On the Shows 8

To follow my plan in the matter of places too: the circus is chiefly consecrated to the Sun. His temple stands in the middle of the course, and his image shines from the top of the temple, because they did not think it fitting to consecrate under a roof one whom they have in the open. Those who maintain that the first show was given by Circe to the Sun, her father, as they would have it, argue that the name circus comes from her. Plainly the sorceress did this business under this name for those whose priestess she was, namely demons and angels. How many idolatries, then, do you recognize in the furnishing of that place? Each ornament of the circus is a temple. The eggs they ascribe to the honor of the Castors, not blushing to believe them hatched from the egg of Jupiter the swan. The dolphins spout for Neptune; the columns bear Seia, named from sowing, Messia, from harvest, and Tutulina, from the protection of the crops; in front of them three altars serve three gods, the Great, the Mighty, and the Strong; they think these are the Samothracian gods. The huge obelisk, as Hermateles affirms, is prostituted to the Sun; its inscription, like its origin, is Egyptian superstition. The council of demons would have been cold without their Great Mother; so she presides there over the channel. Consus, as we said, lies hidden underground at the turning-posts. The Murciae too an idol has claimed: for they hold Murcia to be a goddess of love, to whom they vowed a temple in that part. Take note, Christian, how many unclean names have taken possession of the circus. That religion is foreign to you which so many spirits of the devil have seized. As to places, this is the point at which to forestall a question some people raise. “What,” you say, “if I go to the circus at another time: shall I be in danger of defilement?” There is no rule about places as such. For not only these meeting places of the shows, but even the temples themselves the servant of God may enter without danger to his discipline, if some plain reason compels him, one that has nothing to do with the proper business or function of that place. Besides, the streets, the forum, the baths, the inns, and our very houses are not altogether without idols: Satan and his angels have filled the whole world. Yet it is not because we are in the world that we fall away from God, but if we touch any of the world's crimes. So if I enter the Capitol or the Serapeum as a sacrificer or worshipper, I shall fall away from God, just as I would by entering the circus or the theatre as a spectator. Places do not defile us of themselves, but what is done in the places, by which, as we have argued, even the places themselves are defiled: we are defiled by what is defiled. We mention to whom such places are dedicated precisely in order to show that what is done in them belongs to those to whom the places themselves are dedicated.