The City of God, Volume I. Bishop of Hippo Saint Augustine
23
By J. H., published in 1610, and again in 1620, with Vives' commentary.
24
As the letters of Vives are not in every library, we give his comico-pathetic account of the result of his Augustinian labours on his health: "Ex quo Augustinum perfeci, nunquam valui ex sententia; proximâ vero hebdomade et hac, fracto corpore cuncto, et nervis lassitudine quadam et debilitate dejectis, in caput decem turres incumbere mihi videntur incidendo pondere, ac mole intolerabili; isti sunt fructus studiorum, et merces pulcherrimi laboris; quid labor et benefacta juvant?"
25
See the Editor's Preface.
26
Ps. xciv. 15, rendered otherwise in Eng. ver.
27
Jas. iv. 6 and 1 Pet. v. 5.
28
Virgil,
29
The Benedictines remind us that Alexander and Xenophon, at least on some occasions, did so.
30
Virgil,
31
32
33
Horace,
34
35
36
37
Non numina bona, sed omina mala.
38
Virgil,
39
Though "levis" was the word usually employed to signify the inconstancy of the Greeks, it is evidently here used, in opposition to "immanis" of the following clause, to indicate that the Greeks were more civilised than the barbarians, and not relentless, but, as we say, easily moved.
40
41
Sallust,
42
Ps. lxxxix. 32.
43
Matt. v. 45.
44
Rom. ii. 4.
45
So Cyprian (
46
Ezek. xxxiii. 6.
47
Compare with this chapter the first homily of Chrysostom to the people of Antioch.
48
Rom. viii. 28.
49
1 Pet. iii. 4.
50
1 Tim. vi. 6-10.
51
Job i. 21.
52
1 Tim. vi. 17-19.
53
Matt. vi. 19-21.
54
Paulinus was a native of Bordeaux, and both by inheritance and marriage acquired great wealth, which, after his conversion in his thirty-sixth year, he distributed to the poor. He became bishop of Nola in a. d. 409, being then in his fifty-sixth year. Nola was taken by Alaric shortly after the sack of Rome.
55
Much of a kindred nature might be gathered from the Stoics. Antoninus says (ii. 14): "Though thou shouldest be going to live 3000 years, and as many times 10,000 years, still remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses. The longest and the shortest are thus brought to the same."
56
Augustine expresses himself more fully on this subject in his tract,
57
Matt. x. 28.
58
Luke xii. 4.
59
Ps. lxxix. 2, 3.
60
Ps. cxvi. 15.
61
Diogenes especially, and his followers. See also Seneca,
62
Lucan,
63
Gen. xxv. 9, xxxv. 29, etc.
64
Gen. xlvii. 29, l. 24.
65
Tob. xii. 12.
66
Matt. xxvi. 10-13.
67
John xix. 38.
68
Dan. iii.
69
Jonah.
70
"Second to none," as he is called by Herodotus, who first of all tells his well-known story (
71
Augustine here uses the words of Cicero ("vigilando peremerunt"), who refers to Regulus,
72
As the Stoics generally would affirm.
73
Virgil,
74
Plutarch's
75
1 Cor. ii. 11.
76
Ecclus. iii. 27.
77
Rom. xi. 33.
78
Ps. xlii. 10.
79
Ps. xcvi. 4, 5.
80
Originally the spectators had to stand, and now (according to Livy,
81
Ps. xciv. 4.
82
2 Tim. iii. 7.
83
"Pluvia defit, causa Christiani." Similar accusations and similar replies may be seen in the celebrated passage of Tertullian's
84
Augustine is supposed to refer to Symmachus, who similarly accused the Christians in his address to the Emperor Valentinianus in the year 384. At Augustine's request, Paulus Orosius wrote his history in confutation of Symmachus' charges.
85
Tertullian (
86
Berecynthia is one of the many names of Rhea or Cybele. Livy (xxix. 11) relates that the image of Cybele was brought to Rome the day before the ides of April, which was accordingly dedicated as her feast-day. The image, it seems, had to be washed in the stream Almon, a tributary of the Tiber, before being placed in the temple of Victory; and each year, as the festival returned, the washing was repeated with much pomp at the same spot. Hence Lucan's line (i. 600), 'Et lotam parvo revocant Almone Cybelen,' and the elegant verses of Ovid,
87
"Fercula," dishes, or courses.
88
See Cicero,