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| Chapter XXII. Ridicule of the Solemnities of the Greeks.
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Chapter XXII.—Ridicule of the Solemnities of the Greeks.
And of what sort are your teachings? Who must not
treat with contempt your solemn festivals, which, being held in honour
of wicked demons, cover men with infamy? I have often
seen a man486
| 486 Tatian here describes an actor. [And in America
heathenism has returned upon us in most of the indecencies here
exposed. Are we Christians?] | —and have been amazed to see,
and the amazement has ended in contempt, to think how he is one thing
internally, but outwardly counterfeits what he is not—giving himself
excessive airs of daintiness and indulging in all sorts of effeminacy;
sometimes darting his eyes about; sometimes throwing his hands hither and
thither, and raving with his face smeared with mud; sometimes personating
Aphrodité, sometimes Apollo; a solitary accuser of all the gods,
an epitome of superstition, a vituperator of heroic deeds, an actor of
murders, a chronicler of adultery, a storehouse of madness, a teacher
of cynædi, an instigator of capital sentences;—and yet such
a man is praised by all. But I have rejected all his falsehoods, his
impiety, his practices,—in short, the man altogether. But you are
led captive by such men, while you revile those who do not take a part
in your pursuits. I have no mind to stand agape at a number of singers,
nor do I desire to be affected in sympathy with a man when he is winking
and gesticulating in an unnatural manner. What wonderful or extraordinary
thing is performed among you? They utter ribaldry in affected tones, and
go through indecent movements; your daughters and your sons behold them
giving lessons in adultery on the stage. Admirable places, forsooth,
are your lecture-rooms, where every base action perpetrated by night
is proclaimed aloud, and the hearers are regaled with the utterance of
infamous discourses! Admirable, too, are your mendacious poets, who by
their fictions beguile their hearers from the truth!E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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