may be conjectured, however, that Carthage, as well as Rome, had a
_septizonium_--a decorative building with peristyles one above the other
which surrounded a reservoir. In fact, it is claimed that the one at
Rome was copied from Carthage. Straight streets paved with large flags
intersected around these buildings, forming a network of long avenues, very
bright and ventilated. Some of them were celebrated in the ancient world
either for their beauty or the animation of their trade: the street of the
Jewellers, the street of Health, of Saturn, of Coelestis, too, or of Juno.
The fig and vegetable markets and the public granaries were also some of
the main centres of Carthaginian life.
It is unquestionable that Carthage, with its buildings and statues, its
squares, avenues and public gardens, looked like a large capital, and was
a perfect example of that ideal of rather brutal magnificence and strength
which the Romans obtruded everywhere.
And even while it dazzled the young provincial from Thagaste, the African
Rome shewed him the virtue of order--social and political order. Carthage,
the metropolis of Western Africa, maintained an army of officials who
handled the government in its smallest details. First of all, there
were the representatives of the central power, the imperial rulers--the
Proconsul, a sort of vice-emperor, who was surrounded by a full court, a
civil and military staff, a privy council, an _officium_ which included a
crowd of dignitaries and subaltern clerks. Then there was the Proprætor
of Africa who, being in control of the government of the whole African
province, had an _officium_ still larger perhaps than the Proconsul's.
After them came the city magistrates, who were aided in their functions by
the Council of the Decurions--the Senate of Carthage. These Carthaginian
senators cut a considerable figure: for them their colleagues at Rome
were full of airs and graces, and the Emperors endeavoured to keep them
in a good-humour. All the details of city government came under their
supervision: the slaughter-houses, buildings, the gathering of municipal
taxes, and the police, which comprised even the guardians of the Forum.
Then there were the army and navy. The home port of a grain-carrying fleet
which conveyed the African cereals to Ostia, Carthage could starve Rome
if she liked. The grain and oil of all countries lay in her docks--the
storehouses of the state provisions, which were in charge of a special
prefect who had under his orders a whole corporation of overseers and
clerks.
Augustin must have heard a good deal of grumbling at Carthage against this
excess of officialism. But, all the same, so well-governed a city was a
very good school for a young man who was to combine later the duties of
bishop, judge, and governor. The blessings of order, of what was called
"the Roman peace" no doubt impressed him the more, as he himself came from
a turbulent district often turned upside down by the quarrels of religious
sects and by the depredations of the nomads--a boundary-land of the Sahara
regions where it was much harder to bring the central government into
play than in Carthage and the coast-towns. To appreciate the beauty of
government, there is nothing like living in a country where all is at the
mercy of force or the first-comer's will. Such of the Barbarians who came
in contact with Roman civilization were overcome with admiration for the
good order that it established. But what astonished them more than anything
else was that the Empire was everywhere.
No man, whatever his race or country, could help feeling proud to belong to
the Roman city. He was at home in all the countries in the world subject
to Rome. Our Europe, split into nationalities, can hardly understand now
this feeling of pride, so different from our narrow patriotisms. The way to
feel something of it is to go to the colonies: out there the least of us
may believe himself a sovereign, simply from the fact that he is a subject
of the governing country. This feeling was very strong in the old world.
Carthage, where the striking effect of the Empire appeared in all its
brilliancy, would increase it in Augustin. He had only to look around him
to value the extent of the privilege conferred by Rome on her citizens. Men
coming from all countries, without exception of race, were, so to speak,
made partners of the Empire and collaborated in the grandeur of the Roman
scheme. If the Proconsul who then occupied the Byrsa palace, the celebrated
Symmachus, belonged to an old Italian family, he whom he represented,
the Emperor Valentinian, was the son of a Pannonian soldier. The Count
Theodosius, the general who suppressed the insurrection of Firmus in
Mauretania, was a Spaniard, and the army he led into Africa was made up,
for the most part, of Gauls. Later on, under Arcadius, another Gaul,
Rufinus, shall be master of the whole of the East.
