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 take his flight over all nations and cities, and accurately observe their proceedings, he would see that the sense of justice and right varies in different regions. In the first place, he would behold among the unchangeable people of Egypt, which preserves in its archives the memory of so many ages and events, a bull adored as a Deity, under the name of Apis, and a multitude of other monsters, and all kinds of animals admitted by the same nation into the number of the Gods.

In the next place, he would see in Greece, as among ourselves, magnificent temples consecrated by images in human form, which the Persians regarded as impious; and it is affirmed that the sole motive of Xerxes for commanding the conflagration of the Athenian temples was the be lief that it was a superstitious sacrilege to keep confined within narrow walls the Gods, whose proper home was the entire universe. But afterward Philip, in his hostile projects against the Persians, and Alexander, who carried them into execution, alleged this plea for war, that they were desirous to avenge the temples of Greece, which the Greeks had thought proper never to rebuild, that this monument of the impiety of the Persians might always remain before the eyes of their posterity.

How many—such as the inhabitants of Taurica along the Euxine Sea; as the King of Egypt, Busiris; as the Gauls and the Carthaginians—have thought it exceedingly pious and agreeable to the Gods to sacrifice men! And, besides, the customs of life are so various that the Cretans and Ætolians regard robbery as honorable. And the Lacedæmonians say that their territory extends to all places which they can touch with a lance. The Athenians had a custom of swearing, by a public proclamation, that all the lands which produced olives and corn were their own. The Gauls consider it a base employment to raise corn by agricultural labor, and go with arms in their hands, and mow down the harvests of neighboring peoples. But we ourselves, the most equitable of all nations, who, in order to raise the value of our vines and olives, do not permit the races beyond the Alps to cultivate either vineyards or oliveyards, are said in this matter to act with prudence, but not with justice. You see, then, that