around them. No man has ever lived who
was more celebrated for his scrupulous observance of the most exact
justice, and for the illustration furnished in his life of the noblest
natural virtues, than the Roman Cato. His strict adherence to the
nicest rules of equity--his integrity, honor, and incorruptible
faith--his jealous watchfulness over the rights of his fellow
citizens, and his generous devotion to their interest, procured for
him the sublime appellation of "The Just." Towards _freemen_ his life
was a model of every thing just and noble: but to his slaves he was a
monster. At his meals, when the dishes were not done to his liking, or
when his slaves were careless or inattentive in serving, he would
seize a thong and violently beat them, in presence of his
guests.--When they grew old or diseased, and were no longer
serviceable, however long and faithfully they might have served him,
he either turned them adrift and left them to perish, or starved them
to death in his own family. No facts in his history are better
authenticated than these.

No people were ever more hospitable and munificent than the Romans,
and none more touched with the sufferings of others. Their public
theatres often rung with loud weeping, thousands sobbing convulsively
at once over fictitious woes and imaginary sufferers: and yet these
same multitudes would shout amidst the groans of a thousand dying
gladiators, forced by their conquerors to kill each other in the
amphitheatre for the _amusement_ of the public.[22]

[Footnote 22: Dr. Leland, in his "Necessity of a Divine Revelation,"
thus describes the prevalence of these shows among the Romans:--"They
were exhibited at the funerals of great and rich men, and on many
other occasions, by the Roman consuls, praetors, aediles, senators,
knights, priests, and almost all that bore great offices in the state,
as well as by the emperors; and in general, by all that had a mind to
make an interest with the people, who were extravagantly fond of those
kinds of shows. Not only the men, but the women, ran eagerly after
them; who were, by the prevalence of custom, so far divested of that
compassion and softness which is natural to the sex, that they took a
pleasure in seeing them kill one another, and only desired that they
should fall genteelly, and in an agreeable attitude. Such was the
frequency of those shows, and so great the number of men that were
killed on those occasions, that Lipsius says, no w