us; we sing songs, we paint pictures, and our songs and paintings encourage our souls and cheer us up in moments of depression. And this is why we cannot approve of the application which you make of the arts and sciences. Your learned men employ their aptitudes and acquirements to the invention of new means of causing evil to men; they perfect the methods of war, in other words, of murder; they contrive new ways of moneymaking, that is to say, of enriching some at the expense of others. Your art serves for the erection and decoration of temples in honor of your gods, in whom the more cultivated of you have long ago ceased to believe, but belief in whom you inculcate in others, considering that, by such a deception, you keep them under your power. You erect statues in honor of the most powerful and cruel of your tyrants, whom no one respects, but all fear. In your theaters representations are permitted which hold criminal love up to admiration. Music serves for the delectation of your rich men who have eaten and drunken at their luxurious feasts. Pictorial art is employed in representing in houses of debauchery such scenes as no sober man unvitiated by animal passions could look at without blushing. No, not for this was man endowed with these lofty qualities which differentiate him from the beasts! It is impossible to use them for the mere gratification of your bodies. Consecrating our whole lives to the accomplishment of the will of God, we all the more employ our highest faculties in the same service.”
“Yes,” said Julius, “all this would be admirable if life in such conditions was possible; but it is not possible to live so. You deceive yourselves. You do not acknowledge our protection. But if it were not for the Roman legions, could you live in any comfort? You profit by our protection, though you do not acknowledge it. Some among you, as you yourself say, protect yourselves. You do not acknowledge private property, but take advantage of it; we have it and give it to you. You yourselves do not give away your grapes, but sell them and then make purchases. All this is a cheat. If you did what you say, then it would be so; but now you deceive others as yourselves.”