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.
This spot happened, it matters not here by what means, to become at several times extremely populous, and to supply men for slaughters scarcely credible, if other well-known and well-attested ones had not given them a color.

The first settling of the Jews here was attended by an almost entire extirpation of all the former inhabitants.

Their own civil wars, and those with their petty neighbors, consumed vast multitudes almost every year for several centuries; and the irruptions of the kings of Babylon and Assyria made immense ravages.