Hence has originated the custom, in addressing a people, of ascribing to them, who are now living, what happened to the same people many ages before; as may be seen both in profane historians, and in the books of holy writ. So in Tacitus, Antony the First serving under Vespasian, reminds the soldiers of the third legion of what they had done in former times, how under Mark Antony they had beaten the Parthians, and under Corbulo the Armenians. There was more of prejudice, therefore, than truth in the reproach, which Piso cast upon the Athenians of his own time, refusing to consider them as Athenians since they had become extinct by so many disasters, and were nothing more than a base mixture of all nations of the earth. We say there was more of prejudice than truth in this reproach. For though such a mixture might diminish the dignity, it could not destroy the existence of a people. Nor was he himself ignorant of this. For he reproaches the Athenians of his own day with their feeble efforts in former times against Philip of Macedon, and their ingratitude to their best friends. Now as a change of its component parts cannot destroy the identity of a people, not even for a thousand years or more; so neither can it be denied that a people may lose its existence in two ways; either by the extinction of all its members, or by the extinction of its form and spirit. IV. A body is said to die, when its essential parts, and necessary form of subsistence are destroyed. To the former case may be referred the instance of nations swallowed up by the sea, as Plato relates, and others whom Tertullian mentions: or if a people should be destroyed by an earthquake, of which there are many instances in history, or should destroy themselves, as the Sidonians and Saguntines did. We are informed by Pliny, that in ancient Latium, fifty-three nations were destroyed without a single trace of them remaining. But what, it may be said will be the case, if out of such a nation so few remain that they cannot form a people? They will then retain that property, which they had before as private persons, but not in a public capacity. The same is the case with every community.