On the Shows 22

What wonder? These are the inconsistencies of men who confuse and exchange the standing of good and evil through fickleness of feeling and variety of judgment. For the very sponsors and managers of the shows take those most beloved charioteers, actors, athletes, and gladiators, to whom men surrender their souls and women even their bodies, for whose sake they commit what they censure, and for the very art for which they make much of them they degrade and demean them; indeed they openly condemn them with disgrace and loss of civil rights, keeping them from the senate house, the rostra, the senate, the equestrian order, and all other offices, as well as from certain distinctions. What perversity! They love those whom they penalize; they cheapen those whom they approve; they magnify the art and brand the artist. What kind of judgment is it that a man should be disgraced for the very things by which he wins favor? Nay, what a confession of an evil thing! Its performers, though they are the most welcome of all, are not free of the mark of infamy.