Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Shall we go on now to demand a repudiation of the amphitheater straight from Scripture as well? If we can argue that savagery, that impiety, that ferocity is permitted to us, then let us go to the amphitheater. If the reputation given us is true and this is truly our character, then let us take delight in human blood. [2] "It is a good thing, when the guilty are punished." Who but the guilty will deny it? And yet it is not fitting for the innocent to rejoice at another's punishment; it suits the innocent far better to grieve that a man, his equal, has become so guilty as to be spent so cruelly. [3] But who can guarantee me that it is always the guilty who are condemned to the beasts or to whatever punishment, and that the innocent too are not sometimes made to suffer it — whether through a judge's spite, or a defense too feeble to prevail, or the strain put upon the questioning? How much better, then, not to know when the wicked are punished, so that I need not also know it when the good perish — if, that is, they still have any savor of goodness left in them! [4] Certainly gladiators, innocent men, are sold into the training-school to become victims sacrificed to public pleasure; and even those condemned to it — how does it improve them, to be trained up from a lesser offense into murderers?
[5] But this is my answer to the pagans. For the rest, God forbid that the Christian should need to go on learning, at any greater length, why he must turn away from this spectacle. And yet no one can fully put into words all of this except one who still goes on watching. Better not to fulfill it than to have to remember it.