ABSTRACT
From ancient times, decadence has been seen as a characteristically urban vice. Evidence of the antiquity of the association between decadence and city life can be found in the Book of Genesis, which tells how the first city was established by Cain, the first murderer, on whose forehead - as a sign of his irreparably corrupt and fallen nature - God is said to have placed a mark of shame (Genesis 4: 15-17). Writing at the beginning of the fifth century of the Common Era, and following a tradition of both Jewish and Christian legend which regarded Cain as the founder of a race of degenerate evildoers, St Augustine drew upon the strongly antagonistic view of urban civilization evident in the Book of Genesis when he identified Cain's city with the 'City of Man', an allegorical place whose inhabitants consisted of those men and women whom God had condemned to suffer eternal damnation.1 However, although Augustine's writings betray a deep distrust of the wickedness and depravity of urban life - for instance, he wryly noted that Rome, like the city of Cain, was founded by a fratricide (City of God,
* I am grateful to Professor Greg Walker and Dr Elaine Treharne of Leicester University for their helpful comments after reading an earlier draft of this essay.
