6.  Then thou sayest, “And all his pomp Herod. II. 58:  “The Egyptians were the first to introduce solemn assemblies (πανηγύρις) and processions (πομπάς).”  At Rome the term “pompa” was applied especially to the procession with which the Ludi Circenses were opened and also to any grand ceremony or pageant..”  Now the pomp of the devil is the madness of theatres θεατρομανίαι.  Cf. Tertull. Apologet. 38; “We renounce all your spectacles.…Among us nothing is ever said, or seen, or heard, which has anything in common with the madness of the Circus, the immodesty of the theatre, the atrocities of the arena, the useless exercises of the wrestling-ground.”  He calls the theatre “that citadel of all impurities,” De Spectaculis, c. 10, “immodesty’s peculiar abode,” c. 17, and gives a vivid description of the rage and fury of the Circus in c. 16., and horse-races, and hunting, and all such vanity:  from which that holy man praying to be delivered says unto God, Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity Ps. cxix. 37..  Be not interested in the madness of the theatre, where thou wilt behold the wanton gestures of the players μίμων, the name either of a species of low comedy, “consisting more of gestures and mimicry than of spoken dialogue,” or of the persons who acted in them.  Cyril’s description of the coarse and indecent character of the mimes is more than justified by the impartial testimony of Ovid, Trist. ii. 497: “Quid si scripsissem mimos obscœna jocantes, Qui semper vetiti crimen amoris habent; In quibus assidue cultus procedit adulter, Verbaque dat stulto callida nupta viro. Nubilis hos virgo, matronaque, virque, puerque Spectat, et e magna parte Senatus adest. Nec satis incestis temerari vocibus aures; Assuescunt oculi multa pudenda pati.” A theatre is mentioned as one of the buildings erected by Hadrian in his new City Aelia Capitolina built on the site of Jerusalem; and that theatrical performances were continued in the time of Cyril we know from the accusation that in a time of famine he had sold one of the Church vestments, which was afterwards used upon the stage., carried on with mockeries and all unseemliness, and the frantic dancing of effeminate men Lactantius, Epitome, § 63:  “Histrionici etiam impudici gestus, quibus infames fœminas imitantur, libidines, quæ saltando exprimunt, docent.”;—nor in the madness of them who in hunts κυνηγεσίαις, the so-called “venationes” of the Circus in which the “bestiarii” fought with wild beasts. expose themselves to wild beasts, that they may pamper their miserable appetite; who, to serve their belly with meats, become themselves in reality meat for the belly of untamed beasts; and to speak justly, for the sake of their own god, their belly, they cast away their life headlong in single combats The “bestiarii” were feasted in public on the day before their encounter with the beasts.  See Tertull. Apologet. § 42:  “I do not recline in public at the feast of Bacchus, after the manner of the beast-fighters at their last banquet.”  Ib. § 9:  “Those also who dine on the flesh of wild beasts from the arena, who have keen appetites for bear and stag.”  These latter, however, were chiefly the poor, to whom flesh was a rarity:  Apuleius Metam. iv. 14, quoted by Oehler..  Shun also horse-races, that frantic and soul-subverting spectacle ψυχὰς ἐκτραχήλιζον, an allusion to the risk of a broken neck in the chariot-race.  Tertull. de Spectaculis, § 9:  “Equestrianism was formerly practised in a simple way on horseback, and certainly its ordinary use was innocent:  but when it was dragged into the games, it passed from a gift of God into the service of demons.”  The presiding deity of the chariot-race was Poseidon (Hom. Il. xxiii, 307; Pind. Ol. i. 63; Pyth. vi. 50; Soph. Œdip. Col. 712), and both this and the other shows of the Circus, and of the theatre, were connected with the worship of the gods of Greece and Rome, and therefore forbidden as idolatrous:  “What high religious rites, what sacrifices precede, intervene, and follow, how many guilds, how many priesthoods, how many services are set astir” (Tert. de Spect. § 7)..  For all these are the pomp of the devil.