willingness, bravery, and strength, one should strike another after having challenged him. None should strike another who is confiding or who is panic-striken. One fighting with another, one seeking refuge, one retreating, one whose weapon is broken, and one who is not clad in armour should never be struck. Charioteers, animals, men engaged in carrying weapons, those who play on drums and those who blow conchs should never be smitten."[118] Among the Greeks, in the Homeric age, it was evidently regarded as a matter of course that, on the fall of a city, all the men were slain, and the women and children carried off as slaves;[119] but in historic times such a treatment of a vanquished foe grew rarer, and seems, under ordinary circumstances, to have been disapproved of.[120] The rulers of this land, says the messenger in the 'Heraclidæ,' do not approve of slaying enemies who have been taken alive in battle.[121] In Rome the customs of war underwent a similar change. In ancient days the normal fate of a captive was death, in later times he was generally reduced to slavery; but many thousands of captives were condemned to the gladiatorial shows, and the vanquished general was commonly slain in the Mamertine prison.[122] On the other hand, nations or armies that voluntarily submitted to Rome were habitually treated with great leniency. Cicero says:--"When we obtain the victory we must preserve those enemies who behaved without cruelty or inhumanity during the war; for example, our forefathers received, even as members of their state, the Tuscans, the Aequi, the Volscians, the Sabines, and the Hernici, but utterly destroyed Carthage and Numantia. . . . And, while we {344} are bound to exercise consideration toward those whom we have conquered by force, so those should be received into our protection who throw themselves upon the honour of our general, and lay down their arms, even though the battering rams should have struck their walls."[123] [Footnote 114: Bancroft, _op. cit._ ii. 426, 412.] [Footnote 115: Douglas, _Confucianism and Taouism_, p. 261.] [Footnote 116: _Deuteronomy_, xx. 13 _sqq._] [Footnote 117: _Laws of Manu_, vii. 90 _sq._] [Footnote 118: _Mahabharata_, Bhisma Parva, i. 27 _sqq._ (pt. xii. _sq._ p. 2).] [Footnote 119: _Iliad_, ix. 593 _sq._] [Footnote 120: Schmidt, _Ethik der alten Griechen_, ii. 281 _sqq._] [Footnote 121: Euripides, _Heraclidæ_, 966.] [Footnote 122: Laurent, _op. cit._ iii. 20 _sq._ Lecky, _History of European Morals_, ii. 257.] [Footnote 123: Cicero, _De officiis_, i. 11.] CHAPTER XV HOMICIDE IN GENERAL (continued) CHRISTIANITY introduced into Europe a higher regard for human life than was felt anywhere in pagan society. The early Christians condemned homicide of any kind as a heinous sin. And in this, as in all other questions of moral concern, the distinction of nationality or race was utterly ignored by them.