An active mind like Augustin's could not remain indifferent before this
spectacle of the world thrown open by Rome to all men of talent. He had the
soul of a poet, quick to enthusiasm; the sight of the Eagles planted on
the Acropolis at Carthage moved him in a way he never forgot. He acquired
the habit of seeing big, and began to cast off race prejudices and all the
petty narrowness of a local spirit. When he became a Christian he did not
close himself up, like the Donatists, within the African Church. His dream
was that Christ's Empire upon earth should equal the Empire of the Cæsars.
Still, it is desirable not to fall into error upon this Roman unity.
Behind the imposing front it shewed from one end to the other of the
Mediterranean, the variety of peoples, with their manners, traditions,
special religions, was always there, and in Africa more than elsewhere.
The population of Carthage was astonishingly mixed. The hybrid character
of this country without unity was illustrated by the streaks found in the
Carthaginian crowds. All the specimens of African races elbowed one another
in the streets, from the nigger, brought from his native Soudan by the
slave-merchant, to the Romanized Numidian. The inflow, continually renewed,
of traffickers and cosmopolitan adventurers increased this confusion.
And so Carthage was a Babel of races, of costumes, of beliefs and ideas.
Augustin, who was at heart a mystic, but also a dialectician extremely fond
of showy discussions, found in Carthage a lively summary of the religions
and philosophies of his day. During these years of study and reflection he
captured booty of knowledge and observation which he would know how to make
use of in the future.
In the Carthage sanctuaries and schools, in the squares and the streets,
he could see pass the disciples of all the systems, the props of all the
superstitions, the devotees of all the religions. He heard the shrill
clamour of disputes, the tumult of fights and riots. When a man was at the
end of his arguments, he knocked down his opponent. The authorities had a
good deal of trouble to keep order. Augustin, who was an intrepid logician,
must have longed to take his share in these rows. But one cannot exactly
improvise a faith between to-day and to-morrow. While he awaited the
enlightenment of the truth, he studied the Carthaginian Babel.
First of all, there was the official religion, the most obvious and perhaps
the most brilliant, that of the Divinity of the Emperors, which was still
kept up even under the Christian Cæsars. Each year, at the end of October,
the elected delegates of the entire province, having at their head the
_Sacerdos province_, the provincial priest, arrived at Carthage. Their
leader, clad in a robe broidered with palms, gold crown on head, made his
solemn entry into the city. It was a perfect invasion, each member dragging
in his wake a mob of clients and servants. The Africans, with their
taste for pomp and colour, seized the chance to give themselves over to a
display of ruinous sumptuosities: rich dresses, expensive horses splendidly
caparisoned, processions, sacrifices, public banquets, games at the circus
and amphitheatre. These strangers so overcrowded the city that the imperial
Government had to forbid them, under severe penalties, to stay longer
than five days. A very prudent measure! At these times, collisions were
inevitable between pagans and Christians. It was desirable to scatter such
crowds as soon as possible, for riots were always smouldering in their
midst.
No less thronged were the festivals of the Virgin of Heaven. A survival
of the national religion, these feasts were dear to the hearts of the
Carthaginians. Augustin went to them with his fellow-students. "We trooped
there from every quarter," he says. There was a great gathering of people
in the interior court which led up to the temple. The statue, taken from
its sanctuary, was placed before the peristyle upon a kind of repository.
Wantons, arrayed with barbarous lavishness, danced around the holy
image; actors performed and sang hymns. "Our eager eyes," Augustin adds
maliciously, "rested in turn on the goddess, and on the girls, her
adorers." The Great Mother of the Gods, the Goddess of Mount Berecyntus,
was worshipped with similar license. Every year the people of Carthage went
to wash her solemnly in the sea. Her statue, carried in a splendid litter,
robed with precious stuffs, curled and farded, passed through the streets
of the city, with its guard of mummers and Corybants. These last, "with
hair greasy from pomade, pale faces, and a loose and effeminate walk, held
out bowls for alms to the onlookers."
