In the treaty between the Romans and Carthaginians, made at some period subsequent to 509 B. C., it is stipulated,—Τοῦ Καλοῦ Ἀκρωτηρίου, Μαστίας, Ταρσηΐου, μὴ ληΐζεσθαι ἐπέκεινα Ῥωμαίους μηδ᾽ ἐμπορεύεσθαι, μηδὲ πόλιν κτίζειν (Polyb. iii. 24, 4). Plunder, commerce, and colonization, are here assumed as the three objects which the Roman ships would pursue, unless they were under special obligation to abstain, in reference to foreigners. This morality approaches nearer to that of the Homeric age, than to the state of sentiment which Thucydides indicates as current in his day among the Greeks. [150] See the interesting boastfulness of Nestôr, Iliad, xi. 670-700; also Odyss. xxi. 18; Odyss. iii. 71; Thucyd. i. 5. [151] Odyss. iv. 165, among many other passages. Telemachus laments the misfortune of his race, in respect that himself, Odysseus, and Laërtês were all only sons of their fathers: there were no brothers to serve as mutual auxiliaries (Odyss. xvi. 118). [152] Opp. Di. 182-199:— Οὐδὲ πατὴρ παίδεσσιν ὁμοιΐος, οὐδέ τι παῖδες, Οὐδὲ ξεῖνος ξεινοδόκῳ, καὶ ἑταῖρος ἑταίρῳ, Οὐδὲ κασίγνητος φίλος ἔσσεται, ὡς τὸ πάρος περ, Αἶψα δὲ γηράσκοντας ἀτιμήσουσι τοκῆας, etc. There are two special veins of estimable sentiment, on which it may be interesting to contrast heroic and historical Greece, and which exhibit the latter as an improvement on the former, not less in the affections than in the intellect. The law of Athens was peculiarly watchful and provident with respect both to the persons and the property of orphan minors; but the description given in the Iliad of the utter and hopeless destitution of the orphan boy, despoiled of his paternal inheritance, and abandoned by all the friends of his father, whom he urgently supplicates, and who all harshly cast him off, is one of the most pathetic morsels in the whole poem.[153] In reference again to the treatment of the dead body of an enemy we find all the Greek chiefs who come near (not to mention the conduct of Achilles himself) piercing with their spears the corpse of the slain Hectôr, while some of them even pass disgusting taunts upon it. We may add, from the lost epics, the mutilation of the dead bodies of Paris and Deiphobus by the hand of Menelaus.[154] But at the time of the Persian invasion, it was regarded as unworthy of a right-minded Greek to maltreat in any way the dead body of an enemy, even where such a deed might seem to be justified on the plea of retaliation. After the battle of Platæa, a proposition was made to the Spartan king Pausanias, to retaliate upon the dead body of Mardonius the indignities which Xerxês had heaped upon that of Leonidas at Thermopylæ. He indignantly spurned the suggestion, not without a severe rebuke, or rather a half-suppressed menace, towards the proposer: and the feeling of Herodotus himself goes heartily along with him.[155]