Lactantius — Divine Institutes 5.11

To those humans, then, who match the manners of their gods: because justice is heavy and bitter, they violently exercise against the just that same impiety which they use in other matters, and not without cause are they named beasts by the prophets. Excellently therefore Marcus Tullius: for if there is no one, he says, who would not rather die than be turned into some shape of a beast, though he would have a human mind, how much more wretched is it to be with a beast-like mind in a human shape? To me it seems so much more, as the mind is more excellent than the body. They therefore scorn the bodies of beasts, than which they themselves are fiercer, and please themselves so much that they were born humans, of whom they bear nothing except the outlines and the outer shape. For what Caucasus, what India, what Hyrcania ever fed beasts so savage, so bloodthirsty? Since the rage of all wild animals rages only to the filling of the belly and, when hunger is settled, at once grows quiet. That, that is the true beast, at whose one command black blood is poured everywhere: cruel mourning everywhere, everywhere fear and the fullest image of death. No one can describe for its desert the savagery of this so great beast, which though it lies in one place yet rages through the whole world with iron teeth and not only scatters the limbs of humans but also crushes the bones themselves and rages against the ashes, lest any place of burial remain: as if those who confess God aimed at this, that people should come to their tombs, and not that they themselves should come to God. What savagery, what rage, what madness is that, to have denied light to the living and earth to the dead?

I say therefore that nothing is more wretched than those humans whom necessity either found or made ministers of another's fury, attendants of an impious command. For that was not an honor or advancement of rank, but a human's condemnation to butchery, and God's to everlasting punishment. But what each did through the whole world is impossible to narrate. For what number of volumes will hold such endless, such varied kinds of cruelty? For when power was received each raged according to his own manners. Some from too much fear dared more than they were ordered; others from their own hatred against the just; some from natural fierceness of mind; some, that they might please and by this office pave a way for themselves to higher things; some stood headlong for killing, as one in Phrygia who burned a whole people together with the meeting-place itself. But this one, the fiercer he is, the milder he is found: that worst kind is the one which a false appearance of mildness flatters; that executioner is heavier, fiercer, who has decided to kill no one. And so it cannot be said what great and how heavy kinds of torments judges of this sort invented, that they might reach the effect of their purpose. They do these things not only so that they can boast that they killed none of the innocent — for I myself have heard some boasting that their administration in this part was bloodless — but also for envy, lest either they themselves be conquered or those obtain the glory of their virtue. And so in inventing kinds of punishments they think of nothing else than victory: for they know that that is a contest and a fight. I myself saw in Bithynia a governor wonderfully lifted with joy as if he had subdued some nation of barbarians, because one who had resisted with great virtue for two years at last seemed to yield. They therefore strive to conquer and send sought-out pains into bodies and avoid nothing else than that the tortured not die: as if death alone made people blessed and torments did not, the heavier they are, produce the greater glory of virtue. But they by stubborn folly order care to be applied carefully to the tortured, that the limbs may be renewed for other tortures and new blood be restored for punishment. What so pious, so kind, so humane can be done? They would not have cared so anxiously for those they loved.

This is the teaching of the gods; to these works they train their worshipers; these rites they desire. Moreover the most criminal murderers have founded impious laws against the pious: for both sacrilegious constitutions and unjust disputations of jurists are read. Domitius in the seventh book On the Duty of the Proconsul collected the wicked rescripts of princes, that he might teach with what punishments those ought to be afflicted who confess themselves worshipers of God.