The Instructor 3.11.77

For when the sight is greedy, the appetites grow warm, and the eyes, accustomed to look more boldly at their neighbors because they have leisure allowed them, inflame the erotic desires. Let the shows be forbidden, then, and the entertainments full of buffoonery and much idle babble. For what shameful deed is not displayed in the theaters? What shameless word do the clowns not bring out? Those who have enjoyed the vice in them carry home its vivid images, while those who are unmoved and unaffected by these things would never fall into lazy pleasures. For even if they say that the shows are taken up as a kind of play, for amusement, I would say that cities in which even play is pursued in earnest are not sensible. For contests for glory that kill so many without pity are no longer play; nor are vain zeal and senseless ambition, and besides them the futile squandering of wealth, nor indeed the riots that arise over them, still play.