Chesterton: The War of the Gods and Demons

The wars between ancient Rome and Carthage 264 BC to 146 BC, still have significance today because they molded the face of Europe. They also tell a story of a people seemingly defeated and in ruin who still managed to triumph.

The three Punic Wars (from Latin pūnicus) were named for the people of Carthage who traced their origins back to Phoenicia. They were a trade and shipping empire in North Africa across the Meditrranean Sea. It was the largest war ever fought up until that time, and far from just being a battle over trade routes it was a battle for the “soul of Europe” and humanity itself, represented by Rome, and the demon worshiping Carthaginians. G.K. Chesterton calls it The War of the Gods and Demons and devotes a chapter to it in his book The Everlasting Man–his masterpiece of the history of the world told in religious and philosophical terms, rather than economic.

Rome, while still pagan, worshiped gods of the home and hearth. Chesterton says, “[T]his mythology personified nature as transformed by the forces of man. It was the god of the corn and not of the grass, of the cattle and not the wild things of the forest; in short the cult was literally a culture; as when we speak of it as agriculture.”

Carthage: An Empire that Only Valued Materialism.

Carthage was an empire of trade, business and materialism. Chesterton tells us that, being a practical people, they called on the darker spirits of power and compulsion, the demon Moloch. He is identical to Baal, the Lord. (Their great general Hannibal’s name itself means “grace of Baal”). They believed their ruthless deity could really get things done. They were highly polished with many luxuries, but they bowed to their god by throwing hundreds of their babies into a large furnace.

The Rise and Fall of Hannibal, “The Grace of Baal.”

To describe the war in the barest detail, Hannibal sneaked up on Rome by dragging his massive army of elephants, cavalry and men across the Alps and after many victories stood at the gates of the Golden City. Rome was defeated, in ruins and ashes. Chesterton describes it with what could be an eerie portent of today: “Carthage fell as nothing has fallen since Satan, but the destruction was final. Only men digging in its deep foundation centuries after found a heap of hundreds of little skeletons, the holy relics of that religion.”

Can We still Survive if We have a War on Children?

There are similarities here to our current Culture of Death that sacrifices children via abortion to our gods of pleasure, lust, materialism, convenience, choice, and carefree irresponsibility, and remaining “free” and family-less forever.

In some ways the United States is like ancient Rome fighting the worshipers of Moloch, except that they are not from across the sea but are right here in our own country. They wage a war on children and have a fear of procreation.

We call ISIS inhuman for beheading Christians or crucifying them or burning them alive. We call the ancient Aztecs and Incas savage for ripping out the beating hearts of their human sacrifices, but are we any better when in our abortion clinics we tear off the little arms and legs of living babies? Then sell their little organs for the highest price…to buy a Lamborghini?

If Rome had Lost, the World be a Far Darker Place.

Chesterton says that the Punic Wars was one of the most important wars in history. He says that Rome represented the soul of Europe, sanity. It stood for humanity against the inhumanity of Carthage. The world would have been vastly different if Rome had not risen from the ashes:

The gods had risen again, and the demons had been defeated after all. But they had been defeated by the defeated, and almost defeated by the dead. Nobody understands the romance of Rome, and why she rose afterwards to a representative leadership that seemed almost fated and fundamentally natural. Who does not keep in mind the agony of horror and humiliation through which she had continued to testify to the sanity that is the soul of Europe? She came to stand alone in the midst of an empire because she had once stood alone in the midst of a ruin and a waste. After that all men knew in their hearts that she had been representative of mankind, even when she was rejected of men. And there fell on her the shadow from a shining and as yet invisible light and the burden of things to be. It is not for us to guess in what manner or moment the mercy of God might in any case have rescued the world; but it is certain that the struggle which established Christendom would have been very different if there had been an empire of Carthage instead of an empire of Rome.

A God Who Knew the Way Out of the Grave

He did not live to see the horrors of World War II or the atrocities of the atheistic Soviet Union who killed tens of millions of their own citizens or were the real trailblazers of abortion, making it liberally available since its inception in 1917. Or the similar atrocities of the atheistic Communist Chinese who also killed tens of millions and have killed another 350 million preborn through abortion, many of them forced.

Like Rome, the Pro Life movement was counted down for the count after Roe v. Wade in 1973. Recently so has the Catholic Church, and all the other defenders of the traditional family; but, like Rome as GK says, “The embers that [our opponents] had disdained too much to stamp out have started up again into flames.”

In regards to the many times in history that people have counted the Catholic Church down for the count, he also says that “Christianity has died many times and has risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.”