it of their divisions. This,
at least, was the case of the Greeks; and surely, from the earliest
accounts of them, to their absorption into the Roman empire, we cannot
judge that their intestine divisions, and their foreign wars, consumed
less than three millions of their inhabitants.

What an Aceldama, what a field of blood Sicily has been in ancient
times, whilst the mode of its government was controverted between the
republican and tyrannical parties, and the possession struggled for by
the natives, the Greeks, the Carthaginians, and the Romans, your
lordship will easily recollect. You will remember the total destruction
of such bodies as an army of 300,000 men. You will find every page of
its history dyed in blood, and blotted and confounded by tumults,
rebellions, massacres, assassinations, proscriptions, and a series of
horror beyond the histories perhaps of any other nation in the world;
though the histories of all nations are made up of similar matter. I
once more excuse myself in point of exactness for want of books. But I
shall estimate the slaughters in this island but at two millions; which
your lordship will find much short of the reality.

Let us pass by the wars, and the consequences of them, which wasted
Grecia-Magna, before the Roman power prevailed in that part of Italy.
They are perhaps exaggerated; therefore I shall only rate them at one
million. Let us hasten to open that great scene which establishes the
Roman empire, and forms the grand catastrophe of the ancient drama. This
empire, whilst in its infancy, began by an effusion of human blood
scarcely credible. The neighboring little states teemed for new
destruction: the Sabines, the Samnites, the AEqui, the Volsci, the
Hetrurians, were broken by a series of slaughters which had no
interruption, for some hundreds of years; slaughters which upon all
sides consumed more than two millions of the wretched people. The Gauls,
rushing into Italy about this time, added the total destruction of their
own armies to those of the ancient inhabitants. In short, it were hardly
possible to conceive a more horrid and bloody picture, if that the Punic
wars that ensued soon after did not present one that far exceeds it.
Here we find that climax of devastation, and ruin, which seemed to shake
the whole earth. The extent of this war, which vexed so many nations,
and both elements, and the havoc of the human species caused in both,
really astonishes beyond expression,