Augustine of Hippo

Confessiones

Augustine (354–430) was born at Thagaste, a small inland town in Roman Numidia (today Souk Ahras in eastern Algeria) into a family of modest means. His father Patricius was a town councillor who leaned on a wealthy neighbour to keep his clever son in school, and a pagan until his deathbed. His mother Monica was a Christian of formidable determination, and she appears throughout her son’s writings as the person he could neither satisfy nor escape. He was educated at Thagaste, then at Madauros, then at Carthage, the second city of the Latin West. He became a teacher of rhetoric at Carthage, moved to Rome in 383, and from the autumn of 384 served at the imperial court at Milan as rhetorician, writing public speeches. For nine of those years, he was a Manichee. At Milan he heard Ambrose preach, read the Platonists, and in the summer of 386 underwent the conversion he describes in Book 8; he was baptised the following Easter, and Monica died at Ostia while they waited for a ship home. He never left Africa again. Ordained priest at Hippo Regius in 391, allegedly against his will, and made bishop there in 395, he spent the next thirty-five years preaching, arbitrating property disputes, answering letters and writing; some five million of his words survive. He died on 28 August 430, in the third month of the Vandal siege of his city.

He began writing the Confessions around 397, in his early forties and a year or two into the episcopate, and had finished by about 401. It runs to thirteen books: the first nine tell his life as far as Monica’s death, the tenth turns to memory and to the temptations he was still fighting at the time of writing, and the last three are an extended reading of the opening of Genesis. Confessio in his Latin means two things at once – the admission of sin and the acknowledgement of praise – and the book does both without ever separating them. What has no real precedent is the address: from the first sentence to the last Augustine is speaking to God and not to us, so that the reader is permanently in the position of overhearing a confession. It is also written in two tenses. Tunc and nunc, then and now, turn up in the same sentences, and much of the book’s peculiar force comes from the bishop’s refusal to be either indulgent toward the young man he is describing or simply disgusted by him.

Our passage opens Book 3, and finds him newly arrived at Carthage, sixteen or seventeen, fatherless and living on other people’s money. What he did there he tells us himself. Within a year or so he had taken into his house a woman he never once names, and stayed with her some thirteen years, faithfully, as he is careful to say; in 372 she bore him a son, and they called the boy Adeodatus, “given by God.” She was sent back to Africa from Milan in 385, when Monica had arranged a respectable marriage for him, and Augustine writes that his heart was cut and left bleeding. Adeodatus died at about seventeen. While in Carthage, Augustine studied rhetoric, went to the theatre constantly, and hung about the fringes of a student gang who called themselves the eversores, the Wreckers. The first half of what follows (3.1.1) is Carthage and love, and contains one of the most quoted sentences in the book: nondum amabam, et amare amabam, “I was not yet in love, and I was in love with loving.” The second (3.2.2–4) is about the theatre, asking the eternal question: why does a person want to feel pain while watching a play, while he would do anything to avoid suffering in life?

We are reading the text edited by James J. O’Donnell, a revision of Skutella and Verheijen with some lighter punctuation is his own. His commentary on the whole of the Confessions is freely available at https://www.stoa.org/hippo/ and is the single most useful companion for a reader working through the Latin. For Augustine’s life, Peter Brown’s Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, new edition with an epilogue (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), remains unsurpassed and is a pleasure to read.

The text is suited to upper intermediate readers of Latin (B2 level), though it is harder than it looks. The vocabulary is not difficult and the sentences are mostly short; what is demanding is the density: antithesis, repetition, rhyme, and puns that cannot be carried into English. For this reason, the text analysis will not include identifying constructions that this level’s learners should be familiar with, and will spend its time instead on what the Latin is doing that a translation cannot show. Two things are worth knowing about in advance: Augustine writes late Latin, so expect quod and quia clauses where classical prose would use the accusative and infinitive; and he writes biblical Latin, so expect idioms taken over from the Vulgate (ut quid for “why, for instance) and outright quotations without explicit reference.

