Chapter 8.—That the Theatrical
Exhibitions Publishing the Shameful Actions 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 honor. 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.