Writes Rick Rozoff:

Your article of today is insightful – no, penetrating – in all particulars. I was especially struck by your description of the onerous conditions of the Versailles Treaty as representing an example of a Carthaginian peace. Below are excerpts from two Greek historians reporting on the conquest and destruction of Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War. Scipio’s forebodings proved accurate. The lesson is yet to be learned in the modern era.

Polybius

Histories

Turning round to me at once and grasping my hand Scipio said, “A glorious moment, Polybius; but I have a dread foreboding that some day the same doom will be pronounced upon my own country.” It would be difficult to mention an utterance more statesmanlike and more profound. For at the moment of our greatest triumph and of disaster to our enemies to reflect on our own situation and on the possible reversal of circumstances, and generally to bear in mind at the season of success the mutability of Fortune, is like a great and perfect man, a man in short worthy to be remembered.

Appian

The Punic Wars

Scipio, beholding this city, which had flourished 700 years from its foundation and had ruled over so many lands, islands, and seas, rich with arms and fleets, elephants and money, equal to the mightiest monarchies but far surpassing them in bravery and high spirit (since without ships or arms, and in the face of famine, it had sustained continuous war for three years), now come to its end in total destruction – Scipio, beholding this spectacle, is said to have shed tears and publicly lamented the fortune of the enemy.

After meditating by himself a long time and reflecting on the rise and fall of cities, nations, and empires, as well as of individuals, upon the fate of Troy, that once proud city, upon that of the Assyrians, the Medes, and the Persians, greatest of all, and later the splendid Macedonian empire, either voluntarily or otherwise the words of the poet escaped his lips:

The day shall come in which our sacred Troy

And Priam, and the people over whom

Spear-bearing Priam rules, shall perish all. (Iliad)