TEXT

Veni Carthaginem, et circumstrepebat me undique sartago flagitiosorum amorum. Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, et secretiore indigentia oderam me minus indigentem. Quaerebam quid amarem, amans amare, et oderam securitatem et viam sine muscipulis, quoniam fames mihi erat intus ab interiore cibo, te ipso, deus meus, et ea fame non esuriebam, sed eram sine desiderio alimentorum incorruptibilium, non quia plenus eis eram, sed quo inanior, fastidiosior. Et ideo non bene valebat anima mea et ulcerosa proiciebat se foras, miserabiliter scalpi avida contactu sensibilium. Sed si non haberent animam, non utique amarentur. Amare et amari dulce mihi erat, magis si et amantis corpore fruerer. Venam igitur amicitiae coinquinabam sordibus concupiscentiae candoremque eius obnubilabam de tartaro libidinis, et tamen foedus atque inhonestus, elegans et urbanus esse gestiebam abundanti vanitate. Rui etiam in amorem, quo cupiebam capi. Deus meus, misericordia mea, quanto felle mihi suavitatem illam et quam bonus aspersisti, quia et amatus sum, et perveni occulte ad vinculum fruendi, et conligabar laetus aerumnosis nexibus, ut caederer virgis ferreis ardentibus zeli et suspicionum et timorum et irarum atque rixarum.

Rapiebant me spectacula theatrica, plena imaginibus miseriarum mearum et fomitibus ignis mei. Quid est quod ibi homo vult dolere cum spectat luctuosa et tragica, quae tamen pati ipse nollet? Et tamen pati vult ex eis dolorem spectator et dolor ipse est voluptas eius. Quid est nisi mirabilis insania? Nam eo magis eis movetur quisque, quo minus a talibus affectibus sanus est, quamquam, cum ipse patitur, miseria, cum aliis compatitur, misericordia dici solet. Sed qualis tandem misericordia in rebus fictis et scenicis? Non enim ad subveniendum provocatur auditor sed tantum ad dolendum invitatur, et actori earum imaginum amplius favet cum amplius dolet. Et si calamitates illae hominum, vel antiquae vel falsae, sic agantur ut qui spectat non doleat, abscedit inde fastidiens et reprehendens; si autem doleat, manet intentus et gaudens lacrimat.

Ergo amantur et dolores. Certe omnis homo gaudere vult. An cum miserum esse neminem libeat, libet tamen esse misericordem, quod quia non sine dolore est, hac una causa amantur dolores? Et hoc de illa vena amicitiae est. Sed quo vadit? Quo fluit? Ut quid decurrit in torrentem picis bullientis, aestus immanes taetrarum libidinum, in quos ipsa mutatur et vertitur per nutum proprium de caelesti serenitate detorta atque deiecta? Repudietur ergo misericordia? Nequaquam. Ergo amentur dolores aliquando, sed cave immunditiam, anima mea, sub tutore deo meo, deo patrum nostrorum et laudabili et superexaltato in omnia saecula, cave immunditiam. Neque enim nunc non misereor, sed tunc in theatris congaudebam amantibus cum sese fruebantur per flagitia, quamvis haec imaginarie gererent in ludo spectaculi. Cum autem sese amittebant, quasi misericors contristabar, et utrumque delectabat tamen. Nunc vero magis misereor gaudentem in flagitio quam velut dura perpessum detrimento perniciosae voluptatis et amissione miserae felicitatis. Haec certe verior misericordia, sed non in ea delectat dolor. Nam etsi approbatur officio caritatis qui dolet miserum, mallet tamen utique non esse quod doleret qui germanitus misericors est. Si enim est malivola benivolentia, quod fieri non potest, potest et ille qui veraciter sinceriterque miseretur cupere esse miseros, ut misereatur. Nonnullus itaque dolor approbandus, nullus amandus est. Hoc enim tu, domine deus, qui animas amas, longe alteque purius quam nos et incorruptibilius misereris, quod nullo dolore sauciaris. Et ad haec quis idoneus?

At ego tunc miser dolere amabam, et quaerebam ut esset quod dolerem, quando mihi in aerumna aliena et falsa et saltatoria ea magis placebat actio histrionis meque alliciebat vehementius qua mihi lacrimae excutiebantur. Quid autem mirum, cum infelix pecus aberrans a grege tuo et impatiens custodiae tuae turpi scabie foedarer? Et inde erant dolorum amores, non quibus altius penetrarer (non enim amabam talia perpeti qualia spectare), sed quibus auditis et fictis tamquam in superficie raderer. Quos tamen quasi ungues scalpentium fervidus tumor et tabes et sanies horrida consequebatur. Talis vita mea numquid vita erat, deus meus?

