[69] Augustine, Conf. iii. 2, 3 (P. L. xxxii. 683). The whim took him once ‘theatrici carminis certamen inire.’
[70] Aug. de Civ. Dei, ii. 8 (P. L. xli. 53) ‘et haec sunt scenicorum tolerabiliora ludorum, comoediae scilicet et tragoediae; hoc est, tabulae poetarum agendae in spectaculis, multa rerum turpitudine sed nulla saltem sicut alia multa verborum obscoenitate compositae; quas etiam inter studia quae honesta ac liberalia vocantur pueri legere et discere coguntur a senibus.’
[71] Jerome, Ep. 21 (alii 146) ad Damasum, written 383 (P. L. xxii. 386) ‘at nunc etiam sacerdotes Dei, omissis evangeliis et prophetis, videmus comoedias legere, amatoria bucolicorum versuum verba canere, tenere Vergilium, et id quod in pueris necessitatis est, crimen in se facere voluptatis’ (C. I. Can. i. 37. 2).
[72] Orosius, Hist. adv. Paganos (417), iv. 21. 5 ‘theatra incusanda, non tempora.’ On the character of the treatise of Orosius cf. Dill, 312; Gibbon, iii. 490. Mr. Dill shows in the third book of his admirable work that bad government and bad finance had much more to do with the breakdown of the Empire than the bad morals of the stage.
[73] Dill, 58, 137; Hodgkin, i. 930. Salvian was a priest of Marseilles, and wrote between 439 and 451.
[74] Salvian, vi. 31 ‘quae est enim in baptismo salutari Christianorum prima confessio? quae scilicet nisi ut renuntiare se diabolo ac pompis eius et spectaculis atque operibus protestentur?’ The natural interpretation of this is that the word ‘spectaculis’ actually occurred in the formula abrenuntiationis. Was this so? It was not when Tertullian wrote (†200). He gives the formula as ‘renunciare diabolo et pompae et angelis eius,’ and goes on to argue that visiting ‘spectacula’ amounts to ‘idolatria,’ or worship of the ‘diabolus’ (de Spectaculis, c. 4). Nor is the word used in any of the numerous versions of the formula given by Schaff, iii. 248; Duchesne, 293; Martene, i. 44; Martin von Bracara, de Caeremoniis (ed. Caspari), c. 15.
[75] Salvian, vi. 69, 87.
[76] Augustine, de Cons. Evang. i. 33 (P. L. xxxiv. 1068) ‘per omnes pene civitates cadunt theatra ... cadunt et fora vel moenia, in quibus demonia colebantur. Unde enim cadunt, nisi inopia rerum, quarum lascivo et sacrilego usu constructa sunt.’
[77] This point was made also by Chrysostom in the Easter-day sermon, already cited on p. 15.
[78] Salvian, vi. 39, 42, 49.