powers of enchantment.[1] Amulets are commonly worn, hung about the neck, and of these, miniature copies of the Gospels are in great favour, especially for the protection of infants.[2] Should a merchant on his way to business for the day first meet with a sacred virgin, he curses his luck and anticipates a bad issue to any pending negotiations; on the contrary, should the first woman he encounters be a prostitute, he rejoices in the auspicious omen with which his day has opened.[3] At funerals the old Roman custom of hiring females to act as mourners, who keep up a discordant wailing and shed tears copiously at will, is still maintained.[4] Black clothes are worn as a mark of sorrow for the dead.[5] Great extravagance is often shown in the erection of handsome sepulchral monuments.[6]
That the capital of the East, and by inference the whole Empire, is a hotbed of vice and immorality will impress itself on the mind of the most superficial reader. The dissoluteness of youth is in fact so appalling that the most sane of fathers resort to the extreme measure of expelling their sons from home in a penniless state, with the view that after a term of trial and hardship they may return as reformed and
- ↑ Chrysostom, In Epist. ad Corinth. Hom. xii, 7 (in Migne, x, 105).
- ↑ Ibid., In Matth. Hom. lxxii, 2 (in Migne, vii, 669); Ad Pop. Antioch., xix, 4 (in Migne, ii, 196).
- ↑ Ibid., Ad Illum. Catech., ii, 5 (in Migne, ii, 240).
- ↑ Ibid., In Epist. I ad Corinth., xii, 7 (in Migne, x, 105).
- ↑ Ibid., De Consol. Mort. 6 (in Migne, vi, 303).
- ↑ Ibid., Expos. in Psalm cxi, 4 (in Migne, v, 297), etc. He often protests against this form of luxury. At Rome especially, when the ownership of these costly piles had passed into oblivion, it was the habit of builders to pillage them in order to use their architectural adornments and materials for new erections; Cod. Theod., IX, xvii. Apparently the sepulchres were sometimes violated for the supply of false relics.
