Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] To go through the venues as I proposed, the Circus is dedicated first and foremost to the Sun. His shrine stands in the middle of the arena, and his image flashes out from the gable of the shrine — they did not think it fitting to consecrate under a roof one whom they keep out in the open. [2] They claim the first show was put on by Circe for her father the Sun, as they would have it, and from her they argue the name "circus." Clearly this witch's business with him — she being priestess of demons and angels, that is — was under this name. So how many acts of idolatry do you recognize in the very layout of that place? [3] Every single ornament of the circus is a separate temple. They ascribe the eggs to the honor of the Castors, believing without a blush that they were hatched from an egg by a Jupiter turned swan. Dolphins spout for Neptune; columns support the Seiae, named from sowing, the Messiae, from the harvest, the Tutulinae, from the guarding of the crops; [4] before these stand three altars serving a threefold godhead, the Great, the Mighty, and the Strong — whom they take to be the same as the Samothracian gods. [5] The sheer bulk of the obelisk, as Hermateles maintains, is prostituted to the Sun; its inscription — and hence its origin — tells us it is Egyptian superstition. The council of demons would have felt the chill without their Great Mother, and so she presides there over the water-channel. [6] Consus, as we said, lies hidden underground at the turning-posts, along with Murcia. An idol was made of her too: their claim is that Murcia stands for a goddess of lust, to whom they vowed a shrine in that part of the Circus. [7] Take note, Christian, how many unclean names have taken possession of the Circus. That territory is foreign to you — so many spirits of the devil have occupied it.
As for the venues, this is the place to deal, in anticipation, with a question some will ask. [8] "What," you say, "if I go into the circus at some other time — for some other reason — am I risking contamination?" There is no blanket rule about places. It is not only these gathering-places for spectacles, but even the temples themselves, that a servant of God may enter without any breach of discipline, if urged by some plain and unrelated necessity, provided it has nothing to do with the proper business or function of the place. [9] For that matter, the streets, the forum, the baths, the stables, and even our own houses are not entirely free of idols either — the whole world is filled with Satan and his angels. [10] Yet it is not because we are in the world that we fall away from God, but only if we lay hold of some crime the world offers. So if I enter the Capitol or the Serapeum to sacrifice or to worship, I fall away from God, just as much as a spectator does at the circus or the theater. Places do not defile us in themselves; it is what is done in those places that defiles — and by that very thing, we have argued, the places themselves are defiled: we are contaminated by what is already contaminated. [11] The reason we have gone through what these places are dedicated to is precisely to show that they belong to whatever is done in them — that the places themselves are dedicated to whatever is done there.