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On The Comparative Morality Of The Ancients And Moderns.
ON THE COMPARATIVE MORALITY OF THE ANCIENTS AND MODERNS .
IF we look to the vices of former times they will appear more enormous , if not more general , than the vices of these latter days ; I shall not go back to the infancy of the world for a view of large and populous cities , where scarcely any righteous persons were to be found ; I shall not mark them abandoned to the most unnatural h
crimes , and drawing down destruction from on hig . Were we only to glance over the history of the Jews , a race selected from the nations as God ' s peculiar people , we should be sufficiently shocked by every species of barbarity and profligacy . Though under the immediate direction of God , they were incredulous , obstinate , and cruel ; they were repeatedly guilty of incest , of fratricide , of parricide ; and in
their punishments ( such as sawing men asunder ) they betrayed a most brutal disposition . The cruelties of the Jews are hardly equalled by the inhumanity of the thirty Athenian tyrants , who having slain a vast number of citizens , obliged the daughters of the murdered to dance in the blood of their parents . Nor are the Jewish people exceeded by the moderns in extravagance . It is well known that the Israelitish ladies were accustomed to powder their hair with gold dust ;
We find many of the Romans committing the most savage outrages . Even to revenge a trivial jest , Antoninus Caracalia put all the citizens of Alexandria to the sword , and razed the city fo the ground . The Romans , in many instances , combined the deepest treachery with all the wantonness of cruelty . The punka fides might well be retorted on themselvesThe perfidy of Servius Galbawho
assem-. , bling together the inhabitants of three cities in Spain , under the pretence of consulting their common safety , cut off seven thousand at a stroke ; or of Licinus Luculius , who , in violation of express articles , massacred twenty thousand of the CaucEei , ' can scarce be parallelled in modern times . The mild Augustus himself was guilty of the greatest enormities . It is well known that , on . taking the city of
Perusium , he offered up , as a sacrifice to the manes of his uncle Julius , three hundred of the principal citizens . Plave we ever had occasion to execrate such living characters as those of Nero or Domitian ? Are not the ten persecutions so pregnant with barbarity , that the history of them seems incredible to the moderns ? If such then were the cruelties of the Greeks and Romans , must not imagination recoil from the inhumanity of the nations ' around them ? I-fow can we form an adequate idea of those whom the Greeks-VOL . III . X x
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
On The Comparative Morality Of The Ancients And Moderns.
ON THE COMPARATIVE MORALITY OF THE ANCIENTS AND MODERNS .
IF we look to the vices of former times they will appear more enormous , if not more general , than the vices of these latter days ; I shall not go back to the infancy of the world for a view of large and populous cities , where scarcely any righteous persons were to be found ; I shall not mark them abandoned to the most unnatural h
crimes , and drawing down destruction from on hig . Were we only to glance over the history of the Jews , a race selected from the nations as God ' s peculiar people , we should be sufficiently shocked by every species of barbarity and profligacy . Though under the immediate direction of God , they were incredulous , obstinate , and cruel ; they were repeatedly guilty of incest , of fratricide , of parricide ; and in
their punishments ( such as sawing men asunder ) they betrayed a most brutal disposition . The cruelties of the Jews are hardly equalled by the inhumanity of the thirty Athenian tyrants , who having slain a vast number of citizens , obliged the daughters of the murdered to dance in the blood of their parents . Nor are the Jewish people exceeded by the moderns in extravagance . It is well known that the Israelitish ladies were accustomed to powder their hair with gold dust ;
We find many of the Romans committing the most savage outrages . Even to revenge a trivial jest , Antoninus Caracalia put all the citizens of Alexandria to the sword , and razed the city fo the ground . The Romans , in many instances , combined the deepest treachery with all the wantonness of cruelty . The punka fides might well be retorted on themselvesThe perfidy of Servius Galbawho
assem-. , bling together the inhabitants of three cities in Spain , under the pretence of consulting their common safety , cut off seven thousand at a stroke ; or of Licinus Luculius , who , in violation of express articles , massacred twenty thousand of the CaucEei , ' can scarce be parallelled in modern times . The mild Augustus himself was guilty of the greatest enormities . It is well known that , on . taking the city of
Perusium , he offered up , as a sacrifice to the manes of his uncle Julius , three hundred of the principal citizens . Plave we ever had occasion to execrate such living characters as those of Nero or Domitian ? Are not the ten persecutions so pregnant with barbarity , that the history of them seems incredible to the moderns ? If such then were the cruelties of the Greeks and Romans , must not imagination recoil from the inhumanity of the nations ' around them ? I-fow can we form an adequate idea of those whom the Greeks-VOL . III . X x