If the Romans were so late in coming to blows, they made ample compensation after they had once entered upon the bloody scene; and Appian’s history of their civil wars contains the most frightful picture of massacres, proscriptions, and forfeitures that ever was presented to the world. What pleases most in that historian is that he seems to feel a proper resentment of these barbarous proceedings, and talks not with that provoking coolness and indifference which custom had produced in many of the Greek historians.​[67] The maxims of ancient politics contain, in general, so little humanity and moderation that it seems superfluous to give any particular reason for the violences committed at any particular period; yet I cannot forbear observing that the laws in the latter ages of the Roman commonwealth were so absurdly contrived that they obliged the heads of parties to have recourse to these extremities. All capital punishments were abolished. However criminal, or, what is more, however dangerous any citizen might be, he could not regularly be punished otherwise than by banishment; and it became necessary in the revolutions of party to draw the sword of private vengeance; nor was it easy, when laws were once violated, to set bounds to these sanguinary proceedings. Had Brutus himself prevailed over the Triumvirate, could he, in common prudence, have allowed Octavius and Anthony to live, and have contented himself with banishing them to Rhodes or Marseilles, where they might still have plotted new commotions and rebellions? His executing C. Antonius, brother to the Triumvir, shows evidently his sense of the matter. Did not Cicero, with the approbation of all the wise and virtuous of Rome, arbitrarily put to death Catiline’s associates contrary to law and without any trial or form of process? And if he moderated his executions, did it not proceed either from the clemency of his temper or the conjunctures of the times? A wretched security in a government which pretends to laws and liberty! Thus, one extreme produces another. In the same manner as excessive severity in the laws is apt to beget great relaxation in their execution, so their excessive lenity naturally produces cruelty and barbarity. It is dangerous to force us, in any case, to pass their sacred boundaries.