AMONG all the nations of antiquity highway robbery, we find, was reckoned as a capital offence. n the penal code of the Romans its punishment was crucifixion, at once the cruelest and the most shameful of deaths: "the reason of which," according to St. Gregory of Nyssa, was this - "that the robbers thus banded together did not shrink from murder as a means to their end. They even held themselves in readiness to do it (as was proved) by their choice of arms, supplies, and places of resort. Hence it was that they were subjected to the penalty thereof." The banditti of those times behaved...