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, when it is nakedly considered, and those matters which are apt to divert our attention from it, the characters, actions, and designs of the persons concerned, are not taken into the account.  These wars, I mean those called the Punic wars, could not have stood the human race in less than three millions of the species.  And yet this forms but a part only, and a very small part, of the havoc caused by the Roman ambition.  The war with Mithridates was very little less bloody; that prince cut off at one stroke 150,000 Romans by a massacre.  In that war Sylla destroyed 300,000 men at Cheronea.  He defeated Mithridates’ army under Dorilaus, and slew 300,000.  This great and unfortunate prince lost another 300,000 before Cyzicum.  In the course of the war he had innumerable other losses; and having many intervals of success, he revenged them severely.  He was at last totally overthrown; and he crushed to pieces the king of Armenia, his ally, by the greatness of his ruin.  All who had connections with him shared the same fate.  The merciless genius of Sylla had its full scope; and the streets of Athens were not the only ones which ran with blood.  At this period, the sword, glutted with foreign slaughter, turned its edge upon the bowels of the Roman republic itself; and presented a scene of cruelties and treasons enough almost to obliterate the memory of all the external devastations.  I intended, my lord, to have proceeded in a sort of method in estimating the numbers of mankind cut off in these wars which we have on record.  But I am obliged to alter my design.  Such a tragical uniformity of havoc and murder would disgust your lordship as much as it would me; and I confess I already feel my eyes ache by keeping them so long intent on so bloody a prospect.  I shall observe little on the Servile, the Social, the Gallic, and Spanish wars; nor upon those with Jugurtha, nor Antiochus, nor many others equally important, and carried on with equal fury.  The butcheries of Julius Caesar alone are calculated by somebody else; the numbers he has been the means of destroying have been reckoned at 1,200,000.  But to give your lordship an idea that may serve as a standard, by which to measure, in some degree, the others; you will turn your eyes on Judea; a very inconsiderable spot of the earth in itself, though ennobled by the singular events which had their rise in that country.