ANALYSIS

Notes:

1) Veni Carthaginem… sartago – the book opens on a pun that no translation survives. Sartago is a frying pan, and it sits one syllable away from Carthago: the city’s name turns into a spitting pan of fat as he says it. Circumstrepebat, “was crackling all around me,” keeps the joke going, as a sartago is something you hear before you see. Three words in, the reader knows this is going to be a very peculiar confession.

2) Nondum amabam, et amare amabam – “I was not yet in love, and I was in love with loving.” Perhaps the single most quoted sentence in the Confessions, and its power is entirely grammatical: the same verb appears as a finite form and as its own object. What follows in the paragraph is an anatomy of that condition: desire without a determinate object, looking for something to attach itself to.

3) secretiore indigentia oderam me minus indigentem – “with a more hidden neediness I hated myself for being less needy.” Two comparatives pulling against each other, and a psychological observation of some precision: he resented his own contentment, because contentment felt like a lack of intensity. Anyone who has been seventeen will recognise it.

4) viam sine muscipulis – “a road without mousetraps.” A startling drop into the vocabulary of the kitchen. Muscipula is a homely word, and Augustine keeps a lifelong fondness for it; in a later sermon he calls the Cross a mousetrap baited for the devil. Here the point is that safety felt boring: he hated the road with no traps on it.

5) quo inanior, fastidiosior – “the emptier, the more finicky.” Two comparatives, no verbs at all, and the sentence lands like a diagnosis revealing a paradox: this is a hunger (fames) that does not produce appetite but disgust. Note ea fame non esuriebam, “I was not hungry with that hunger” – he had the condition without the symptom.

Et ideo non bene valebat anima mea et ulcerosa proiciebat se foras, miserabiliter scalpi avida contactu sensibilium. Sed si non haberent animam, non utique amarentur. Amare et amari dulce mihi erat, magis si et amantis corpore fruerer.

Notes:

1) non bene valebat anima mea et ulcerosa – “my soul was not in good health, and covered in sores.” The medical metaphor entering here will run to the last line of the passage, with scabies, tumor, tabes and sanies on the way. Augustine thinks about sin through the body more consistently than almost any writer before him, and the vocabulary is clinical rather than moralising.

2) scalpi avida – “greedy to be scratched.” Scalpere is the ordinary verb for scratching an itch, and the passive infinitive after avida is a Greek-flavoured construction that Latin poets liked. Fingernails will come back in the final sentence of the chapter, and the two occurrences frame everything between them.

3) contactu sensibilium – “by contact with sensible things,” i.e. things available to the senses. Philosophical vocabulary (sensibilia as against intelligibilia) is purposefully dropped into the sentence about scratching.

4) sed si non haberent animam, non utique amarentur – “but if they had no soul, they would certainly not be loved.” A quick, important concession, easy to read past. Augustine is not saying that he loved bodies rather than persons. He is saying that what drew him was a person, and that this is exactly why the disorder mattered. Compare amantis corpore fruerer: frui, to enjoy something as an end in itself, is a loaded verb in his later vocabulary, where it is opposed to uti, to use something as a means.

Venam igitur amicitiae coinquinabam sordibus concupiscentiae candoremque eius obnubilabam de tartaro libidinis, et tamen foedus atque inhonestus, elegans et urbanus esse gestiebam abundanti vanitate. Rui etiam in amorem, quo cupiebam capi.

Notes:

1) venam amicitiae – “the vein of friendship.” Vena is both a blood vessel and a vein of water, a spring. This phrase is the structural spine of the passage, as it returns in the middle of the theatre argument (et hoc de illa vena amicitiae est), where the spring becomes a river, and the question is no longer whether the water is good but where it is running.

2) coinquinabam… obnubilabam – “I kept fouling… I kept clouding.” Two heavy compound verbs, both imperfect, both four syllables before the ending; they slow the clause down deliberately. Obnubilare, “to overcast,” is rare and faintly poetic. Note candorem, the brightness being clouded: candor means both whiteness and moral transparency.

