Rome will burn

When I look at the photographs of the cities in ruins as a result of the current military conflicts, I am reminded of a story in history.

During the final destruction of Carthage by Roman armies a soldier saw the supreme commander of the Roman forces, Scipio Aemilianus, standing amid the smoke and ruins and he was crying.  When asked why, Scipio Aemilianus replied, "Because I know that one day the word will be given for the destruction of Rome and it will be just as complete as this."


The Roman writer Polybius describes it like this (from wikipedia):

Scipio, when he looked upon the city as it was utterly perishing and in the last throes of its complete destruction, is said to have shed tears and wept openly for his enemies. After being wrapped in thought for long, and realizing that all cities, nations, and authorities must, like men, meet their doom; that this happened to Ilium, once a prosperous city, to the empires of Assyria, Media, and Persia, the greatest of their time, and to Macedonia itself, the brilliance of which was so recent, either deliberately or the verses escaping him, he said:

A day will come when sacred Troy shall perish,

And Priam and his people shall be slain.

And when Polybius speaking with freedom to him, for he was his teacher, asked him what he meant by the words, they say that without any attempt at concealment he named his own country, for which he feared when he reflected on the fate of all things human. Polybius actually heard him and recalls it in his history.^[7]

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William Schaeffer