De Virtutibus

And it appears to me that some lawgivers, having started from this point, have also promulgated the law about condemned women, which commands that pregnant women, if they have committed any offence worthy of death, shall nevertheless not be executed until they have brought forth, in order that the creature in their womb may not be slain with them when they are put to death.

But these men have established these enactments with reference to human beings, but this lawgiver of ours, going beyond them all, extends his humanity even to brute beasts, in order that ..... . we being accustomed to practise all the things ordained in his laws, may display an excessive degree of humanity, abstaining from pursuing any one, or even from annoying them in retaliation for any annoyance which we have received at their hands, and that we may not store up in secret our own good things, so as to keep them to ourselves, but may bring them into the middle, and offer them freely to all men everywhere, as if they were our kinsmen and our natural brothers.

Moreover, let wicked sycophants calumniate the whole nation as one given to inhumanity, and our laws as enjoining unsociable and inhuman observances, while the laws do thus openly show compassion on even the herds of cattle, and while