3) de tartaro libidinis – “out of the Tartarus of lust.” Augustine helps himself to classical mythology as freely as to Scripture, and tartarus is certainly a very vivid metaphor for the deep abyss and a dungeon of torment in which lust had thrown him.

4) foedus atque inhonestus, elegans et urbanus esse gestiebam – “filthy and dishonourable, I was itching to be elegant and sophisticated.” Two pairs of adjectives set against each other across the sentence, with the gap between them as the point. Urbanus is precisely what a bright provincial boy wanted to be in the second city of the Latin West, and gestiebam – to be all agitated with wanting – is another subtle critique of his younger self.

Deus meus, misericordia mea, quanto felle mihi suavitatem illam et quam bonus aspersisti, quia et amatus sum, et perveni occulte ad vinculum fruendi, et conligabar laetus aerumnosis nexibus, ut caederer virgis ferreis ardentibus zeli et suspicionum et timorum et irarum atque rixarum.

Notes:

1) Deus meus, misericordia mea – the vocative turn. It is worth stopping at the first one of these to register what kind of book this is: the Confessions is addressed to God from beginning to end, and the reader is never the person being spoken to.

2) quanto felle… suavitatem illam… aspersisti – “with how much gall you sprinkled that sweetness.” Fel is gall, the bitter taste. The theological claim inside the image is that the bitterness was a mercy and was administered on purpose, which is why quam bonus, “and how good you were,” is jammed into the middle of the sentence rather than left to the end.

3) vinculum fruendi… conligabar laetus aerumnosis nexibus – “the bond of enjoyment… happily I was being tied up in wretched knots.” Three words for binding inside one clause (vinculum, conligare, nexus), and laetus set directly against aerumnosis: glad, in miserable chains. The passive verbs matter – things were being done to him, at his own invitation.

4) virgis ferreis ardentibus zeli et suspicionum et timorum et irarum atque rixarum – “with the red-hot iron rods of jealousy and suspicions and fears and angers and quarrels.” The polysyndeton (et… et… et… atque) makes the list feel like it is still going. What is striking is how unromantic and how specific it is: not sin in the abstract, but the actual daily texture of a jealous relationship, remembered accurately by a man of forty-three.

Notes:

1) Rapiebant me spectacula theatrica – “theatrical shows kept carrying me off.” Rapere is a violent verb – seizure, abduction, plunder – and putting it first makes the theatre the agent and Augustine the object. He did not go to the theatre; the theatre took him.

2) fomitibus ignis mei – “the kindling of my own fire.” Fomes is tinder, and the word had a long theological future ahead of it. Note miseriarum mearum and ignis mei: what he watched on stage was already inside him, which is why it caught.

3) Quid est quod ibi homo vult dolere – “what is it that makes a person want to grieve there?” Watch the tense change. Up to this point the paragraph has been in the narrative imperfect; from here to the end of the argument Augustine writes in the present. He stops remembering and starts thinking, and the shift is audible in the Latin.

4) dolor ipse est voluptas eius – “the pain itself is his pleasure.” The paradox stated without cushioning. This is the problem later philosophers would call the paradox of tragedy – Hume wrote in his 1757 essay “Of Tragedy” that spectators are “pleased in the proportion as they are afflicted.”

5) mirabilis insania – “an astonishing madness.” Insania is the ordinary word for mental illness, not a figure of speech, and it belongs with the medical vocabulary running through the passage.

Nam eo magis eis movetur quisque, quo minus a talibus affectibus sanus est, quamquam, cum ipse patitur, miseria, cum aliis compatitur, misericordia dici solet. Sed qualis tandem misericordia in rebus fictis et scenicis? Non enim ad subveniendum provocatur auditor sed tantum ad dolendum invitatur, et actori earum imaginum amplius favet cum amplius dolet.

Notes:

1) eo magis… quo minus… sanus est – “each is moved the more, the less healthy he is.” The correlative comparatives return, and so does the medical frame: susceptibility to staged emotion is being treated as a symptom, and the strength of the response is a measure of the illness.

