- stood the pronouncements of Trajan and Alexander,[1] the
diatribes of the Christian Fathers,[2] and even the laws of Constantius and Valentinian, by which such delinquents are condemned to be burnt alive.[3] Preaching at Antioch a century before this time, the earnest and fearless Chrysostom cannot refrain from expressing his amazement that that metropolis, in its open addiction to this vice, does not meet with the biblical fate of Sodom and Gomorrah.[4] Nor is there any evidence to refute the assumption that Constantinople at the beginning of the sixth century is in this respect less impure than the Syrian capital.[5]
- [Footnote: to have been somewhat of a purist for his time, abolished a theatrical
spectacle addressed particularly to the paederasts, against which Chrysostom had vainly launched his declamations; In Psalm xli, 2 (in Migne, v, 157). "Boys, assuming the dress and manners of women, with a mincing gait and erotic gestures, ravished the senses of the observers so that men raged against each other in their impassioned fury. This stain on our manners you obliterated," etc.; Procopius, Gaz. Panegyr., 16. The saint is much warmer and more analytical in his invective.]*
- ↑ Hist. Aug. Alexander, 24.
- ↑ Tertullian, De Monogam., 12; Lactantius, Divin. Instit., v, 9; Salvian, De Gubern. Dei, vii, 17, etc.
- ↑ Cod. Theod., IX, vii, with Godefroy's duplex commentary. The peculiar wording of the law of Constantius almost suggests that it was enacted in a spirit of mocking complacency; ibid., Cod., IX, ix, 31.
- ↑ Chrysostom, Adv. Op. Vit. Mon., 8 (in Migne, i, 361). There was probably a stronger tincture of Greek manners at Antioch, of Roman at Constantinople, but the difference does not seem to have been material. We here take leave of Chrysostom. The saint fumes so much that we must generally suspect him of exaggeration, but doubtless this was the style which drew large crowds of auditors and won him popularity.
- ↑ Procopius, Anecdot., 9, 11; Novel., lxxvii, etc. The first glimpse of Byzantine sociology is due to Montfaucon, who, at the end of his edition of Chrysostom brought together a selection of the most striking passages he had met with. These excerpts were the germ and foundation of a larger and more systematized work by P. Mueller, Bishop of Zealand;
