Saint Augustin | Page 6

been found. Certain inscribed
stone tablets, capitals and shafts of columns, a stone with an inscription
which belonged to a Catholic church--that is all which has been
discovered up to this present time.
Let us not ask for the impossible. Thagaste had columns--nay, perhaps
a whole street between a double range of columns, as at Thimgad. That
would be quite enough to delight the eyes of a little wondering boy. A
column, even injured, or scarcely cleansed from wrack and rubbish, has
about it something impressive. It is like a free melody singing among

the heavy masses of the building. To this hour, in our Algerian villages,
the mere sight of a broken column entrances and cheers us--a white
ghost of beauty streaming up from the ruins among the modern hovels.
There were columns at Thagaste.

II
THE FAMILY OF A SAINT
It was in this pleasant little town, shaded and beautified for many years
now by the arts of Rome, that the parents of Augustin lived.
His father, Patricius, affords us a good enough type of the Romanized
African. He belonged to the order of Decuriones, to the "very brilliant
urban council of Thagaste" (_splendidissimus ordo Thagastensis_), as
an inscription at Souk-Ahras puts it. Although these strong epithets
may be said to be part of the ordinary official phraseology, they
indicate, just the same, the importance which went with such a position.
In his township, Patricius was a kind of personage. His son assures us
that he was poor, but we may suspect the holy bishop of exaggerating
through Christian humility. Patricius must certainly have owned more
than twenty-five acres of land, for this was made a condition of being
elected to the curia. He had vineyards and orchards, of which Augustin
later on recalled the plentiful and sweet-tasting fruits. In short, he lived
in considerable style. It is true that in Africa household expenses have
never at any time been a great extravagance. Still, the sons of Patricius
had a pedagogue, a slave specially engaged to keep them under his eye,
like all the children of families comfortably off.
It has been said that as Augustin's father was a member of the curia, he
must have been a ruined man. The Decurions, who levied taxes and
made themselves responsible for their collection, were obliged to
supply any deficiency in the revenue out of their own money. Patricius,
it is thought, must have been one of the numerous victims of this
disastrous system. But no doubt there were a good many exceptions.
Besides, there is nothing in Augustin's reminiscences which authorizes
us to believe that his father ever knew embarrassment, to say nothing of
actual poverty. What seems by far the most probable is that he lived as
well as he could upon the income of his estate as a small country
landowner. In Africa people are satisfied with very little. Save for an
unusually bad year following a time of long drought, or a descent of

locusts, the land always gives forth enough to feed its master.
To hunt, to ride horseback, now and then to go on parade, to look after
his small-holders and agricultural slaves, to drive one of those bargains
in which African cunning triumphs--such were the employments of
Patricius. In short, he drifted through life on his little demesne.
Sometimes this indolent man was overcome by a sudden passion for
work; or again he was seized by furious rages. He was violent and
brutal. At such moments he struck out right and left. He would even
have hit his wife or flogged the skin off her back if the quietude of this
woman, her dignity and Christian mildness, had not overawed him. Let
us not judge this kind of conduct by our own; we shall never
understand it. The ancient customs, especially the African customs,
were a disconcerting mixture of intense refinement and heedless
brutality.
That is why it will not do to exaggerate the outbursts of Patricius,
which his son mentions discreetly. Although he may not have been
very faithful to his wife, that was in those days, more than in ours, a
venial sin in the eyes of the world. At heart the African has always
longed for a harem in his house; he inclines naturally to the polygamy
of Muslemism. In Carthage, and elsewhere, public opinion was full of
indulgence for the husband who allowed himself liberties with the
serving-women. People laughed at it, and excused the man. It is true
they were rather harder on the matron who took the same kind of
liberty with her men-slaves. However, that went on too. The Bishop of
Hippo, in his sermons, strongly rebuked the Christian married couples
for these frequent adulteries which were scarcely regarded as errors.
Patricius was a pagan, and this