Torture: 1817

"Magistrates are not, by law, permitted to exercise cruelties at their own discretion.

But of late, district magistrates, actuated by a desire to be rewarded for their activity, have felt an ardent enthusiasm to inflict torture. And though it has been repeatedly prohibited by Imperial Edicts, which they profess openly to conform to; yet they really and secretly violate them.

Whenever they apprehend persons of suspicious appearances, or those charged with great crimes, such as murder or robbery, the magistrates begin by endeavouring to seduce the prisoners to confess, and by forcing them to do so...."

--From Analectic Magazine--

What a barbaric state of affairs. Oh, that's right, we can't look down our nose at people who do that anymore.

Desperate Housewives: 398

In a word, while many matrons, who had milder husbands, yet bore even in their faces marks of shame, would in familiar talk blame their husbands' lives, she would blame their tongues, giving them, as in jest, earnest advice: "That from the time they heard the marriage writings read to them, they should account them as indentures, whereby they were made servants; and so, remembering their condition, ought not to set themselves up against their lords." And when they, knowing what a choleric husband she endured, marvelled that it had never been heard, nor by any token perceived, that Patricius had beaten his wife, or that there had been any domestic difference between them, even for one day, and confidentially asking the reason, she taught them her practice above mentioned. Those wives who observed it found the good, and returned thanks; those who observed it not, found no relief, and suffered.

--From The Confessions of Saint Augustine--

 That was some interesting marital advice.

Sex: 398

I took pleasure, not only in the pleasure of the deed, but in the praise. What is worthy of dispraise but vice? But I made myself worse than I was, that I might not be dispraised; and when in any thing I had not sinned as the abandoned ones, I would say that I had done what I had not done, that I might not seem contemptible in proportion as I was innocent; or of less account, the more chaste.

--From The Confessions of Saint Augustine--

Even saints lie about it! This is the kind of stuff they need to teach in sex-ed classes.

This has me thinking though: people often do bad things because they worry about what other people might think of them.

Murder: 398

In quest of the fame of eloquence, a man standing before a human judge, surrounded by a human throng, declaiming against his enemy with fiercest hatred, will take heed most watchfully, lest, by an error of the tongue, he murder the word "human being"; but takes no heed, lest, through the fury of his spirit, he murder the real human being.

--From The Confessions of Saint Augustine--

 Don't mess with grammar!