Among the antient Persians, the punishment of whipping was also in use: it was even frequently inflicted on the Grandees of the Kingdom by order of the King, as we find in _Stobæus_, who moreover relates in his forty-second Discourse, ‘That when one of them had been flagellated by order of the King, it was an established custom, that he should give him thanks as for an excellent favour he had received, and a token that the King remembered him.’ This custom of the Persians was however in subsequent times altered: they began to set some more value on the skin of Men; and we find in Plutarch’s _Apophthegms of Kings_, ‘That Artaxerxes, son of Xerxes, sirnamed the _Longhanded_, was the first who ordered that the Grandees of his kingdom should no longer be exposed to the former method of punishment; but that, when they should have been guilty of some offence, instead of their backs, only their clothes should be whipped, after they had been stripped of them.’ We also find, that it was a custom in antient times, for Generals and Conquerors, to flog the Captives they had taken in war; and that they moreover took delight in inflicting that punishment with their own hands on the most considerable of those Captives. We meet, among others, with a very remarkable proof of this practice, in the Tragedy of Sophocles, called _Ajax Scourgebearer_ (Μαστιγοφόρος): in a Scene of this Tragedy Ajax is introduced as having the following conversation with Minerva. MINERVA. ‘What kind of severity do you prepare for that miserable man?’ AJAX. ‘I propose to lash his back with a scourge till he dies.’ MINERVA. ‘Nay, do not whip the poor Wretch so cruelly.’ AJAX. ‘Give me leave, Minerva, to gratify, on this occasion, my own fancy; he shall have it, I do assure you, and I prepare no other punishment for him.’ The punishment of flagellation was also much in vogue among the Romans; and it was the common chastisement which Judges inflicted upon Offenders, especially upon those of a servile condition. Surrounded by an apparatus of whips, scourges, and leather-straps, they terrified Offenders, and brought them to a sense of their duty.