Aristotle strongly condemns the Lacedæmonians and Cretans for regarding war and conquest as the sole ends to which all law and education should be directed. Also in non-Greek tribes like the Scythians, Persians, Thracians and Celts he says, only military power is admired by the people and encouraged by the state. “There was formerly too a law in Macedonia that any one who had never slain an enemy should wear the halter about his neck.” Among the Iberians too, a military people, “it is the custom to set around the tomb of a deceased warrior a number of obelisks corresponding to the number of enemies he has killed.... Yet ... it may well appear to be a startling paradox that it should be the function of a Statesman to succeed in devising the means of rule and mastery over neighbouring peoples whether with or against their own will. How can such action be worthy of a statesman or legislator, when it has not even the sanction of law?” (_op. cit._, IV. Ch. 2.) We see that Aristotle disapproves of a glorification of war for its own sake, and regards it as justifiable only in certain circumstances. Methods of warfare adopted and proved in the East would not have been possible in Greece. An act of treachery, for example, such as that of Jael, (_Judges_ IV. 17) which was extolled in songs of praise by the Jews, (_loc. cit._ V. 24) the Greek people would have been inclined to repudiate. The stories of Roman history, the behaviour of Fabricius, for instance, or Regulus and the honourable conduct of prisoners on various occasions released on parole, show that this consciousness of certain principles of honour in warfare was still more highly developed in Rome. Socrates in the _Republic_ (V. 469, 470) gives expression to a feeling which was gradually gaining ground in Greece, that war between Hellenic tribes was much more serious than war between Greeks and barbarians. In such civil warfare, he considered, the defeated ought not to be reduced to slavery, nor the slain despoiled, nor Hellenic territory devastated. For any difference between Greek and Greek is to “be regarded by them as discord only—a quarrel among friends, which is not to be called war”.... “Our citizens [_i.e._ in the ideal republic] should thus deal with their Hellenic enemies; and with barbarians as the Hellenes now deal with one another.” (V. 471.) The views of Plato and Aristotle on this and other questions were in advance of the custom and practice of their time.