Due to the length of the quotes, I've moved them to the end of the posting. To sum up...
Augustine writes about Scipio, a Roman, who advised against conquering a wealthy enemy, and against installing seats in theatres, because security and wealth lead to avarice and moral pestilence.
av·a·rice (ăv'ə-rĭs) - reprehensible acquisitiveness; insatiable desire for wealth (personified as one of the deadly sins)
pes·ti·lence (pĕs'tə-ləns) - an epidemic disease with a high death rate
We live in luxury in the West, like Rome but more so. Reading this made me wonder. Scipio, that Agustine is admiring, challenged having seats in the theatres of Rome. The parallel today would be having seats in movie theatres.
He called it an enervating and emasculating influence to have theatre seats!
Can you imagine having to stand in movie theatres?
Our lives are so full of luxury we can't even see it. Yet, he calls luxury an affront to manliness, a threat to good citizenship. Augustine points out that having the feeling of security along with wealth lead to avarice and moral pestilence.
Pagan Roman citizens had gotten so bogged down in this that even after Rome had fallen, and there was neither security nor wealth, they could not pull their lives together for they kept running after money and pleasure rather than piecing their lives and regions back together.
The west's two most remarkable characteristics are avarice and moral pestilence.
We as Western Christians have gotten so bogged down in this that our leaders teach that God wants us to ruthlessly seek more money to enlarge our territory or have our "best" life now by seeking wealth. For us is modeled moral pestilence.
How did we come to embrace into our faith one of the "seven deadly sins"?
Pagan Rome was beyond redemption - even being conquered did not get them to pull their act together. Is the west beyond redemption in this?
Did the great depression halt the influence of avarice and moral pestilence? May the depression have added on 50 years to the lifespan of western civilization because of this?
Should I get rid of lots of my luxuries - things as "basic" as seating in the Roman theatres?
Augustine writes to the survivors of the fall of the Roman Empire:
For certainly your desire for peace, and prosperity, and plenty is not prompted by any purpose of using these blessings honestly, that is to say, with moderation, sobriety, temperance, and piety; for your purpose rather is to run riot in an endless variety of sottish pleasures, and thus to generate from your prosperity a moral pestilence which will prove a thousandfold more disastrous than the fiercest enemies. It was such a calamity as this that Scipio, your chief pontiff, your best man in the judgment of the whole senate, feared when he refused to agree to the destruction of Carthage, Rome’s rival and opposed Cato, who advised its destruction. He feared security, that enemy of weak minds, and he perceived that a wholesome fear would be a fit guardian for the citizens. And he was not mistaken;
And again:
For similar reasons, and animated by the same considerate patriotism, that same chief pontiff of yours—I still refer to him who was adjudged Rome’s best man without one dissentient voice—threw cold water on the proposal of the senate to build a circle of seats round the theatre, and in a very weighty speech warned them against allowing the luxurious manners of Greece to sap the Roman manliness, and persuaded them not to yield to the enervating and emasculating influence of foreign licentiousness. So authoritative and forcible were his words, that the senate was moved to prohibit the use even of those benches which hitherto had been customarily brought to the theatre for the temporary use of the citizens. (you can read the text here, the whole book is online)
Testing comment.