[Footnote 107: In strict philosophy, a limitation of the
rights of war seems to imply nonsense and contradiction.
Grotius himself is lost in an idle distinction between the
jus naturae and the jus gentium, between poison and
infection. He balances in one scale the passages of Homer
(Odyss. A 259, &c.) and Florus, (l. ii. c. 20, No. 7, ult.;)
and in the other, the examples of Solon (Pausanias, l. x. c.
37) and Belisarius. See his great work De Jure Belli et
Pacis, (l. iii. c. 4, s. 15, 16, 17, and in Barbeyrac's
version, tom. ii. p. 257, &c.) Yet I can understand the
benefit and validity of an agreement, tacit or express,
mutually to abstain from certain modes of hostility. See the
Amphictyonic oath in Aeschines, de falsa Legatione.]