De Spectaculis c. 5—7.

into that brothel of public modesty, to the school of obscenity, so that nothing may be done less in secret than what is learned in public: and even among the laws, whatever is forbidden by the laws is taught. What is a faithful Christian doing among these things, for whom it is not permitted to even think about vices? Why is he delighted by images of lust, so that, with modesty laid aside, he becomes bolder toward crimes? He learns to perform them while he grows accustomed to seeing them. Those women, however, whom their own misfortune has enslaved to public lust, the place conceals, and they find comfort for their disgrace in hiding places: they blush to be seen, even those who have sold their modesty. But this public monster 10 is carried out with everyone watching, and the obscenity of prostitutes is paraded past: it was sought how adultery might be committed through the eyes. To this disgrace, a befitting disgrace is added: a man broken in all his limbs, and a man softened beyond the gentleness of a woman, whose art it is to express words with his hands. And for the sake of some person, who is neither man nor woman, the whole city is moved so that the legendary lusts of antiquity may be danced out. Such is the love for whatever is forbidden that memory brings back under the eyes even that which time had hidden.

7 It is not enough for lust to use its present evils, unless they make a spectacle of that which even a previous age had abandoned. It is not permitted, I say, for faithful Christians to be present, nor is it permitted at all for those whom Greece sends everywhere, trained in their vain arts to soothe the ears. One man imitates the harsh blasts of a war trumpet; another modulates mournful sounds with his breath inflating the flute; another, with choirs and