Chapter 22.—That Rome Was Founded
When the Assyrian Kingdom Perished, at Which Time Hezekiah Reigned
in Judah.
To be brief, the city of Rome was
founded, like another Babylon, and as it were the daughter of the
former Babylon, by which God was pleased to conquer the whole
world, and subdue it far and wide by bringing it into one
fellowship of government and laws. For there were already
powerful and brave peoples and nations trained to arms, who did not
easily yield, and whose subjugation necessarily involved great
danger and destruction as well as great and horrible labor. For
when the Assyrian kingdom subdued almost all Asia, although this
was done by fighting, yet the wars could not be very fierce or
difficult, because the nations were as yet untrained to resist, and
neither so many nor so great as afterward; forasmuch as, after that
greatest and indeed universal flood, when only eight men escaped in
Noah’s ark, not much more than a thousand years had passed when
Ninus subdued all Asia with the exception of India. But Rome did
not with the same quickness and facility wholly subdue all those
nations of the east and west which we see brought under the Roman
empire, because, in its gradual increase, in whatever direction it
was extended, it found them strong and warlike. At the time when
Rome was founded, then, the people of Israel had been in the land
of promise seven hundred and eighteen years. Of these years
twenty-seven belong to Joshua the son of Nun, and after that three
hundred and twenty-nine to the period of the judges. But from the
time when the kings began to reign there, three hundred and
sixty-two years had passed. And at that time there was a king in
Judah called Ahaz, or, as others compute, Hezekiah his successor, the best and most pious king, who it is admitted reigned in the times of Romulus. And in that part of the Hebrew nation called Israel, Hoshea had begun to reign.