(no subject)

[timelets]

He [king Philip] let anger get the better of him and acted just as impiously as the Aetolians—trying to cure one evil with another—and it never crossed his mind that this was wrong.
...
To take and destroy an enemy’s forts, docks, cities, men, ships, crops, and so on and so forth—in other words, to weaken the enemy while strengthening one’s own cause and moving closer to one’s objective—is forced upon one by the rules and rights of war. But even in wartime gratuitous damage to temples and statues and other works of art, when there is not the slightest chance that this will either help one’s own cause or weaken the enemy, is a sure sign of a fanatic in a rage.

--- Polybius, The Histories.