V. The lawfulness of injuring or destroying the person of a public enemy is supported by the testimony of many of the best writers, both poets, moralists, and historians. In one of the tragedies of Euripides, there is a proverb, which says, that "to kill a public enemy, or an enemy in war is no murder." Therefore the custom of the ancient Greeks, which rendered it unlawful and impious to use the same bath, or to partake of the same festivities and sacred rites with a person who had killed another in time of peace, did not extend to any one who had killed a public enemy in war. Killing an enemy is indeed everywhere called a right of war. "The rights of war, _says Marcellus in Livy_, support me in all that I have done against the enemy." And the same historian gives the address of Alcon to the Saguntines, where he says, "You ought to bear these hardships, rather than suffer your own bodies to be mangled, and your wives and children to be seized and dragged away before your eyes." Cicero in his speech in defence of Marcellus passes a high encomium upon the clemency of Caesar, who, "by the laws of war and the rights of victory, might have put to death all, whom he had spared and protected." And Caesar observes to the Eduans, that "it was an act of kindness in HIM, to spare those whom the laws of war would have authorised him to put to death." But the rights of war, for which these writers plead, could not PERFECTLY JUSTIFY the putting prisoners to death, but could only grant IMPUNITY to those who availed themselves of the barbarous custom. There is a wide difference however between actions like these, and destroying an enemy by proper means of hostility. For, as Tacitus says, "in the leisure hours of peace the merits and demerits of every case may be examined and weighed, but, in the tumult and confusion of war, the innocent must fall with the guilty": and the same writer, in another place, observes, that "there are many actions, which the principles of humanity cannot ENTIRELY approve, but which the policy of war requires." And it is in this, and no other sense that Lucan has said, "the complexion of right may be assigned to what is wrong." VI. This right of making lawful what is done in war is of great extent. For in the first place it comprises, in the number of enemies, not only those who actually bear arms, or who are immediately subjects of the belligerent power, but even all who are within the hostile territories, as appears from the form given by Livy, who says, that "war is declared against the sovereign, and all within his jurisdiction." For which a very good reason may be assigned; because danger is to be apprehended even from THEM, which, in a continued and regular war, establishes the right now under discussion.