The first cruelties are exercised for themselves; thence

duces others.

springs the fear of a just revenge, which after- One act of cruelty wards produces a series of new cruelties to necessarily proobliterate one another. Philip, king of Macedon, who had so much to do with the people of Rome, agitated with the horror of so many murders committed by his appointment, and doubting of being able to keep himself secure from so many families, at divers times mortally injured and offended by him, resolved to seize all the children of those he had caused to be slain, to dispatch them daily one after another, and so to establish his own repose.1

Fine matter is never impertinent, however placed; and therefore I, who more consider the weight and utility of what I deliver than its order and connection, need not fear in this place to bring in a fine story, though it be a little by the by; for when they are rich in their own native beauty, and are able to justify themselves, the least end of a hair will serve to draw them into my argument.

Amongst others condemned by Philip, Herodicus, prince of Thessaly, had been one; he had moreover, after him, caused his two sons-in-law to be put to death, each leaving a son very young behind him; Theoxena and Archo were their two widows. Theoxena, though highly courted to it, could not be persuaded to marry again. Archo married Poris, the greatest man among the Ænians, and by him had a great many children, which she, dying, left in a tender age. Theoxena, moved with a maternal charity towards her nephews, that she might have them under her own eyes, and in her own protection, married Poris. Presently comes a proclamation of the king's edict. This brave-spirited mother suspected the cruelty of Philip, and, afraid of the insolence of the soldiers towards these fine and tender children, boldly declared that she would rather kill them with her own hands than deliver them. Poris, startled at this protestation, promised her to steal them away, and to transport them to Athens, and 1 Livy, xl. 3.

there commit them to the custody of some faithful friend of his. They took therefore the opportunity of an annual feast, which was celebrated at Ænia in honour of Æneas, and thither they went. Having appeared by day at the public ceremonies and banquet, they stole at night into a vessel prepared for that purpose, to escape away by sea. The wind proved contrary, and finding themselves in the morning within sight of the land from whence they had launched over night, were made after by the guards of the port. At their approach, Poris laboured all he could to make the mariners do their utmost to escape from the pursuers; but Theoxena, frantic with affection and revenge, recurring to her former resolution, prepared arms and poison, and exposing these before them: "Come, my children," said she, "death is now the only means of your defence and liberty, and shall administer occasion to the gods to exercise their sacred justice; these sharp swords, these full cups will open you the way to it; courage, fear nothing. And thou, my son, who art the eldest, take this steel into thy hand, that thou may'st the most bravely die." The children, having on one side so powerful a counsellor, and the enemy at their throats on the other, ran all of them eagerly upon what was next to hand, and, half dead, were thrown into the sea. Theoxena, proud of having so gloriously provided for the safety of all her children, clasping her arms with great affection about her husband's neck: "Let us, my friend," said she, "follow these boys, and enjoy the same sepulchre they do." And, so embraced, threw themselves headlong overboard into the sea; so that the ship was carried back empty of the owners into the harbour.

Tyrants contrive

to lengthen the

Tyrants, at once both to kill and to make their anger felt, have pumped their wits to invent the most lintorments of those gering deaths. They will have their enemies they put to death. dispatched, but not so fast that they may not have leisure to taste their vengeance.1 And therein they are mightily perplexed, for if the torments they inflict are vio1 An allusion to Caligula's saying, "I wish them to feel themselves dying."

lent, they are short; if long, they are not then so painful as they desire; and thus they torment themselves in contriving how to torment others. Of this we have a thousand examples of antiquity, and I know not whether we, unawares, do not retain some traces of this barbarity.

All that exceeds a simple death appears to me pure cruelty. Our law cannot expect that he whom the fear of being executed, by being beheaded or hanged, will not restrain, should be any more awed by the imagination of a languishing fire, burning pincers, or the wheel. And I know not, in the mean time, whether we do not throw them into despair; for in what condition can the soul of a man, expecting four-and-twenty hours together to be broke upon a wheel, or, after the old way, nailed to a cross, be? Josephus relates 1 that in the time of the war the Romans made in Judea, happening to pass by where they had three days before crucified certain Jews, he amongst them knew three of his own friends, and obtained the favour of having them taken down; of whom two, he says, died, the third lived a great while after.

Chalcondylas, a writer of good credit, in the records he has left behind him of things that happened in his time, and near him, tells us, as of the most excessive torment, of what the Emperor Mechmet very often practised, of cutting off men in the middle, by the diaphragm, with one blow of a scimitar; by which it happened that they died, as it were, two deaths at once, and both the one part and the other, says he, were seen to stir and struggle a great while after, in very great torment. I do not think there was any great suffering in this motion; the torments that are most dreadful to look on are not always the greatest to endure; and I find those that other historians relate to have been practised upon the Epirot lords, to be more horrid and cruel, where they were condemned to be flayed alive by pieces, after so malicious a manner that they continued fifteen days in this misery.

1 In the History of his Life, towards the end.

2 Hist. of the Turks, x. at the beginning.

As also these two others: Croesus, having caused a gentleman, the favourite of his brother Pantaleon, to be seized, carried him into a fuller's shop, where he caused him to be scratched and carded with cards and combs belonging to that trade till he died. George Sechel, chief commander of the peasants of Poland, who committed so many mischiefs under the title of the crusade, being defeated in battle, and taken by the waywode of Transylvania, was for three days bound naked upon the rack, exposed to all sorts of torments that any one could contrive against him, during which time many other prisoners were kept fasting. In the end, he living and looking on, they made his beloved brother Lucat, for whom only he entreated, taking upon himself the blame of all their evil actions, to drink his blood; and caused twenty of his most favoured captains to feed upon him, tearing his flesh in pieces with their teeth, and swallowing the morsels. The remainder of his body and bowels, so soon as he was dead, were boiled, and others of his followers compelled to eat them.?

CHAPTER XXVIII.

ALL THINGS HAVE THEIR SEASON.

SUCH as compare Cato the Censor with the younger Cato that killed himself, compare two beautiful natures, and much resembling one another. The first acquired his reputation The virtue of Cato several ways, and excels in military exploits of Utica preferable and the utility of his public avocations; but the virtue of the younger, besides that it were blasphemy to compare any to him in vigour, was much more

to that of Cato the

Censor.

1 Herod. i. 92.

2 Chronicle of Carion, book iv. p. Cureus, Annals of Silesia, p. 233.

700.

pure and unblemished; for who can acquit the Censor of envy and ambition, having dared to jostle the honour of Scipio, a man in worth, valour, and all other excellent qualities, infinitely beyond him, or any other of his time?

That which they report of him, amongst other things, that, in his extreme old age, he put himself upon learning the Greek tongue with a greedy appetite, as if to quench a long thirst, does not seem to make much for his honour; it being properly what we call being twice a child. All things have their season, even the best; and a man may say his Paternoster out of time; as they accused T. Quintus Flaminius,2 that, being general of an army, he was seen praying apart in the time of a battle that he won :

Imponet finem sapiens et rebus honestis.8

"The wise man limits even proper things."

4

Eudemonidas, seeing Xenocrates, when very old, still very intent upon his school-lessons, "When will this man be wise," said he, "if he is still learning?" And Philopomen, to those who extolled King Ptolemy for every day inuring his person to the exercise of arms, "It is not," said he, commendable in a king of his age to exercise himself in those things; he ought now really to employ them." " The young

6

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are to make their preparations, the old to enjoy them, say the sages; and the greatest vice they observe in us is that our desires incessantly grow young again; we are always rebeginning to live.

Our studies and desires should sometimes be sensible of age. We have one foot in the grave, and yet our appetites and pursuits spring every day new upon us :