A Roman lady of rank, out of mere voluptuous regard to her
own comfort, revolted from the harsh clamors of eternal chastisements
inflicted on her numerous slaves; she forbade them; the grateful slaves
showed their love for her; gradually and unintentionally she trained
her feelings, when thus liberated from a continual temptation to the
sympathies with cruelty, into a demand for gentler and purer
excitement. Her purpose had been one of luxury; but, by the benignity
of nature still watching for ennobling opportunities, the actual result
was a development given to the higher capacities of her heart. In the
same way, when the brutal right (and in many circumstances the brutal
duty) of inflicting death upon prisoners taken in battle, had exchanged
itself for the profits of ransom or slavery, this relaxation of
ferocity (though commencing in selfishness) gradually exalted itself
into a habit of mildness, and some dim perception of a sanctity in
human life. The very vice of avarice ministered to the purification of
barbarism; and the very evil of slavery in its earliest form was
applied to the mitigation of another evil--war conducted in the spirit
of piratical outrage. The commercial instincts of men having worked one
set of changes in war, a second set of changes was prompted by
instincts derived from the arts of ornament and pomp.
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