already in that age very generally diffused. But if the Greeks of heroic times possessed the good qualities we have attributed to them, they were still more, perhaps, distinguished for others, which often obliterated the footsteps of their virtues, and appeared to be the guiding principles of their lives. Chief among these was their passion for war and violence,[143] which engaged them in everlasting struggles with their neighbours, developed overmuch their fierce and destructive qualities, and threw into comparative shade such of their propensities as were gentler and more humane. War by land, piracy by sea, filled the whole country with incessant alarms. Commerce was checked and confined within very narrow channels, both travelling and navigation being exceedingly unsafe, while bands of marauders traversed land and sea in quest of rapine and plunder. In some states no other mode was known of arriving at opulence, and the humbler classes of society were wholly subsisted by it.[144] The laws of war, too, were proportionably savage. It was customary either to give no quarter, or to devote all prisoners taken to servitude; and, accordingly, every petty state was filled with unfortunate captives, many of them of illustrious birth and qualities, reduced to the humblest conditions, being compelled to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. In peace, too, and in their own homes their warlike habits led frequently to the perpetration of violence; their passions being strong and unbridled they resented insults on the spot, and numerous homicides were, in consequence, found flying from the country whose infant institutions their passions had sought to overthrow. Footnote 143: See Thirlwall i. 180. sqq. and Mitford i. 181.—Among the Sauromatæ, in the time of Hippocrates, even the women mounted on horseback and fought in battle. They were not allowed to marry until they had slain three enemies.—De Aër. et. Loc. § 78. A circumstance is related of the Parthian court, illustrative of the ferocity which prevailed generally in antiquity. The monarch, it is said, kept a humble friend, whom he fed like a dog, and whipped till the blood flowed, for the slightest offence at table, apparently for the amusement of the guests.—Athen. iv. 38. This trait of barbarism was imitated by the Czar Peter, by servile historians denominated the Great, who used brutally to maltreat the princess Galitzin before his whole court.—Mem. of the Margrav. of Bayreuth, vol. i. p. 34. Footnote 144: Thucyd. i. 5.