2) miseria… compatitur, misericordia – three related words doing definitional work in a single clause. Miseria is the wretchedness you undergo; misericordia is miser plus cor, a heart made wretched by someone else’s trouble; compati is the exact Latin calque of Greek sympathein, to suffer alongside.

3) qualis tandem misericordia in rebus fictis et scenicis? – “what sort of pity, after all, is there in made-up and stagey things?” It is not pity if it has nobody on the other end to receive it.

4) non ad subveniendum provocatur… sed tantum ad dolendum invitatur – “he is not roused to go to the rescue, but merely invited to grieve.” The heart of the critique, and the two verbs carry it: provocare is a summons, invitare is an offer you may decline. Real pity issues in subvenire, going to help; theatrical pity terminates in the feeling itself and has nowhere to go.

5) actori… amplius favet cum amplius dolet – “he applauds the actor the more, the more he grieves.” The observation is empirical and devastating: the audience rewards the performer in proportion to the pain inflicted on them (Hume again).

Et si calamitates illae hominum, vel antiquae vel falsae, sic agantur ut qui spectat non doleat, abscedit inde fastidiens et reprehendens; si autem doleat, manet intentus et gaudens lacrimat. Ergo amantur et dolores. Certe omnis homo gaudere vult. An cum miserum esse neminem libeat, libet tamen esse misericordem, quod quia non sine dolore est, hac una causa amantur dolores?

Notes:

1) vel antiquae vel falsae – “either ancient or fictitious.” A careful distinction: the disasters staged are either historical (Troy, Thebes) or invented outright. Either way they are not present, and nobody in the audience can do anything about them, which is the condition the whole argument turns on.

2) abscedit inde fastidiens et reprehendens – “he leaves, turning up his nose and complaining.” The disappointed theatregoer demanding his money back because the tragedy failed to hurt him. Augustine is being sarcastic.

3) gaudens lacrimat – “he weeps, and enjoys it.” Two words, present participle against finite verb, and the entire paradox is in them.

4) certe omnis homo gaudere vult – “surely every human being wants to be happy.” The axiom Augustine took from Cicero – from the Hortensius, the book he would read at eighteen – and never let go of it. It is the premise that makes the taste for grief a genuine puzzle rather than just a bad habit.

5) an… hac una causa amantur dolores? – the proposed solution, and note that it arrives as a question. We love griefs because we love being compassionate, and compassion cannot be had without grief. An introduces a tentative alternative rather than an assertion, and Augustine will spend the rest of the chapter testing it.

Et hoc de illa vena amicitiae est. Sed quo vadit? Quo fluit? Ut quid decurrit in torrentem picis bullientis, aestus immanes taetrarum libidinum, in quos ipsa mutatur et vertitur per nutum proprium de caelesti serenitate detorta atque deiecta? Repudietur ergo misericordia? Nequaquam. Ergo amentur dolores aliquando, sed cave immunditiam, anima mea, sub tutore deo meo, deo patrum nostrorum et laudabili et superexaltato in omnia saecula, cave immunditiam.

Notes:

1) Et hoc de illa vena amicitiae est – “and this too comes from that vein of friendship.” The image from the first paragraph returns, and the argument turns on it. Pity at the theatre and the appetite that ruined his twenties are drawn from the same source. This is why the passage is not a denunciation: the water is good, and the whole question is the channel.

2) Sed quo vadit? Quo fluit? Ut quid decurrit… – three questions, each shorter to start and longer to finish, accelerating into the image. Ut quid for “why” is biblical Latin, calqued from the Greek of the Septuagint and familiar to any reader of the Psalms (Deus meus, ut quid dereliquisti me?).

3) torrentem picis bullientis – “a torrent of boiling pitch.” Set beside de tartaro libidinis in the first paragraph, the topography of hell keeps supplying Augustine with his hydraulics: the clear spring and the boiling river are the same water at different points in its course.

4) per nutum proprium… detorta atque deiecta – “by its own inclination, twisted aside and flung down from heavenly calm.” Nutus is a nod of the head, hence an inclination, hence an act of will. The stream diverts itself; nothing pushes it: Augustine’s account of the will in a subordinate clause.

