ABSTRACT
In Laws, 628c-e, Plato argued that the objective of war was to bring about peace, the foundation of the legislative process. Aristotle took up the same idea in the Nicomachean Ethics, 1177b, and Cicero made the idea his own in De officiis, 1, 9, 35. Plato's point of view was partially adopted by St Augustine, in the City of God 19, 12, 1, and by Thomas Aquinas in writing about war in Summa theologiae, II, 2, q. 40, a. 1. This last work influenced other medieval treatise writers and saw its high-point in the work of the School of Salamanca with Francisco de Vitoria, Domingo de Soto, and Francisco Suárez, culminating in Hugo Crocio's treatise Sobre el derecho de guerra y de paz. The same lines of thought can also be seen in Thomas More's Utopia. It is, in short, one of the essential doctrinal underpinnings of European thought on the subject of war. And, as we know, war enjoyed a permanent presence in the culture of the seventeenth century. It was a basis of reflection for treatise writers, theologians, and historians, and the source of inspiration for writers, painters, and sculptors, due to two factors: its prestige as a literary theme since classical times, and the geographical and chronological proximity of the theatres of European war.
