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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Greek and Roman writers on war and peace
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Julian
Translated by Wilmer Cave Wright
From Letter to Themistius
Who, I ask you, ever found salvation through the conquests of Alexander? What city was more wisely governed because of them, what individual improved? Many indeed you might find whom these conquests enriched, but not one whom they made wiser or more temperate than he was by nature, if indeed they have not made him more insolent and arrogant…
From The Caesars
I did not give way to boundless ambition and aim at enlarging her empire at all costs, but assigned for it two boundaries defined as it were by nature itself, the Danube and the Euphrates. Then after conquering the Scythians and the Thracians I did not employ the long reign that you gods vouchsafed me in making projects for war after war, but devoted my leisure to legislation and to reforming the evils that war has caused.
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