Resigned to the government of affection and passion, they were generous and
faithful where they had fixed an attachment; implacable, froward, and
cruel, where they had conceived a dislike: addicted to debauchery, and the
immoderate use of intoxicating liquors, they deliberated on the affairs of
state in the heat of their riot; and in the same dangerous moments,
conceived the designs of military enterprise, or terminated their domestic
dissentions by the dagger or the sword.
In their wars they preferred death to captivity. The victorious armies of
the Romans, in entering a town by assault, or in forcing an encampment,
have found the mother in the act of destroying her children, that they
might not be taken; and the dagger of the parent, red with the blood of his
family, ready to be plunged at last into his own breast. [Footnote: Liv.
lib. xli. 11. Dio Cass.]
In all these particulars, we perceive that vigour of spirit, which renders
disorder itself respectable, and which qualifies men, if fortunate in their
situation, to lay the basis of domestic liberty, as well as to maintain
against foreign enemies their national independence and freedom.
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