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Tamoskaro Directory 01
Page 08
After the battle of the Metaurus, the chief interest of the war was transferred to Spain and Africa. The Roman armies were led by a youthful hero, perhaps the greatest man that Rome ever produced, with the exception of Julius Caesar. The remaining period of the war is little more than the history of P. Scipio. This extraordinary man was the son of P. Scipio, who fell in Spain in B.C. 212, as already related. In his early years he acquired, to an extraordinary extent, the confidence and admiration of his countrymen. His enthusiastic mind led him to believe that he was a special favorite of heaven; and he never engaged in any public or private business without first going to the Capitol, where he sat some time alone, enjoying communion with the gods. For all he proposed or executed he alleged the divine approval: he believed himself in the revelations which he asserted had been vouchsafed to him; and the extraordinary success which attended all his enterprises deepened this belief.
The vast subject which I have thus lightly skimmed is not without interest, again, from its human implications. Savages as a rule produce enormous families; but then, the infant mortality in savage tribes is proportionally great. Among civilized races, families are smaller, and deaths in infancy are far less numerous. The higher the class or the natural grade of a stock, the larger as a rule the proportion of children safely reared to the adult age. The goal towards which humanity is slowly moving would thus seem to be one where families in most cases will be relatively small--perhaps not more on an average than three to a household--but where most or all of the children brought into the world will be safely reared to full maturity. This is already becoming the rule in certain favored ranks of European society.
William, called of Poitiers, though a Norman, chaplain of William I and Archdeacon of Lisieux, wrote a biography of the king, Gesta Willelmi Duels Normannorum et Regis Anglice (in Migne's Patrologia Latina,149), of much value for the period immediately following the Conquest. It has been thought that he was not present at the battle of Hastings, but the account of William's movements between the battle and his coronation contains several indications of first--hand knowledge, matters of detail likely to be noted by an eye--witness; and though he was a strong partisan and panegyrist of the king, his statements of what happened may generally be accepted. His comments and opinions, however, must be used with the greatest caution. His work originally ended in 1071, but the last part is now wanting, and it ends abruptly in the spring of 1067. The entire book was used, however, by Orderic Vitalis as one of the chief sources of his narrative, and in that form we probably have all the main facts it contained.
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