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Oh infatuated men, what is this blindness, or rather madness, which
possesses you? How is it that while, as we hear, even the eastern
nations are bewailing your ruin, and while powerful states in the most
remote parts of the earth are mourning your fall as a public calamity,
ye yourselves should be crowding to the theatres, should be pouring
into them and filling them; and, in short, be playing a madder part
now than ever before? This was the foul plague-spot, this the wreck
of virtue and honor that Scipio sought to preserve you from when he
prohibited the construction of theatres; this was his reason for
desiring that you might still have an enemy to fear, seeing as he did
how easily prosperity would corrupt and destroy you. He did not
consider that republic flourishing whose walls stand, but whose morals
are in ruins. But the seductions of evil-minded devils had more
influence with you than the precautions of prudent men. Hence the
injuries you do, you will not permit to be imputed to you: but the
injuries you suffer, you impute to Christianity. Deprayed by good
fortune, and not chastened by adversity, what you desire in the
restoration of a peaceful and secure state, is not the tranquillity of
the commonwealth, but the impunity of your own vicious luxury. Scipio
wished you to be hard pressed by an enemy, that you might not abandon
yourselves to luxurious manners; but so abandoned are you, that not
even when crushed by the enemy is your luxury repressed. You have
missed the profit of your calamity; you have been made most wretched,
and have remained most profligate.
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