Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Since, then, rage is forbidden to us, we are removed from every spectacle — even from the circus, where rage properly reigns as president. Watch the crowd arriving already at that spectacle in a rage, already unruly, already blind, already worked up over their bets. [2] The presiding official is not quick enough to suit them; their gaze spins round and round after the tokens tumbling in his urn. Then, anxious, they hang on the starting-signal — a single frenzy voiced as one by the whole crowd. [3] Learn the madness from its emptiness: "He's dropped it!" they say, and pass the word to each other over what everyone has seen at the same instant. Here is my proof of their blindness: they fail to grasp what has truly fallen; a napkin is what they suppose it, when it is in fact the devil's shape, flung down headlong from above. [4] From this, then, they go off into fits and passions and quarrels — everything that is forbidden to priests of peace. From it come curses, abuse without justice to warrant the hatred, and cheering, too, without merit to warrant the love. [5] For what will they gain of their own, these people who act there and are not their own selves? Unless perhaps this one thing, by which they are not their own: they grieve over another man's misfortune, they rejoice over another man's success. Whatever they wish for, whatever they curse, is foreign to them; so among them love idles pointlessly and hatred rages without cause. [6] Or is it, perhaps, permitted to love without cause, though not to hate without cause? God certainly forbids hatred even where there is cause, since he commands that enemies be loved; God likewise does not allow cursing even where there is cause, since he commands that those who curse be blessed. [7] But what is more bitter than the circus, where not even its own leaders or citizens are spared? If any of the things over which the circus goes mad is somewhere fitting for the saints, then it will be permitted even at the circus; but if it is nowhere fitting, then it is not fitting there either.