The devotion to Isis was yet another excuse for processions: the _Serapeum_
was a rival attraction to the temple of the Heavenly Maiden. If we may
trust Tertullian, the Africans swore only by Serapis. Possibly Mithras
had also worshippers in Carthage. Anyhow, the occult religions were fully
represented there. Miracle-working was becoming more and more the basis
even of paganism. Never had the soothsayers been more flourishing.
Everybody, in secret, pried into the entrails of the sacrificial victims,
or used magic spells. As to the wizards and astrologists, they did business
openly. Augustin himself consulted them, like all the Carthaginians. The
public credulity had no limits.
On the opposite side from the pagan worship, the sects which had sprung
from Christianity sprouted. True, Africa has given birth to but a small
number of heresies: the Africans had not the subtle mind of the Orientals
and they were not given to theorizing. But a good many of the Eastern
heresies had got into Carthage. Augustin must have still met Arians there,
although at this period Arianism was dying out in Africa. What is certain
is that orthodox Catholicism was in a very critical state. The Donatists
captured its congregations and churches; they were unquestionably in the
majority. They raised altar against altar. If Genethlius was the Catholic
bishop, the Donatist bishop was Parmenianus. And they claimed to be more
Catholic than their opponents. They boasted that they were the Church, the
single, the unique Church, the Church of Christ. But these schismatics
themselves were already splitting up into many sects. At the time Augustin
was studying at Carthage, Rogatus, Bishop of Tenes, had just broken
publicly with Parmenian's party. Another Donatist, Tyconius, published
books wherein he traversed many principles dear to his fellow-religionists.
Doubt darkened consciences. Amid these controversies, where was the truth?
Among whom did the Apostolic tradition dwell?
To put the finishing touch on this anarchy, a sect which likewise derived
from Christianity--Manicheeism--began to have numerous adepts in Africa.
Watched with suspicion by the Government, it concealed part of its
doctrine, the most scandalous and subversive. But the very mystery which
enveloped it, helped it to get adherents.
Among all these apostles preaching their gospel, these devotees beating
the drum before their god, these theologians reciprocally insulting and
excommunicating one another, Augustin brought the superficial scepticism of
his eighteenth year. He wanted no more of the religion in which his mother
had brought him up. He was a good talker, a clever dialectician; he was in
a hurry to emancipate himself, to win freedom for his way of thinking as
for his way of life; and he meant to enjoy his youth. With such gifts, and
with such dispositions, he could only choose among all these doctrines that
which would help most the qualities of his mind, at once flattering his
intellectual pretensions, and leaving his pleasure-loving instincts a loose
rein.
III
THE CARTHAGE STUDENT
However strong were the attractions of the great city, Augustin well knew
that he had not been sent there to amuse himself, or to trifle as an
amateur with philosophy. He was poor, and he had to secure his future--make
his fortune. His family counted on him. Neither was he ignorant of the
difficult position of his parents and by what sacrifices they had supplied
him with the means to finish his studies. Necessarily he was obliged to be
a student who worked.
With his extraordinary facility, he stood out at once among his
fellow-students. In the rhetoric school, where he attended lectures,
he was, he tells us, not only at the top, but he was the leader of his
companions. He led in everything. At that time, rhetoric was extremely
far-reaching: it had come to take in all the divisions of education,
including science and philosophy. Augustin claims to have learned all that
the masters of his time had to teach: rhetoric, dialectic, geometry, music,
mathematics. Having gone through the whole scholastic system, he thought of
studying law, and aided by his gift of words, to become a barrister. For a
gifted young man it was the shortest and surest road to money and honours.
