and that--I quote Salvian still--when the population was half
destroyed by fire and sword, the poor dying of famine, corpses of men
and women lying about the streets breeding pestilence, while the dogs
devoured them, the few nobles who were left comforted themselves by
sending to the Emperor to beg for Circensian games.

Those Circensian games, and indeed all the public spectacles, are
fresh proofs of what I said just now; that if a bad people earn bad
government, still a bad government makes a bad people.

They were the most extraordinary instance which the world ever saw,
of a government setting to work at a vast expense to debauch its
subjects. Whether the Roman rulers set that purpose consciously
before them, one dare not affirm. Their notion probably was (for
they were as worldly wise as they were unprincipled) that the more
frivolous and sensual the people were, the more quietly they would
submit to slavery; and the best way to keep them frivolous and
sensual, the Romans knew full well; so well, that after the Empire
became Christian, and many heathen matters were done away with, they
did not find it safe to do away with the public spectacles. The
temples of the Gods might go: but not the pantomimes.

In one respect, indeed, these government spectacles became worse, not
better, under Christianity. They were less cruel, no doubt: but
also they were less beautiful. The old custom of exhibiting
representations of the old Greek myths, which had something of grace
and poetry about them, and would carry back the spectators' thoughts
to the nobler and purer heroic ages, disappeared before Christianity;
but the old vice did not. That was left; and no longer ennobled by
the old heroic myths round which it had clustered itself, was simply