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Updated: April 30, 2025
Somewhere, in a long-forgotten history of his brief school days, he had come across a phrase that he remembered now, by some devious and distant process of association, and when he heard of the calamities that his campaign had wrought, of the shipwrecked fortunes and careers that were sucked down by the Pit, he found it possible to say, with a short laugh, and a lift of one shoulder: "Vae victis."
Over against an entry, giving an account of his presence at an Examination before Magistrates, of whom he was one, on the eleventh of April, 1692, at Salem, is the interjection, thrice repeated, "Vae, Vae, Vae." At the opening of the year 1692, he inserted, at a subsequent period, this passage: "Attonitus tamen est, ingens discrimine parvo committi potuisse Nefas."
Quoth Pantagruel, Then do not marry. Yea but, quoth Panurge, would you have me so solitarily drive out the whole course of my life, without the comfort of a matrimonial consort? You know it is written, Vae soli! and a single person is never seen to reap the joy and solace that is found with married folks. Then marry, in the name of God, quoth Pantagruel.
Take no notice at all of her murmurs, of her cries, of her sufferings; nature has ordained her for your use, that she may bear everything children, griefs, blows and pains from man. Don't accuse yourself of harshness. In the codes of all the nations which are called civilized, man has written the laws which govern the destiny of women in these cruel terms: Vae victis! Woe to the conquered!
In the 'Discourse on Negro Slavery' we see this devilish philosophy in full bloom. The gods, he tells us, are with the strong. Might has a divine right to rule, blessed are the crafty of brain and strong of hand! Weakness is crime. "Vae victis!" as Brennus said when he threw his sword into the scale, Woe to the conquered!
It is a monster, composed of many myriads of conglomerated lives, of lives that are distinct and conflicting, lives that move in all directions and are yet joined at the base like the tentacles of an octopus.... It is a confused mingling of all the instincts, and of all the reasons, and of all the unreasons.... Blasts of wind from the abyss; sightless and raging forces issuing from the seething depths of animalism; a mad impulse towards destruction and self-destruction; the crude appetites of the herd; distorted religion; mystical erections of the soul enamoured of the infinite, and seeking the morbid assuagement of joy through suffering, through its own suffering, and through the suffering of others; the pretentious despotism of reason, claiming the right to impose on others the unity it lacks yet desires; romanticist flashes of an imagination kindled by memories of the past; the academic phantasmagoria of official history, of the patriotic history which is ever ready to brandish the "Vae Victis" of Brennus, or the "Gloria Victis," as circumstances may dictate.... Helter-skelter there surge upon the tide of passion all the lurking fiends which, in times of peace and order, society spurns.... Every one of us is entangled in the tentacles of the octopus.
There can be no doubt that the Gauls received the sum they demanded, and quitted Rome; that in weighing it they scornfully imposed upon the Romans is very possible, and the vae victis too may be true: we ourselves have seen similar things before the year 1813.
Then he cried: 'Vae victis! That is what right is. Ah! what beasts of prey there are in this world! What eagles! It makes my flesh creep." He held out his glass to Joly, who filled it, then he drank and went on, having hardly been interrupted by this glass of wine, of which no one, not even himself, had taken any notice:
Bear always in mind Christ's words, 'Vae vobis scribae et Pharisae hypocrite qui clauditis regnum coelorum ante homines; vos non intratis, nec introeunts sinitis intrare! This means, 'Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, who close to men the Kingdom of God, and neither enter nor allow others to enter!
But calling God to witness, he says to Him: Vae tacentibus de te "Woe unto those who keep silent upon Thee." In the eyes of Augustin, the conditions were such that silence would have been cowardly. And elsewhere he adds: "They may believe me or not as they will, but I like much better to read than to write books...." In any case, his modesty was evident.
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