11. Salvian's diatribe against the games has been one of the most quoted portions of his work as Gregoire and Collombet note ( Oeuvres de Salvien, II, 476), it was much used by the French clergy in the 18 th century, especially as a source for Lenten sermons. The Italian translation by S. Carlo Borromeo (Milan, 1579) is actually entitled Libro di Salviano Vescovo di Marsiglia contra, gli spettacoli ed altre vanità del mondo. The subject was one on which the majority of the Fathers wrote with vehemence, and there is naturally a considerable degree of similarity in their attacks. Salvian's chapters on the spectacles are perhaps closest to Tertullian, De spectaculis, and to what Lactantius has to say on the subject in various sections of his Institutiones divinae.
12. This sentence shows that in spite of all attempts to check the custom, men were still being "thrown to the lions" in the middle of the 5th century. Constantine in a.d. 325 decreed (Cod. Just. XI. 44) : "Bloody spectacles in a time of civil peace and domestic quiet do not meet with our favor, wherefore we absolutely prohibit the existence of gladiators." Rittershausen aptly queries whether the spectacle of men torn and devoured by wild beasts was more suited to civil peace and quiet than were gladiatorial combats.
13. See Minucius Felix Octavius 26.
14. Already in the fourth century the chief functions of the consuls at Rome had come to be the giving of their names to the official year, and giving games to the people; this example therefore has an added pertinence in the discussion of the games. See Seneca De ira III. 31, in the importance of the consul ordinarius as compared with the consuls later in the year, who were deprived of that immortality for their names, which until the general adoption of the Christian era was really considerable.
15. See Seneca Ep. VII. 2: "Nothing is so ruinous to good character as to spend time at any spectacle."
16. Romans 1. 32.
17. See Lactantius Inst. div. VI. 20.
18. II Corinthians 8. 9.
19. Philippians 2. 6, 8.
20. Titus 2. 11-14.
21. I Peter 2. 21.
22. Luke 6. 25, 21.
23. Tertullian makes a similar connection between spectacula and pompa diaboli in De spectaculis 4. On his other uses of the phrase, and its generally symbolic meaning at this time, cf. P. de Labriolle's article, "Pompa Diaboli," Bulletin du Cange, II (1926), 170-181. The actual word spectacula was not included in the baptismal vow, but in Salvian's interpretation was inherent in the pomp and works of the devil. So Tertullian, in the passage cited above, says: "If then the whole apparatus of the spectacles is proven to consist of idolatry, there is no doubt that our vow of renunciation at the font refers also to the spectacles, which are by their idolatry in the service of the devil and his pomp and angels."
24. See Isidore, Etymologiae XVIII. 59: "These spectacles of cruelty and vanity were instituted not only by the vices of men but by the orders of demons also. Therefore a Christian should have nothing to do with the insanity of the circus, with the indecency of the theater, with the cruelty of the amphitheater, with the atrocities of the arena, with the voluptuousness of the games. For he who prefers such sights denies God, being made a traitor to the Christian faith, who seeks again what he once renounced at the font; that is, the devil, his pomps and works."
25. That is, baptism.
26. Another instance of popular disregard for imperial edicts. Cod. Theod. II. 8. 20, in a.d. 392, forbade circuses on Sunday except when the emperor's birthday fell on that day. Another decree, ibid. II. 8. 23, of a.d. 399, forbade theaters and races and all sorts of public shows, with the same exception. In a.d. 409 (ibid. II. 8. 25), the prohibition hold even for the emperor's birthday and the anniversaries of his rule. A few years after Salvian's book was published, the emperors Leo and Anthemius in the East (Cod. Just. III. 12. 9, a.d. 469) inflicted heavy penalties for presence at the spectacles on Sunday, and on any officials who should authorize such performances "on the pretext of public business."
27. Sources? Compare Isaiah 16.4 and 10.
28. Haemmerle, op. cit., I. 27-28, puts the destruction of Mayence in A.D. 405-406 (see Jerome, Ep. 123; Migne, PL, XXII, col. 1057), and that of Cologne between 438 and 440, as it is here connected with the fourth sack of Treves. Salvian, Ep. I, agrees with this in his account of the effect on his relatives of the recent sack of the city.
29. The dates of the four destructions of Treves here mentioned have been much discussed with widely differing conclusions. The 12th century Gesta Treverorum described four captures of the city, but, ranging as they do from that of the "Greeks" under the Arian Constans in a.D. 380 to that of the Franks in 463, they do not suit the conditions required by Salvian's text. The recent tendency has been to ascribe all four captures of the city to the Franks, and to set them fairly close together, emphasizing the phrase ter continuatis vicibus in VI. 15 infra. Rudolph and Kenterich ( Quellen zur Rechts- und Wirtschaftsgebiete der rheinischen Stadte: kurtrierische Stadte: I. Trier, Bonn 1915, 5-6) incline to date the first capture in A.D. 411-412, the second and third in the period from 412 to 416, and the fourth in 427-428, dates that connect well with Salvian's account and with local conditions. The earlier and later dates assigned by some commentators, while suitable as far as the history of Treves is concerned, are less consistent with the conditions required by Salvian's account. For summaries of various opinions on this point, see Haemmerle, Studia Salviana I, 19-26. Haemmerle himself suggests the date 406 as that of a sack by the Vandals, and 411-413, 418, 438-439 or earlier, as Frankish destructions of the city. This conjecture is not far from that of Rudolph and Kenterich.
30. The text is badly corrupted, and no satisfactory emendation has been proposed. The bracketed words are supplied on the basis of the preceding sentence.
31. Jeremiah 44. 21-22.
32. Baluze, referring this phrase to the burning of Treves, somewhat gratuitously concluded that Salvian could not have been a native of that city.
33. Matthew 5. 28.
34. The corrupt text is here emended according to Pauly's conjectures.
35. II Samuel 6. 6-7.