Sketches of the History of Man. Lord Kames (Henry Home)
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the pavement; ladies of the first rank forced to perform the lowest acts of slavery. Hector doth not dissemble, that if Troy should be conquered, his poor wife would be condemned to draw water like the vilest slave. Hecuba, in Euripides, laments that she was chained like a dog at Agamemnon’s gate; and the same savage manners are described in many other Greek tragedies. Prometheus makes free with the heavenly fire, in order to give life to man. As a punishment for bringing rational creatures into existence, the gods decree, that he be chained to a rock, and abandoned to birds of prey. Vulcan is introduced by Eschylus rattling the chain, nailing one end to a rock, and the other to the breast-bone of the criminal. Who but an American savage can at present behold such a spectacle and not be shocked? A scene representing a woman murdered by her children would be hissed<352> by every modern audience; and yet that horrid scene was represented with applause in the Electra of Sophocles. Stoboeus reports a saying of Menander, that even the gods cannot inspire a soldier with civility: no wonder that the Greek soldiers were brutes and barbarians, when war was waged, not only against the state, but against every individual. At present, humanity prevails among soldiers as among others; because we make war only against a state, not against individuals. The Greeks are the less excusable for their cruelty, as they appear to have been sensible that humanity is a cardinal virtue. Barbarians are always painted by Homer as cruel; polished nations as tender and compassionate:
Ye Gods! (he cried) upon what barren coast,
In what new region is Ulysses tost?
Possess’d by wild barbarians fierce in arms,
Or men whose bosom tender pity warms?
ODYSSEY, book 13. 241.
Cruelty is inconsistent with true heroism; and, accordingly, very little of the latter is discoverable in any of Homer’s warriors. So much did they retain of the savage character, as, even without blushing, to fly from an enemy superior in bo-<353>dily strength. Diomedes, who makes an illustrious figure in the fifth book of the Iliad, retires when Hector appears: “Diomedes beheld the chief, and shuddered to his inmost soul.” Antilochus, son of Nestor, having slain Melanippus(a), rushed forward, eager to seize his bright arms. But seeing Hector, he fled like a beast of prey who shuns the gathering hinds. And the great Hector himself shamefully turns his back upon the near approach of Achilles: “Periphetes, endowed with every virtue, renowned in the race, great in war, in prudence excelling his fellows, gave glory to Hector, covering the chief with renown.” One would expect a fierce combat between these two bold warriors. Not so, Periphetes stumbling, fell to the ground; and Hector was not ashamed to transfix with his spear the unresisting hero.
In the same tone of character, nothing is more common among Homer’s warriors than to insult a vanquished foe. Patroclus, having beat Cebriones to the ground with a huge stone, derides his fall in the following words:<354>
Good heav’ns! what active feats yon artist shows,
What skilful divers are our Phrygian foes!
Mark with what ease they sink into the sand.
Pity! that all their practice is by land.7
The Greeks are represented(a) one after another stabbing the dead body of Hector: “Nor stood an Argive near the chief who inflicted not a wound. Surely now, said they, more easy of access is Hector, than when he launched on the ships brands of devouring fire.”
When such were the manners of warriors at the siege of Troy, it is no surprise to find the heroes on both sides no less intent on stripping the slain than on victory. They are every where represented as greedy of spoil.
The Jews did not yield to the Greeks in cruelty. It is unnecessary to give instances, as the historical books of the Old Testament are in the hands of every one. I shall select one instance for a specimen, dreadfully cruel without any just provocation: “And David gathered all the people together, and went to Rabbah, and fought against it, and took it. And he<355> brought forth the people that were therein, and put them under saws, and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick-kiln: and thus did he unto all the cities of the children of Ammon”(b).
That cruelty was predominant among the Romans, is evident from every one of their historians. If a Roman citizen was found murdered in his own house, his whole household slaves, perhaps two or three hundred, were put to death without mercy, unless they could detect the murderer. Such a law, cruel and unjust, could never have been enacted among a people of any humanity. Brutality to their offspring was glaring. Children were held, like cattle, to be the father’s property: and so tenacious was the patria potestas, that if a son or daughter sold to be a slave was set free, he or she fell again under the father’s power, to be sold a second time, and even a third time. The power of life and death over children was much less unnatural, while no public tribunal existed for punishing crimes. A<356> son, being a slave, could have no property of his own. Julius Caesar was the first who privileged a son to retain for his own use spoils acquired in war. When law became a lucrative profession, what a son gained in that way was declared to be his property. In Athens, a man had power of life and death over his children; but, as they were not slaves, what they acquired belonged to themselves. So late as the days of Dioclesian, a son’s marriage did not dissolve the Roman patria potestas (a). But the power of selling children wore out of use(b). When powers so unnatural were given to men over their children, and exercised so tyranically, can there be any doubt of their cruelty to others?* <357> During the second triumvirate, horrid cruelties were every day perpetrated without pity or remorse. Antony, having ordered Cicero to be beheaded, and the head to be brought to him, viewed it with savage pleasure. His wife Fulvia laid hold of it, struck it on the face, uttered many bitter execrations, and, having placed it between her knees, drew out the tongue, and pierced it with a bodkin. The delight it gave the Romans to see wild beasts set loose against one another in their circus, is a proof not at all ambiguous of their taste for blood, even at the time of their highest civilization. The Edile Scaurus sent at one time to Rome 150 panthers, Pompey 410, and Augustus 420, for the public spectacles. Their gladiato-<358>rian combats are a less evident proof of their ferocity: the courage and address exerted in these combats gave a manly pleasure, that balanced in some measure the pain of seeing these poor fellows cut and slash one another. And, that the Romans were never cured of their thirst for blood, appears from Caligula, Nero, and many other monsters, who tormented the Romans after Augustus. There is no example in modern times of such monsters in France, though an absolute monarchy, nor even in Turkey.
Ferocity was, in the Roman empire, considerably mollified by literature and other fine arts; but it acquired new force upon the irruption of the barbarous nations who crushed that empire. In the year 559, Clotaire, King of the Franks, burnt alive his son, with all his friends, because they had rebelled against him. Queen Brunehaud, being by Clotaire II. condemned to die, was dragged through the camp at a horse’s tail, till she gave up the ghost. The ferocity of European nations became boundless during the anarchy of the feudal system. Many peasants in the northern provinces of France being<359> sorely oppressed in civil wars carried on by the nobles against each other, turned desperate, gathered together in bodies, resolving to extirpate all the nobles. A party of them, anno 1358, forced open the castle of a knight, hung him upon a gallows, violated in his presence his wife and daughters, roasted him upon a spit, compelled his wife and children to eat of his flesh, and terminated that horrid scene with massacring the whole family, and burning the castle. When they were asked, says Froissard, why they committed such abominable actions, their answer was, “That they did as they saw others do; and that all the nobles in the world ought to be destroyed.” The nobles, when they got the upper hand, were equally cruel. They put all to fire and sword, and massacred every peasant who came in the way, without troubling themselves to separate the innocent from the guilty. The Count de Ligny encouraged his nephew, a boy of fifteen, to kill with his own hand some prisoners who were his countrymen; in which, says Monstrelet, the young man took great delight. How much worse than brutal must have been<360> the manners of that age! for even a beast of prey kills not but when instigated by hunger. The third act of stealing from the lead-mines in Derby was, by a law of Edward I. punished in the following manner. A hand of the criminal was nailed to