Alexander, the tyrant of Pheres, durst not be a spectator of tragedies in
the theatre, for fear lest his citizens should see him weep at the
misfortunes of Hecuba and Andromache, who himself without pity caused so
many people every day to be murdered. Is it not meanness of spirit that
renders them so pliable to all extremities? Valour, whose effect is only
to be exercised against resistance--

"Nec nisi bellantis gaudet cervice juvenci"--

["Nor delights in killing a bull unless he resists."
--Claudius, Ep. ad Hadrianum, v. 39.]

stops when it sees the enemy at its mercy; but pusillanimity, to say that
it was also in the game, not having dared to meddle in the first act of
danger, takes as its part the second, of blood and massacre. The murders
in victories are commonly performed by the rascality and hangers-on of an
army, and that which causes so many unheard of cruelties in domestic wars
is, that this canaille makes war in imbruing itself up to the elbows in
blood, and ripping up a body that lies prostrate at its feet, having no
sense of any other valour:

"Et lupus, et turpes instant morientibus ursi,
Et quaecunque minor nobilitate fera est:"

["Wolves and the filthy bears, and all the baser beasts,
fall upon the dying."--Ovid, Trist., iii. 5, 35.]

like cowardly dogs, that in the house worry and tear the skins of wild
beasts, they durst not come near in the field. What is it in these times
of ours that makes our quarrels mortal; and that, whereas our fathers had