C. Cæsar would commonly, for _exercise_ and _pleasure_, put _senators_ and _Roman knights_ to the _torture_; and _whip_ several of them like _slaves_, or put them to _death_ with the most acute _torments_, merely for the satisfaction of his _cruelty_. That Cæsar that “wished the people of Rome had but one neck, that he might cut it off at one blow;”—it was the employment, the study, and the joy of his life. He would not so much as give the expiring leave to groan, but caused their mouths to be stopped with sponges, or for want of them, with rags of their own clothes, that they might not breathe out so much as their last agonies at liberty; or, perhaps, lest the tormented should speak something which the tormentor had no mind to hear. Nay, he was so impatient of delay, that he would frequently rise from supper to have men killed by _torch-light_, as if his life and death had depended upon their dispatch before the next morning; to say nothing how many _fathers_ were put to death in the same night with their _sons_ (which was a kind of mercy in the prevention of their mourning). And was not Sylla’s cruelty prodigious too, which was only stopped for want of enemies? He caused seven thousand _citizens_ of Rome to be slaughtered at once; and some of the senators being startled at their cries that were heard in the _senate-house_, “Let us mind our business,” says Sylla; “this is nothing but a few mutineers that I have ordered to be sent out of the way.” A _glorious spectacle_! says Hannibal, when he saw the trenches flowing with human blood; and if the rivers had run blood too, he would have liked it so much the better.