Docentur praestigias inhonestas, cum cinaedulis et sambuca psalterioque eunt in ludum histrionum, discunt cantare, quae maiores nostri ingenuis probro ducier voluerunt. eunt, inquam, in ludum saltatorium inter cinaedos virgines puerique ingenui! haec cum mihi quisquam narrabat, non poteram animum inducere ea liberos suos homines nobiles docere: sed cum ductus sum in ludum saltatorium, plus medius fidius in eo ludo vidi pueris virginibusque quinquaginta, in his unum – quod me rei publicae maxime miseritum est – puerum bullatum, petitoris filium non minorem annis duodecim, cum crotalis saltare quam saltationem inpudicus servulus honeste saltare non posset.
(Scipio Africanus Aemilianus, ORF2 fr. 30)
They’re taught disreputable tricks, they go to acting school with little pansies toting this an that kind of harp, they learn to sing – things our ancestors wished to be considered disgraceful for freeborn children. They go to dancing school, I say, freeborn maidens and boys, in a crowd of pansies! When someone told me this, I could not believe that noble men were teaching their own children these things; but when I was taken to a dancing school, ‘pon my word, I saw more than fifty boys and maidens there, and among these – this above all made me grieve for our commonwealth – one of them a boy wearing the amulet of the well-born, the son of an office-seeker, not less than twelve years old, doing a dance with castanets that it would disgrace a shameless little slave to dance. (tr. Robert A. Kaster)
Crambe Repetita 