people were, the more quietly they would submit to slavery; and the best
way to keep them frivolous and sensual, the Romans knew full well; so
well, that after the Empire became Christian, and many heathen matters
were done away with, they did not find it safe to do away with the public
spectacles. The temples of the Gods might go: but not the pantomimes.

In one respect, indeed, these government spectacles became worse, not
better, under Christianity. They were less cruel, no doubt: but also
they were less beautiful. The old custom of exhibiting representations
of the old Greek myths, which had something of grace and poetry about
them, and would carry back the spectators' thoughts to the nobler and
purer heroic ages, disappeared before Christianity; but the old vice did
not. That was left; and no longer ennobled by the old heroic myths round
which it had clustered itself, was simply of the silliest and most vulgar
kind. We know in detail the abominations, as shameless and ridiculous,
which went on a century after Salvian, in the theatres of Constantinople,
under the eyes of the most Christian Emperor Justinian, and which won for
that most infamous woman, Theodora, a share in his imperial crown, and
the right to dictate doctrine to the Christian Bishops of the East, and
to condemn the soul of Origen to everlasting damnation, for having
exprest hopes of the final pardon of sinners. We can well believe,
therefore, Salvian's complaints of the wickedness of those pantomimes of
which he says, that 'honeste non possunt vel accusari;' he cannot even
accuse them without saying what he is ashamed to say; I believe also his
assertion, that they would not let people be modest, even if they wished;
that they inflamed the passions, and debauched the imaginations of young
and old, man and woman, and--but I am not here to argue that sin is sin,
or that the population of London would be the worse if the most shameless
persons among them were put by the Government in possession of Drury Lane
and Covent Garden; and that, and nothing less than that, did the Roman
pantomimes mean, from the days of Juvenal till those of the most holy and
orthodox Empress Theodora.

'Who, knowing the judgment of God, that they who do such things are
worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do
them.'

Now in contrast to all these abominations, old Salvian sets, boldly and
honestly, the superior morality of the barbarians.