The City of God

That those who complain about Christian times wish to abound in shameful prosperities. Chapter XXX

If that Nasica Scipio of yours, once pontiff, were living, whom the entire senate elected under the terror of the Punic war for the receiving of the Phrygian rites, when a good man was sought, whose face you would perhaps not dare to look upon, he himself would restrain you from this impudence. For why do you complain of Christian times when afflicted by adverse events, unless it is because you desire to have your luxury secure, and to flow along with your most depraved morals, removed from all harshness of troubles? Nor do you desire to have peace and to abound in every kind of supplies so that you may use these goods honestly, that is, modestly, soberly, temperately, and piously, but so that an infinite variety of pleasures may be sought after in insane effusions: and that in your prosperous affairs those evils may arise in your morals which are worse than the raging enemies. But that Scipio, your supreme pontiff, that man deemed best by the judgment of the entire senate, fearing this calamity for you, did not want Carthage, then a rival to the Roman empire, to be razed, and he contradicted Cato, who was decreeing that it should be razed, fearing the enemy for weak minds: and seeing that terror was necessary as a suitable tutor for the citizens like wards. Nor did his opinion fail, it was proved by the event itself, that he was telling the truth. For with Carthage destroyed, the great terror of the Roman republic having been removed and extinguished, such great evils arising from prosperous affairs followed immediately, that with concord corrupted and broken, first by savage and bloody seditions, then soon by the connection of evil causes, even by civil wars, such great slaughters were committed, such blood was shed, such immanity burned with the desire for proscriptions and robberies, that those Romans who feared evils from enemies because of a more upright life, having lost that integrity of life, suffered crueler things from their fellow citizens: and that very lust for ruling, which among other vices of the human race was more unrestrained in the entire Roman people, after it won out in a few of the more powerful, it oppressed the others, crushed and exhausted, even with the yoke of servitude.

By what degrees of vices the desire for ruling has increased in the Romans. Chapter XXXI

For when would that rest in the proudest minds, until it reached royal power through continuous honors? Moreover, the ability to continue honors would not exist unless ambition prevailed. But ambition would not prevail at all unless the people were corrupted by avarice and luxury. But the people became avaricious and luxurious through prosperous affairs, which that Nasica very providently judged should be feared, when he did not want the greatest, strongest, and most opulent city of the enemies to be taken away: so that lust might be pressed by fear: lust, once pressed, would not be luxurious, and luxury, once restrained, would not grow greedy. With these vices bolted, virtue, useful to the state, would flourish and grow, and appropriate liberty would remain for that virtue. Hence also it was, and from this most provident love of the fatherland it came, that the same supreme pontiff of yours, elected by the senate of that time, as has often been said, without any discrepancy of votes, restrained the man deemed best from his arrangement and desire of building a theater for the stage: and he persuaded by most grave speech that they should not allow Greek luxury to creep into the manly morals of the fatherland, and to consent to foreign wickedness for the weakening and emasculation of virtue: and he had so much authority that the senatorial modesty, moved by his words, subsequently prohibited even the benches, which the city had begun to set up for an hour for the spectacle of games, from being placed there. With how much zeal would that man have removed the scenic games themselves from the city of Rome, if he dared to resist the authority of those whom he thought to be gods, whom he did not understand to be harmful demons: or if he did understand, he thought they should be appeased rather than despised. For the heavenly doctrine had not yet been declared to the nations, which, cleansing the heart by faith for the attaining of heavenly or super-celestial things, would change human affection by humble piety, and would liberate it from the dominion of proud demons.

Concerning the institution of scenic games. Chapter XXXII

Nevertheless, know you who do not know these things: and you who pretend not to know these things, pay attention, you who murmur against the Liberator against being liberated from such masters: the scenic games, spectacles of shame and license of vanities, were instituted in Rome not by the vices of men, but by the commands