An interesting book review in today’s Globe:
Mr. Brog, in his In Defense of Faith: The Judeo-Christian Idea and the Struggle for Humanity, concedes that Christians have committed horrendous crimes in the name of theology but sets out to prove that Judeo-Christian beliefs gave the Western and, ultimately, entire world its most important spiritual value: an obligatory reverence for life.
Mr. Brog advances his argument in a series of historical vignettes. He introduces Tacitus, the Roman senator and historian, who (in his major work, Histories) describes the Jews as wicked, stubborn and lascivious and lists the Jewish beliefs he finds most revolting – especially, he says, the belief “that it is a deadly sin to kill an unwanted child.” The Romans were “proud practitioners of infanticide.” As were the Greeks. As were the other nations of the ancient world.
The value we place on life is a values judgment, ever evolving. What was established (life is sacred) can easily be torn down, and one could argue, has been substantially in recent years. Over to you, Tacitus!
by 
“The value we place on life is a values judgment, ever evolving.”
I don’t know if I like this sentence. Any system of values that is not founded upon the absolute value of the very subject of value, the “valuer” – i.e. the human person – cannot really be called “value” properly speaking. In other words, those who do not value human life absolutely are not just confused about their values, but cannot really have any values (i.e. common values as Scheler or Sissela Bok might define them) but rather just universalized expressions of a base selfishness, even if it’s mitigated by some inconsistent “concern” or “compassion” for the other in some cases.
Really, Rome, that is the example of the high moral standard that humanity has set for itself. The people who thought it was ripping good fun to make their slaves fight to the death for the amusement of social elites.