The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1908-05-23
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Mexico City.
PEACE CONFERENCE.
Continued from page II
Mexico City

custom OF burylng alive was common in Persia an
that the queen of Persia ordered fourteen childre
of lustrious birth TO be buried alive that the spil
ITS dwelling in the earth might favor her husband
| (AerxesO enterprise.
Can we believe Joscphus, the Jewish historian
when he tells us that the king of the nsoent an,
lascivlous Moabites. when encompassed By his enc
mics, brought out his and heir and, lifting hin
unto the walls of the city slew him in sacrfce-t It
the gods of the nation! Must we credit the author
of the Book of Judges when he records the boast Of
the captive King Adonbezec:
Seventy kings, whose fingers and toes | cut off
gathered up the leavings of the meat under my ia
| bic"
| In the golden age of Roman civilization livec
julius Caesar and Octavius Augustus, who, as low
ers and patrons OF the fine arts. accomplished scho
ars. warriors and statesmen. are held up for oul
| admiration in high schools. colleges and acade-
mics Of julius Caesar we dare say little in plair
language His utter moral rottenness was loath
some and his depravity beggars description. Cate
might well shake his head at Caesars loose toga
His manhood was worthy of his youth His letters
to Anthony reveal tlthiness beyond all belief; yet
so barefaced crime and cruelty in the golden
age that he lauded b. Seutonius for .'his alb
horrence of cruelty" because he cut the Threats OF
the pirates he had taken when he might have cru
CITED them. Caesar was proclaimed god attic!
his death, by Augustus, the Roman emperor. Thi.
same Augustus, according to the calm and cautious
blographer OF the Caesars. upon q mere suspicion
and that, too unfounded. pluckcd out with his owi
hand the eyes of the Roman knight Quntus Gallus
and then cruelty put him to death by ignominio,l,
torture. And what of the fate of prisoners of wal
After Mark Antony and his friends we're starved
out III Perugia, and the army forced to surrender
the prisoners were brought out and put to death III
patches. Three hundred of the Roman knights and
mobiles of Antonys army, selected by Octavius Au
gustus slaughtered around the altar erected
to the Names of Julius Caesar, if thoH had been
800 sheep or bulls or oxen.
After every battle the prisoners of war were
either slaughtered on the field sold into slavery Oh
reserved for death at the gladiatoris combats. In
the most refined periods of the Roman empire al
the latest and brightest epoch of eathen or class
cal civilization prisoners of war were compelled t.
destroy each other for the delectation of the cit
zens, not only in Rome, but wherever an amphithe
atre was raised in Europe Africa Asia Minor anr
Asia proper. Even small country towns like Pom
peii and Herculaneum had these gladiatoriaI shows
where prisoners were publicly slaughtered for the
amusement of the people.
"As soon as the prisoners who were condemned
to fight with each other. or with Wild beasts writes
Seneca. were brought out upon the arena, the spec
tators became enemies of the human combatant,
and desired nothing so much as to see them quick,
slaughtered
Eiphlinus, in his life of the Emperor Commo
dus relates that when the contest between the prs
oneFs too equally sustained the imperial mon
stcr became enraged at the combatants for moi
dispatching one another more quickly that he hat
the wretches tied together to make sure af their i'm
mediate death. Lactantius adds:
$50 ferocious was the thirst of the spectator,
for blood that should one of each pair of combat
ants not fall quickly the whole crowd flies into 9
rage against them and fresh men must be brought
out to dispatch them"
The same Lactantius, corroborating Pliny, writes
"that part of the horrid performances, tho
warm blood of the dying prisoners was handed
around the amphitheatre and drunk by the specta
tors
Such became, at last, the games and pastmes Of
civilized society among the polite nations of an
tiqutv that the mutual slaughter of prisoners was
no more TO thsm than play to us, SO completely had
humanity become estranged from the human heart
Mankind required all the strength of the divine
example OF the love of man given the cross, and
the new commandment of Jesus Christ to love our
neighbor; he required heroic examples of self-sac
rifce. of self-denial of martyrdom and death be-
fore he could be persuaded hope for even the pos
sbiitv of change to higher and better life. In
his critical and learned work on mythology, the
gifted and accurate Banter tells us that:
Among all the peoples of the earth before the
redemption man has slaughtered his fellow man and
tortured him with nameless crueties, and there is
not spot earth on the globe of ancient civil
cation that has not been dyed with human blood
thus barbarousv she'd"
Contrasted with the horrors of war in the golden
age of Roman and Grecian civilization with the
indiscriminate slaughter of men. women and chill
dren; with the unspeakablt torture inflicted on the
defeated and the horrible violation of women and
virgins, that followed the capture of city or town:
face to face with the historical facts of the savage
atrocities inflicted on the conquered. war TODAY i
merciful Will any sane man now venture TO tell
us, the presence of the miraculous chanqe