The struggle between the Macedonians and Greeks, and, before that, the disputes of the Greek commonwealths among themselves, for an unprofitable superiority, form one of the bloodiest scenes in history.  One is astonished how such a small spot could furnish men sufficient to sacrifice to the pitiful ambition of possessing five or six thousand more acres, or two or three more villages; yet to see the acrimony and bitterness with which this was disputed between the Athenians and Lacedemonians; what armies cut off; what fleets sunk and burnt; what a number of cities sacked, and their inhabitants slaughtered and captived; one would be induced to believe the decision of the fate of mankind, at least, depended upon it!  But those disputes ended as all such ever have done, and ever will do; in a real weakness of all parties; a momentary shadow, and dream of power in some one; and the subjection of all to the yoke of a stranger, who knows how to profit 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.