulties that they do not think of calling on God; which yet they ought then most to do, when they can be rescued by no other than God. Wherefore let us be wise by the example of Judas, that placed in great dangers or temptations we at once implore the grace and help of God, humbly and with great confidence; for so we shall obtain it, and by it be saved.
The sixth, God in this event willed to humble Judas, lest he be proud of his strength and victories. So God permits holy men to fall into some lesser sins, that they may escape greater ones, especially of vainglory and pride.
The seventh, God willed to show Judas and the others that all things in this world are vain, fragile and perishable, and to transfer him from them by death to true life and blessed immortality: for death leads to this, as a way, and that often in appearance wretched, abject, and, as it seems to men, unworthy of such great men. So God permitted the princes of the Apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, to be unworthily slain by Nero, that by this they might deserve to receive a greater crown of patience in heaven. So he permitted Jordan, who succeeded St. Dominic in the generalship of the order of Preachers, to be drowned in the sea, and when some grieved and almost murmured that so holy a man had undergone so vile a death, he himself appearing to some rebuked them, asserting that by that death he had passed, expiated from all faults and stains, to blessed immortality. For the just man, by whatever death he is overtaken, shall be in refreshment, because he dies in his justice and in the grace of God. So St. Francis Xavier, striving for the conversion of China, at its very entrance, in the extremity of all want, forsaken by all, underwent a death wretched, as it seemed to men, but worthy of an apostolic man.
Another cause is given by Rupert, book X On the Victory of the Word of God, last chap., Peter of Blois, Epist. CXLVI, Emmanuel Sa and some others: namely that the treaty made by Judas and Jonathan with the Romans displeased God, because they did not trust enough in God alone, and therefore after this treaty all things went unhappily with them and they soon fell. But I showed above that this treaty was prudently made by them; for we must so trust God that human helps be not neglected: so Serarius near the end of the book, Question XXIII.