On the Shows 9

Now about the art by which the circus games are exhibited. Horsemanship was formerly a simple thing: one rode on horseback, and it was certainly a matter of common use; it was not guilty. But when it was pressed into the games, it passed from being a gift of God to the service of demons. So this kind is assigned to Castor and Pollux, to whom, Stesichorus tells us, horses were allotted by Mercury. Neptune too is equestrian, whom the Greeks call Hippios. They have consecrated the six-horse team to Jupiter, the four-horse to the Sun, the two-horse to the Moon. And again: “Erichthonius first dared to yoke chariots and four horses, and to stand victorious on the swift wheels.” Erichthonius, son of Minerva and Vulcan, born indeed of lust spilled on the earth, is a demonic portent, nay the devil himself, not a snake. If Trochilus of Argos was the inventor of the chariot, he dedicated that work of his first to Juno. If at Rome Romulus first displayed the four-horse chariot, I think he too has been enrolled among the idols, if he is the same as Quirinus. Since the four-horse chariots were brought forward by such authors, it is fitting that they also clothed the charioteers in the colors of idolatry. For at first there were only two, white and red. White was dedicated to winter for the gleaming snows, red to summer for the redness of the sun. But afterwards, as both pleasure and superstition advanced, some consecrated the red to Mars, others the white to the Zephyrs, the green to Mother Earth or to spring, and the blue to Heaven and Sea or to autumn. But since every kind of idolatry is condemned by God, surely that kind too is condemned which is profaned by the elements of the world.