against the laws of reason which nature has imprinted in us; and in the other case it seems that we could call upon that same nature to answer for having left us in such imperfection and feebleness. So that many people have thought that we could not be blamed except for what we do against our consciences; and on this rule is based in part the view of those who condemn capital punishment for heretics and unbelievers, and that which maintains that an advocate and a judge can not be held to account for having fallen short in the discharge of their duties through ignorance. But as for cowardice, it is certain that the most usual way is to chastise it by shame and ignominy. And it is said that this rule was first employed by the legislator Charondas,[1] and that before his time the laws of Greece punished with death those who had run away from a battle, whereas he decreed only that they should be for three days seated in the public square, dressed in women’s clothes, in the hope that they might still be made use of, their courage being restored by this disgrace. (c) Suffundere malis hominis sanguinem quam effundere[2] (a) It seems, too, that the Roman laws in old times condemned to death those who had run away; for Ammianus Marcellinus relates[3] that the Emperor Julian condemned ten of his soldiers, who had turned their backs during a charge against the Parthians, to be degraded and afterward to suffer death, according, as he says, to the ancient laws. But at another time, for a similar offence, he condemned others only to remain among the prisoners under the standard of the baggage.[4] (c) The severe condemnation by the Roman people of the troops who escaped from Cannæ, and, in that same war, of those who were the companions of Cneius Fulvius in his defeat,
- ↑ See Diodorus Siculus, XII, 4.
- ↑ Seek rather to bring a man’s blood to his cheek than to shed it. — Tertullian, Apalogeticum. The original has maluit; Montaigne took the quotation from the Adversus Dialogistam of Justus Lipsius, where malis is substituted for maluit.
- ↑ See Ammianus Marcellinus, XXIV, 4. This fact concerns the Emperor Julian the Apostate, when fighting with the Persians in a.d. 363, just before his death.
- ↑ Ibid., XXV, 1. This took place at nearly the same time as the preceding. A body of cavalry had failed to make a proper charge.
