of the gods, propitiated rather than offended them._
But, some one will interpose, these are the fables of poets, not
the deliverances of the gods themselves. Well, I have no mind to
arbitrate between the lewdness of theatrical entertainments and of
mystic rites; only this I say, and history bears me out in making the
assertion, that those same entertainments, in which the fictions of
poets are the main attraction, were not introduced in the festivals
of the gods by the ignorant devotion of the Romans, but that the gods
themselves gave the most urgent commands to this effect, and indeed
extorted from the Romans these solemnities and celebrations in their
honour. I touched on this in the preceding book, and mentioned that
dramatic entertainments were first inaugurated at Rome on occasion
of a pestilence, and by authority of the pontiff. And what man is
there who is not more likely to adopt, for the regulation of his own
life, the examples that are represented in plays which have a divine
sanction, rather than the precepts written and promulgated with no
more than human authority? If the poets gave a false representation
of Jove in describing him as adulterous, then it were to be expected
that the chaste gods should in anger avenge so wicked a fiction, in
place of encouraging the games which circulated it. Of these plays,
the most inoffensive are comedies and tragedies, that is to say, the
dramas which poets write for the stage, and which, though they often
handle impure subjects, yet do so without the filthiness of language
which characterizes many other performances; and it is these dramas
which boys are obliged by their seniors to read and learn as a part
of what is called a liberal and gentlemanly education.[96]