With these distinctions, then, we may assume that there are two ways in which men may learn the judgment of God, as we have on this point stated; first by the contests of athletes, and secondly by the contests of champions. These ways of discovering the judgment of God I will treat of in the chapter following. IX.--That people then, which conquered when all were striving hard for the Empire of the world, conquered by the will of God. For God cares more to settle a universal strife than a particular one; and even in particular contests the athletes sometimes throw themselves on the judgment of God, according to the common proverb: "To whom God makes the grant, him let Peter also bless."[254] It cannot, then, be doubted that the victory in the strife for the Empire of the world followed the judgment of God. The Roman people, when all were striving for the Empire of the world, conquered; it will be plain that so it was, if we consider the prize or goal, and those who strove for it. The prize or goal was the supremacy over all men; for it is this that we call the Empire. None reached this but the Roman people. Not only were they the first, they were the only ones to reach the goal, as we shall shortly see. [Footnote 254: Witte only gives a query (?). The saying expresses the Ghibelline view of the relation of the Empire to the Pope; it may have originated with the coronation of Charles the Great.] The first man who panted for the prize was Ninus, King of the Assyrians; but although for more than ninety years (as Orosius tells[255]) he, with his royal consort Semiramis, strove for the Empire of the world and made all Asia subject to himself, nevertheless he never subdued the West. Ovid mentions both him and his queen in the fourth book of the _Metamorphoses_, when he says, in the story of Pyramus:[256] "Semiramis girdled the round space with brick-built walls;" and, "let them come to Ninus' tomb and hide beneath in its shade." [Footnote 255: I. 4.--(W.)] [Footnote 256: _Metam._ iv. 58, 88.--(W.)] Secondly, Vesoges, King of Egypt, aspired to this prize; but though he vexed the North and South of Asia, as Orosius relates,[257] yet he never gained for himself one-half of the world; nay, when, as it were, between the judges[258] and the goal, the Scythians drove him back from his rash enterprise. [Footnote 257: Oros. i. 14.--(W.)] [Footnote 258: "Athlothetæ." The judges or umpires in the Greek games, whose seats were opposite to the goal at the side of the stadium. _Vide_ Smith's _Dictionary of Antiquities_, s.v. "stadium."] Then Cyrus, King of the Persians, made the same attempt; but after the destruction of Babylon, and the transference of its Empire to Persia, he did not even reach the regions of the West, but lost his life and his object in one day at the hands of Tamiris, Queen of the Scythians.[259] [Footnote 259: Oros. ii. 7.--(W.)]