Why, then, did I hate the Greek classics, full of like fictions to those in Virgil?  For Homer also curiously wove similar stories, and is most pleasant, yet was disagreeable to my boyish taste.  In truth, the difficulty of a foreign tongue dashed as with gall all the sweetness of the Greek fable.  For not one word of it did I understand, and to make me learn I was urged vehemently with cruel threats and stripes.  Yet I learned with delight the fictions in Latin concerning the wicked doings of Jove and Juno, and for this I was pronounced a helpful boy, being applauded above many of my own age and class.

I will now call to mind my past uncleanness and the carnal corruptions of my soul; not because I love them, but that I may love Thee, O my God.  What was it that I delighted in, but to love and to be loved?  But I kept not the measure of love of soul to soul, friendship’s bright boundary, for I could not discern the brightness of love from the fog of lust.  Where was I, and how far was I exiled from the delights of Thy house, in that sixteenth year of my age, when the madness of licence took the rule over me?  My friends, meanwhile, took no care by marriage to prevent my fall; their only care was that I should learn to speak excellently, and become a great orator.  Now, for that year my studies were intermitted; whilst, after my return from Madaura—­a neighbouring city whither I had journeyed to learn grammar and rhetoric—­the expenses for a further journey to Carthage were provided for me; and that rather by sacrifice than by the ordinary means of my father, who was but a poor citizen of Tagaste.  But yet this same father had no concern how I grew towards Thee; or how chaste I were; or, so that I were but eloquent, how barren I were to Thy culture, O God.

But while in that my sixteenth year I lived with my parents, the briers of unclean desires grew rank over my head, and there was no hand to root them out.  My father rejoiced to see me growing towards manhood, but in my mother’s breast Thou hadst already begun Thy temple, whereas my father was as yet but a catechumen, and that but recently.  I remember how she, seized with a holy fear and trembling, in private warned me with great anxiety against fornication.  These seemed to me womanish advices which I should blush to obey.  But they were Thine, and I knew it not.  I ran headlong with such blindness that amongst my equals I was ashamed of being less shameless than others when I heard them boast of their wickedness.  I would even say I had done what I had not done that I might not seem contemptible exactly in proportion as I was innocent.

II.—­Monica’s Prayers and Augustine’s Paganism

To Carthage I came, where there sang in my ears a cauldron of unholy loves.  I denied the spring of friendship with the filth of concupiscence, and I beclouded its brightness with the hell of lust.