Unhappily for him, hardly was he settled down at Carthage than his father
died. This made his future again problematical. How was he to keep up his
studies without the sums coming from his father? The affairs of Patricius
must have been left in the most parlous condition. But Monnica, clinging to
her ambitious plans for her son, knew how to triumph over all difficulties,
and she continued to send Augustin money. Romanianus, the Mæcenas of
Thagaste, who was doubtless applied to by her, came once more to the rescue
of the hard-up student. The young man, set at ease about his expenses,
resumed light-heartedly his studious and dissipated life.
As a matter of fact, this family bereavement does not seem to have caused
him much grief. In the _Confessions_ he mentions the death of his father in
a few words, and, so to speak, in parenthesis, as an event long foreseen
without much importance. And yet he owed him a great deal. Patricius was
hard pressed, and he took immense trouble to provide the means for his
son's education. But with the fine egotism of youth, Augustin perhaps
thought it enough to have profited by his father's sacrifices, and
dispensed himself from gratitude. In any case, his affection for his father
must have been rather lukewarm; the natural differences between them ran
too deep. In these years, Monnica filled all the heart of Augustin.
But the influence of Monnica herself was very slight upon this grown-up
youth, eighteen years old. He had forgotten her lessons, and it did not
trouble him much if his conduct added to the worries of the widow, who was
now struggling with her husband's creditors. At heart he was a good son and
he deeply loved his mother, but inevitably the pressure of the life around
him swept him along.
He has pictured his companions for us, after his conversion, as terrible
blackguards. No doubt he is too severe. Those young men were neither better
nor worse than elsewhere. They were rowdy, as they were in the other cities
of the Empire, and as one always is at that age. Imperial regulations
enjoined the police to have an eye on the students, to note their conduct
and what company they kept. They were not to become members of prohibited
societies, not to go too often to the theatre, nor to waste their time in
raking and feastings. If their conduct became too outrageous, they were to
be beaten with rods and sent back to their parents. At Carthage there was
a hard-living set of men who called themselves "The Wreckers." Their great
pleasure was to go and make a row at a professor's lecture; they would
burst noisily into the classroom and smash up anything they could lay hold
of. They amused themselves also by "ragging" the freshmen, jeering at their
simplicity, and playing them a thousand tricks. Things haven't much changed
since then. The fellow-students of Augustin were so like students of
to-day that the most modern terms suggest themselves to describe their
performances.
Augustin, who was on the whole well conducted, and, as behoved a future
professor, had a respect for discipline, disapproved of "The Wreckers" and
their violence. This did not prevent him from enjoying himself in their
society. He was overcome with shame because he could not keep pace with
them--we must believe it at least, since he tells us so himself. With a
certain lack of assurance, blended however with much juvenile vanity, he
joined the band. He listened to that counsel of vulgar wisdom which is
disastrous to souls like his: "Do as others do." He accordingly did do
as the others; he knew all their debauchery, or he imagined he did, for
however low he went, he was never able to do anything mean. He was then so
far from the faith that he arranged love-trysts in the churches. "I was not
afraid to think of my lust, and plan a scheme for securing the deadly fruit
of sin, even within the walls of Thy church during the celebration of Thy
mysteries." We might be reading the confession of a sensualist of to-day.
One grows astonished at these morals, at once so old and so modern. What,
already! These young Christian basilicas, but newly sprung out of the
earth, where the men were strictly separated from the women--were they
already become places of assignation, where love-letters were slipped into
hands, and procuresses sold their furtive services!...
At length the great happiness for which Augustin had so long been sighing
was granted him: he loved and he was loved.
He loved as he indeed was able to love, with all the impetuosity of his
nature and all the fire of his temperament, with all his heart and all his
senses. "I plunged headlong into love, whose fetters I longed to wear." But
as he went at once to extremes, as he meant to give himself altogether,
and expected all in return, he grew irritated at not receiving this same
kind of love. It was never enough love for him. Yet he was loved, and the
very certainty of this love, always too poor to his mind, exasperated the
violence and pertinacity of his desire. "Because I was loved, I proudly
riveted round myself the chain of woe, to be soon scourged with the red-hot
iron rods of jealousy, torn by suspicions, fears, anger, and quarrels."
