The relaxation of the old Roman austerity implied in the popularity of the _mimi_ and _histriones_ did not pass uncensured by even the pagan moralists of the Empire. The stage has a share in the denunciations of Tacitus and Juvenal, both of whom lament that princes and patricians should condescend to practise arts once relegated to the _infames_. Martial’s hypocrite rails at the times and the theatres. Three centuries later the soldierly Ammianus Marcellinus finds in the gyrations of the dancing-girls, three thousand of whom were allowed to remain in Rome when it was starving, a blot upon the fame of the state; and Macrobius contrasts the sober evenings of Praetextatus and his friends with revels dependent for their mirth on the song and wanton motions of the _psaltria_ or the jests of _sabulo_ and _planipes_[35]. Policy compelled the emperors to encourage _spectacula_, but even they were not always blind to the ethical questions involved. Tiberius based his expulsion of the _histriones_, at least in part, on moral grounds. Marcus Aurelius, with a philosophic regret that the high lessons of comedy had sunk to mere mimic dexterity, sat publicly in his box and averted his eyes to a state-paper or a book[36]. Julian, weaned by his tutor Mardonius from a boyish love of the stage, issued strict injunctions to the priests of the Sun to avoid a theatre which he despaired of reforming[37]. Christian teachers, unconcerned with the interests of a dynasty, and claiming to represent a higher morality than that either of Marcus Aurelius or of Julian, naturally took even stronger ground. Moreover, they had their special reasons for hostility to the stage. That the actors should mock at the pagan religion, with whose _ludi_ their own performances were intimately connected, made a good dialectical point. But the connexion itself was unpardonable, and still more so the part taken by the mimes during the war of creeds, in parodying and holding up to ridicule the most sacred symbols and mysteries of the church. This feeling is reflected in the legends of St. Genesius, St. Pelagia and other holy folk, who are represented as turning from the scenic profession to embrace Christianity, the conversion in some cases taking place on the very boards of the theatre itself[38]. So far as the direct attack upon the stage is concerned, the key-note of patristic eloquence is struck in the characteristic and uncompromising treatise _De Spectaculis_ of Tertullian. Here theatre, circus, and amphitheatre are joined in a threefold condemnation. Tertullian holds that the Christian has explicitly forsworn _spectacula_, when he renounced the devil and all his works and vanities at baptism. What are these but idolatry, and where is idolatry, if not in the _spectacula_, which not only minister to lust, but take place at the festivals and in the holy places of Venus and Bacchus? The story is told of the demon who entered a woman