Some very bold critics do indeed assert that the Book of Deuteronomy was not composed until after the siege of Samaria by Benhadad, during which, it is said in the Second Book of Kings, that mothers ate their children. But these critics, in considering Deuteronomy as a book written after the siege of Samaria, do but verify this terrible occurrence. Others assert that it could not happen as it is related in the Second Book of Kings. It is there said: "And as the king of Israel was passing by upon the wall [of Samaria], there cried a woman unto him, saying, 'Help, my lord, O king.' And he said, 'If the Lord do not help thee, whence shall I help thee? out of the barn floor? or out of the wine-press?' And the king said unto her, 'What aileth thee?' And she answered, 'This woman said unto me, give thy son, that we may eat him to-day, and we shall eat my son to-morrow. So we boiled my son, and did eat him; and I said unto her on the next day, 'Give thy son, that we may eat him,' and she hath hid her son.'" These censors assert that it is not likely that while King Benhadad was besieging Samaria, King Joram passed quietly by the wall, or upon the wall, to settle differences between Samaritan women. It is still less likely that one child should not have satisfied two women for two days. There must have been enough to feed them for four days at least. But let these critics reason as they may, we must believe that fathers and mothers ate their children during the siege of Samaria, since it is expressly foretold in Deuteronomy. The same thing happened at the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar; and this, too, was foretold by Ezekiel. Jeremiah exclaims, in his "Lamentations": "Shall the women eat their fruit, and children of a span long?" And in another place: "The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children." Here may be added the words of Baruch: "Man has eaten the flesh of his son and of his daughter." This horror is repeated so often that it cannot but be true. Lastly, we know the story related in Josephus, of the woman who fed on the flesh of her son when Titus was besieging Jerusalem. The book attributed to Enoch, cited by St. Jude, says that the giants born from the commerce of the angels with the daughters of men were the first cannibals. In the eighth homily attributed to St. Clement, St. Peter, who is made to speak in it, says that these same giants quenched their thirst with human blood and ate the flesh of their fellow creatures. Hence resulted, adds the author, maladies until then unknown; monsters of all kinds sprung up on the earth; and then it was that God resolved to drown all human kind. All this shows us how universal was the reigning opinion of the existence of cannibals. What St. Peter is made to say in St. Clement's homily has a palpable affinity with the story of Lycaon, one of the oldest of Greek fables, and which we find in the first book of Ovid's "Metamorphoses."