1. All references to this work are from The Confessions of Saint Augustine, translated by R. S. Pine-Coffin (London: Penguin, 1961), save for the quotation (note 53, 11-29), where I use the more felicitous Rex Warner translation (New York: New American Library, 1963). Similarly, citations to The City of God refer to the translation of Gerald G. Walsh, Demetrius, B. Zema, and Grace Monahan (New York: Image Books, 1958), save for the quotation (note 48, 1.23), where I use the translation in the David Knowles edition (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984). I wish to thank Mark Glouberman, Harvey Mitchell, Roger Seamon, and Kay Stockholder for their valuable comments and criticisms.

2. Confessions, 7.3.

3. Confessions, 7.7.

4. See especially, J. N. Figgis, The Political Aspects of Saint Augustine's “City of God” (London: Longmans, 1921); P.R.L. Brown, “Augustine,” in Trends in Medieval Political Thought, edited by B. Smalley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 1-21, and R. A. Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

5. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), part 2, chap. 7, “In Interiore Homine,” 127-43. Despite my substantive disagreements, readers of this work will be aware of my considerable debt to Taylor.

6. A point made by Judith Shklar in her review in Political Theory 19 (February 1991): 105-9.

7. City of God, 9.4-5.

8. See Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo (London: Macmillan, 1967), who argues that Augustine remained a confirmed, though critical, Ciceronian, 36, 40-41, 79-80, 300, 394. See, too, Maurice Testard, Saint Augustin et Ciceron (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1958), 2 vols.

9. City of God, 9.4.

10. City of God, 14.9. See Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of the Will in Classical Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), chap. 6, for an analysis of Augustine's conception of the will as an original notion emanating from his own moral experience as portrayed in The Confessions. See, too, Charles Kahn, “The Discovery of the Will: From Aristotle to Augustine,” in The Question of Eclecticism, edited by J. M. Dillon and A. A. Long (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).

11. City of God, 14.6, 28.

12. City of God, 14.2.

13. City of God, 1.9.

14. City of God, 11.15.

15. This point is brought out in G. R. Evans, Augustine on Evil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), chap. 2.

16. Confessions, 1.10.

17. Confessions, 2.4.

18. Confessions, 1.12, 1.6.

19. City of God, 14.13, my italics.

20. City of God, 14.13.

21. City of God, 14.15.

22. Ibid.

23. City of God, 14.13, citing 2 Peter, 2.10.

24. City of God, 5.12.

25. On True Religion, 39.72.

26. See, for this point, Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Augustine, translated by L.E.M. Lynch (London: Gollancz, 1961), at 104.

27. Confessions, 2.10.

28. City of God, 5.18.

29. Cicero, De Officis 1.31.114. See, too, Brian Vickers, In Defense of Rhetoric (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), 49-50, and Robert Hariman, The Motives of Eloquence: Literary Rhetoric in the Renaissance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1976), 13-14.

30. Confessions, 3.2.

31. Ibid.

32. In Republic, 10.

33. The Soliloquies of Saint Augustine, 2.ix, translated by Thomas F. Gilligan (New York: Cosmopolitan Science & Art Service Company, 1943), 108-9, cited in Jonas Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), at 57, who offers a balanced analysis of Augustine's views on the theatre.

34. Augustine nevertheless recognized the affinity between the ceremonies of divine worship among a Christian congregation and the experience of spectatorship at a play, one which could be put to positive use. On Christian Doctrine, 1.29, Works, translated by J. F. Shaw (Edinburgh: Clark, 1871-1876), 9:24-25.

35. City of God, 4.26.

36. City of God, 1-2.

37. For example, Cicero, De Oratore 2.193. This point is brought out by Niall Rudd, Lines of Inquiry: Studies in Latin Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 171-77, from which the following account of the place of lawyers in the Roman rhetorical tradition is drawn. See, too, Charles Norris Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957), 392-95, and Neal Wood, “Populares and Circumcelliones: The Vocabulary of `Fallen Man' in Cicero and St. Augustine,” in The Politics of Fallen Man, edited by M. M. Goldsmith and Thomas A. Horne (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 1986), 33-52.

38. Cicero, De Oratore, 2.194.

39. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 4.43. Rudd, at 173, points out that Cicero generally argues in favor of real rather than feigned emotion as most efficient but insists that in either case the lawyer needs to practice and master the techniques of evoking these feelings. See De Oratore, 2.189, and Vickers, at 67.

40. Tusculan Disputations, 4.55, quoted in Rudd at 171.

41. Confessions, 3.3-4. It is useful in this context to notice how Augustine first praises the “content” of Cicero's philosophy but then denies the importance of rhetorical techniques in the shaping of his own personality, insistently claiming that he, unlike some of his rebellious fellow students, “did not use [Cicero] as a whetstone to sharpen my tongue” nor engage in the “mockery and trickery which they loved to practice on others.” Later, however, during his tenure in the Milanese chair of rhetoric, Augustine was “eager for fame” and indulged in rhetorical duplicity. Now he could prepare “a speech in praise of the Emperor, intending that it should include a great many lies which would certainly be applauded by an audience who knew well enough how far from the truth they were.”Confessions, 6.6. Unsurprisingly, self-righteousness was not one of those afflictions of the soul about which Augustine seems to have deeply reflected.

42. Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 266.

43. City of God, 1.17-19, 22-26; 5.12. Augustine directs his criticism against the then most authoritative accounts of Livy, History, 1.58-59; Plutarch, Cato, and Sallust, Cato, 52-54. See, too, Ian Donaldson, The Rapes of Lucretia: A Myth and Its Transformations (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982), chaps. 1-2, and, for the legend of Cato, J. W. Johnson, The Formation of English Neo-Classical Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967), 95-105.

44. Livy, The Early History of Rome, Books 1-5, 1.57, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt (London: Penguin, 1960), 99.

45. Seneca, De Providentia, 2.10, cited in Donaldson, The Rapes of Lucretia, 147.

46. City of God, 1.19, my italics.

47. Plutarch, Cato, 65-70, quoted by Augustine, City of God, 1.23.

48. City of God, 1.23.

49. Soliloquies, 2.ix.

50. City of God, 1.28.

51. Augustine quotes Sallust, Cataline Wars, 7, to show that the desire for glory was the primary passion animating Roman conduct.

52. City of God, 1.28.

53. Confessions, 11.29.

54. Confessions, 9.1.

55. Confessions, 10.40.

56. Confessions, 10.16.

57. Confessions, 9.1.

58. Confessions, 10.5.

59. Confessions, 7.10.

60. See especially, Augustine's account of memory in De Trinitate, 10-11, which cannot be discussed here.

61. John Freccero, “Autobiography and Narrative,” in Reconstructing Individualism, edited by Thomas C. Heller et al. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986), 16-30, usefully explores this point.

62. Confessions, 10.23.

63. Ibid.

64. Confessions, 4.14.

65. City of God, 5.13.

Augustine and the Sources of the Divided Self

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