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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.
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