rovoked a national calamity."[517] In the Roman law is found a
proposition which was often quoted in the Middle Ages: "That which is
done against divine religion is done to the harm of all."[518] Hale[519]
explains the tortures inflicted by the Iroquois, by their desire to mark
some kinds of Indian warfare as very abominable, and so to drive them
out of use. Torture always flatters vanity. He who inflicts it has
power. To reduce, plunder, and torment an enemy is a great luxury. The
lust of blood is a frightful demon when once it is aroused. A Hungarian
woman of noble birth, at the beginning of the seventeenth century,
tortured to death thirty or forty of her maidservants. She began by
inflicting severe punishments and developed a fiendish passion for the
sight of suffering and blood.[520] It is the combinations of the other
elements, religion, ambition, sex, vanity, and the lust of blood, with
the dislike of dissenters, which has caused the most frightful
developments of torture and persecution. This brings us to the case of
the mediaeval inquisition. It is not to be expected that a phenomenon of
high civilization will be simple and uniform. So the motives of
Christian persecution to enforce conformity are numerous and mixed. It
was directly against some of the leading principles of Christianity, but
there are texts in the New Testament which were used to justify it.[521]

+237. Torture in ancient states.+ The Egyptians used torture in all
ordinary investigations to find out the facts.[522] The Greeks had used
torture. It was common in the Periclean age in the courts of Athens. The
accused gave his slaves to be tortured "to challenge evidence against
himself."[523] Plutarch[524] tells of a barber who heard of the defeat
of Nicias in Sicily and ran to tell the magistrates. They tortured him
as a maker of trouble by disseminating false news, until the story was
confirmed. Philotas was charged with planning to kill Alexander. He was
tortured and the desired proof was obtained.[525] Eusebius,[526]
describing the persecution under Nerva, says that Simeon, Bishop of
Jerusalem, being one hundred and twenty years old, was tortured for
several days and then crucified. Torture underwent a special development
in the Euphrates valley. The Assyrian stones show frightful tortures
which kings sometimes inflicted with their own hands. Maiming, flaying,
impaling, blinding, and smothering in hot ashes became usual forms in
Persia. They pa