the Romans._
Oh infatuated men, what is this blindness, or rather madness, which
possesses you? How is it that while, as we hear, even the eastern
nations are bewailing your ruin, and while powerful states in the
most remote parts of the earth are mourning your fall as a public
calamity, ye yourselves should be crowding to the theatres, should
be pouring into them and filling them; and, in short, be playing a
madder part now than ever before? This was the foul plague-spot,
this the wreck of virtue and honour that Scipio sought to preserve
you from when he prohibited the construction of theatres; this was
his reason for desiring that you might still have an enemy to fear,
seeing as he did how easily prosperity would corrupt and destroy you.
He did not consider that republic flourishing whose walls stand, but
whose morals are in ruins. But the seductions of evil-minded devils
had more influence with you than the precautions of prudent men.
Hence the injuries you do, you will not permit to be imputed to you;
but the injuries you suffer, you impute to Christianity. Depraved by
good fortune, and not chastened by adversity, what you desire in the
restoration of a peaceful and secure state, is not the tranquillity
of the commonwealth, but the impunity of your own vicious luxury.
Scipio wished you to be hard pressed by an enemy, that you might not
abandon yourselves to luxurious manners; but so abandoned are you,
that not even when crushed by the enemy is your luxury repressed.
You have missed the profit of your calamity; you have been made most
wretched, and have remained most profligate.