Chapter 16
TERTULLIAN
without his mind being roused and his soul being stirred by some unspoken agitation. (6) No one ever approaches a pleasure such as this without passion; no one experiences this passion without its damaging effects. These very effects are incitements to passion. On the other hand, if the passion ceases, there is no pleasure, and he who goes where he gains nothing is convicted of foolishness. (7) But I think that foolishness also is foreign to us. Is it, further, not true that a man really condemns himself when he has taken his place among those whose company he does not want and whom, at any rate, he confesses to detest? (8) It is not enough to refrain from such acts, unless we also shun those who commit them.
'If thou didst see a thief,' says holy Scripture, 'thou didst run with him.'3 Would that we did not live in the world with them! Still, we are separated from them in the things of the world. For the world is God's, but the things of the world are the Devil's.
Chapter 16 (1) Since, then, frenzy is forbidden us, we are debarred from every type of spectacle, including the circus, where frenzy rules supreme. Look at the populace, frenzied even as it comes to the show, already in violent commotion, blind, wildly excited over its wagers.1 (2) The praetor is too slow for them; all the time their eyes are rolling as though in rhythm
3 Ps. 49.18.
1 The days preceding the races were filled with eager suspense. People discussed passionately the chances of the different 'factions' and made bets. They even consulted soothsayers and employed all kinds of magic to injure or slacken the speed of the horses and charioteers competing with their favorites. ^ 8
SPECTACLES
with the lots he shakes up in his urn.2 Then they await the signal with bated breath; one outcry voices the common madness. (3) Recognize the madness from their foolish behavior. 'He has thrown it!' they shout; everyone tells every body else what all of them have seen just that moment. This I take as a proof of their blindness: they do not see what has been thrown—a signal cloth, they think—but it is the symbol of the Devil hurled headlong from on high.3 (4) Accordingly, from such beginnings the affair progresses to outbursts of fury and passion and discord and to everything forbidden to the priests of peace.4 Next come curses, insults without any justified reason for the hatred, and rounds of applause without the reward of affection. (5) What are the partakers in all this
-—no longer their own masters—likely to achieve for them selves? At best, the loss of their self-control. They are saddened by another's bad luck; they rejoice in another's success.
What they hope for and what they dread has nothing to do with themselves, and so their affection is to no purpose and 2 The barriers or starting places in the race course, vaulted and ropedin gates by the entrance, were assigned by lot.
3 The presiding magistrate dropped a white handkerchief from his balcony as the signal for the start of the race. Alluding to Luke 10.18,
Tertullian sees in the falling handkerchief a symbol of the fall of Lucifer.
4 The characterization of the Christians as 'priests of peace' occurs only here in Tertullian: more frequently he calls them 'the sons of peace'
(see, for instance, De corona 11.2), an idea taken from the New Testament, where Christ's teachingis described as 'the gospel of peace' (cf., for instance, Eph. 6.15) . In a wider sense, all Christians are called 'priests of God and of Christ' in the Apocalypse (6.20) .
St. Augustine (City of God 20.10) comments on this passage as follows: 'Here he [St. John] is speaking not just of bishops and of presbyters (who are now priests in the Church) , but of all Christians.
For, just as we call all of them Christs by reason of their mystical chrism, we call them all priests insomuch as they are members of the One Priest.'