But, if men will not receive the truth which we have proved, and object, as they are wont, that all men are not equal in strength, we will refute them with the instance of the victory of David over Goliath; and if the Gentiles seek for aught more, let them repel the objection by the victory of Hercules over Antæus. For it is mere folly to fear that the strength which God makes strong should be weaker than a human champion. It is, therefore, now sufficiently clear that what is acquired by single combat is acquired by right. XI.--But the Roman people gained their empire by duel between man and man; and this is proved by testimonies that are worthy of all credence; and in proving this, we shall also show that where any question had to be decided from the beginning of the Roman Empire, it was tried by single combat. For first of all, when a quarrel arose about the settling in Italy of Father Æneas, the earliest ancestor of this people, and when Turnus, King of the Rutuli, withstood Æneas, it was at last agreed between the two kings to discover the good pleasure of God by a single combat, which is sung in the last book of the _Æneid_. And in this combat Æneas was so merciful in his victory, that he would have granted life and peace to the conquered foe, had he not seen the belt which Turnus had taken on slaying Pallas, as the last verses of our poet describe. Again, when two peoples had grown up in Italy, both sprung from the Trojan stem, namely, the Romans and the Albans, and they had long striven whose should be the sign of the eagle,[269] and the Penates of Troy, and the honours of empire; at last by mutual consent, in order to have certain knowledge of the case in hand, the three Horatii, who were brethren, and the three Curatii, who were also brethren, fought together before the kings and all the people anxiously waiting on either side; and since the three Alban champions were killed, while one Roman survived, the palm of victory fell to the Romans, in the reign of Hostilius the king. This story has been diligently put together by Livy, in the first part of his history, and Orosius also gives similar testimony.[270] [Footnote 269: "_Il sacrosanto segno._" V. _Parad._ vi. 32.] [Footnote 270: Liv. i. 24; Oros. ii. 4.] Next they fought for empire with their neighbours the Sabines and Samnites, as Livy tells us; all the laws of war were kept; and though those who fought were very many in number, the war was in the form of a combat between man and man. In the contest with the Samnites, Fortune nearly repented her of what she had begun, as Lucan instances in the second book of his _Pharsalia_:[271] "How many companies lay dead by the Colline gate then, when the headship of the world and universal empire well-nigh were transferred to other seats, and the Samnite heaped the corpses of Rome beyond the numbers[272] of the Caudine Forks." [Footnote 271: II. 135.] [Footnote 272: