The second part of his first law, predicting severity of punishments under absolutist governments, is necessary to account for the interruptions to this progressive cessation of aggravated death, torture and mutilation. He contrasts imperial Rome with the Roman republic, absolutist monarchies in pre-Enlightenment Europe with post-Enlightenment constitutional government, and draws attention to the barbarity of punishments in pre-Revolutionary France the France of the absolutist ancient regime. Absolute rulers, he explains, take on quasi-religious status, through such doctrines as divine right. Even where this kind of claim is absent, they tend to elimi-nate, or take over functions of, other sources of power and authority such as the Church. Punishments in absolutist societies will, therefore, fumble those in simple, traditional societies, because in absolutist societies crime also comes to seem sacrilegious as well as anti-social.