This was passion with chorus and orchestra, a little theatrical, with its
violences, its alternations between fury and ecstasy, such as an African,
steeped in romantic literature, would conceive it. Deceived, he flung
himself in desperate pursuit of the ever-flitting love. He had certainly
more than one passion. Each one left him more hungry than the last.
He was sensual, and he felt each time how brief is pleasure, in what a
limited circle all enjoyment turns. He was tender, eager to give himself;
and he saw plainly that one never gives oneself quite altogether, that even
in the maddest hours of surrender one always reserves oneself in secret,
keeping for oneself something of oneself; and he felt that most of the time
his tenderness got no answer. When the joyous heart brings the offering of
its love, the heart of her he loves is absent. And when it is there, on the
edge of the lips, decked and smiling to meet the loved one, it is the other
who is absent. Almost never do they join together, and they never join
together altogether. And so this Love, which claims to be constant and even
eternal, ought to be, if it would prolong itself, a continual act of faith,
and hope, and charity. To believe in it in spite of its darkening and
falling away; to hope its return, often against all evidence; to pardon its
injustices and sometimes its foul actions--how many are capable of such
abnegation? Augustin went through all that. He was in despair about it.
And then, the nostalgia of predestined souls took hold of him. He had an
indistinct feeling that these human loves were unworthy of him, and that
if he must have a master, he was born to serve another Master. He had a
desire to shake off the platitude of here below, the melancholy fen where
stagnated what he calls "the marsh of the flesh"; to escape, in a word,
from the wretched huts wherein for a little he had sheltered his heart; to
burn all behind him, and so prevent the weakness of a return; and to go and
pitch his tent further, higher, he knew not where--upon some unapproachable
mountain where the air is icy, but before the eyes, the vasty stretches of
light and space....
These first loves of Augustin were really too fierce to last. They
burned up themselves. Augustin did not keep them up long. There was in
him, besides, an instinct which counteracted his exuberant, amorous
sentimentality--the sense of beauty. That in itself was enough to make him
pause on the downhill of riot. The anarchy and commotion of passion was
repellent to a mind devoted to clearness and order. But there was still
another thing--the son of the Thagaste freeholder had any amount of common
sense. That at least was left to him of the paternal heritage. A youth of
what we call the lower middle class, strictly brought up in the hard and
frugal discipline of the provinces, he felt the effects of his training.
The bohemianism in which his friends revelled could not hold him
indefinitely. Besides this, the career he desired, that of a barrister
or professor, had a preliminary obligation to maintain a certain outward
decorum. He himself tells us so; in the midst of his most disreputable
performances he aspired to be known for his fashion and wit--_elegans atque
urbanus_. Politeness of speech and manners, the courteous mutual deference
of the best society--such, was the ideal of this budding professor of
rhetoric.
Anxiety about his future, joined to his rapid disenchantments, ere long
sobered the student: he just took his fling and then settled down. Love
turned for him into sensual habit. His head became clear for study and
meditation. The apprentice to rhetoric liked his business. Up to his
last breath, despite his efforts to change, he continued, like all his
contemporaries, to love rhetoric. He handled words like a worker in verbals
who is aware of their price and knows all their resources. Even after his
conversion, if he condemns profane literature as a poisoner of souls, he
absolves the beauty of language. "I accuse not words," he says. "Words
are choice and precious vessels. I accuse the wine of error that drunken
doctors pour out for us into these fair goblets." At the Rhetoric School he
took extreme pleasure in declaiming. He was applauded; the professor gave
him as an example to the others. These scholastic triumphs foretold others
more celebrated and reverberating. And so, in his heart, literary vanity
and ambition disputed the ever-lively illusions of love. And then, above
all! he had to live; Monnica's remittances were necessarily small; the
generosity of Romanianus had its limit. So he beat about to enlarge his
small student's purse. He wrote verses for poetic competitions. Perhaps
already he was able to act as tutor to certain of his fellow-students, less
advanced.