5) deo patrum nostrorum et laudabili et superexaltato in omnia saecula – a direct quotation from the Song of the Three Young Men (Daniel 3:52–53). The register jumps without warning into liturgical Latin at exactly the moment he turns to address his own soul. Note the repetition of Cave immunditiam before and after the invocation, wrapping the prayer around the warning.

Neque enim nunc non misereor, sed tunc in theatris congaudebam amantibus cum sese fruebantur per flagitia, quamvis haec imaginarie gererent in ludo spectaculi. Cum autem sese amittebant, quasi misericors contristabar, et utrumque delectabat tamen.

Notes:

1) Neque enim nunc non misereor – “for it is not that I now feel no pity.” A double negative, placed defensively at the head of the sentence. Augustine is guarding against the obvious misreading of everything he has just said, and the care he takes over it tells you he expected to be misread.

2) tunc… nunc – there they are, in adjacent clauses. This then and now structure is the engine of the whole autobiographical half of the Confessions, and it is why the book is not a memoir: nothing from the past is reported without the present standing next to it.

3) congaudebam amantibus – “I rejoiced along with the lovers.” Congaudere is the exact positive counterpart of compatifrom the previous paragraph – co-joying against co-suffering.

4) quasi misericors contristabar – “I was saddened as though compassionate.” The quasi delivers the verdict on the whole enterprise. His pity was a performance, exactly matching the performance on stage.

5) utrumque delectabat tamen – “and yet both gave pleasure.” This is the sentence that closes the case. Whether the lovers came together or lost each other, he enjoyed it – so the object of the emotion was never what mattered; only the sensation was.

Nunc vero magis misereor gaudentem in flagitio quam velut dura perpessum detrimento perniciosae voluptatis et amissione miserae felicitatis. Haec certe verior misericordia, sed non in ea delectat dolor. Nam etsi approbatur officio caritatis qui dolet miserum, mallet tamen utique non esse quod doleret qui germanitus misericors est.

Notes:

1) magis misereor gaudentem in flagitio quam… perpessum – “I feel more pity for the man rejoicing in his disgrace than for the man who has suffered hard things.” Ordinary sympathy is turned inside out: the successful sinner is in worse condition than the unlucky one, and needs more pity, not less.

2) detrimento perniciosae voluptatis et amissione miserae felicitatis – “by the loss of a ruinous pleasure and the forfeiting of a wretched happiness.” Two oxymorons back to back, each with the adjective quietly cancelling its noun. The construction does the argument’s work without stating it.

3) officio caritatis – “by the duty of charity,” the criterion of Christian ethics: grief for another is approved when it is an officium, not a taste being indulged.

4) mallet tamen utique non esse quod doleret – “he would still, certainly, prefer that there were nothing to grieve about.” This is a decisive test for genuine compassion, since it does not involve a taste for pity.

5) germanitus – “genuinely.” A rare adverb, from germanus, “born of the same parents,” hence “authentic, of the true stock.”

Si enim est malivola benivolentia, quod fieri non potest, potest et ille qui veraciter sinceriterque miseretur cupere esse miseros, ut misereatur. Nonnullus itaque dolor approbandus, nullus amandus est. Hoc enim tu, domine deus, qui animas amas, longe alteque purius quam nos et incorruptibilius misereris, quod nullo dolore sauciaris. Et ad haec quis idoneus?

Notes:

1) si enim est malivola benivolentia, quod fieri non potest – “for if there is such a thing as ill-willing good-will, which is impossible.” Malivolentia and benivolentia are the same word with the sign reversed: wanting people to be wretched so that you can pity them would be malevolent benevolence, which is a paradox.

2) nonnullus itaque dolor approbandus, nullus amandus est – “some grief, then, is to be approved; none is to be loved.” The conclusion of the entire argument in eight words, two gerundives, and the nonnullus / nullus resonance, a true slogan.

3) quod nullo dolore sauciaris – “in that you are wounded by no grief.” The theological resolution: God pities without suffering, and so pities more purely than we can. Whether that is a satisfying answer to the problem is a genuinely open question.

4) Et ad haec quis idoneus? – “and who is adequate for these things?” A quotation of 2 Corinthians 2:16. The argument does not end in a conclusion; it ends by handing the question over to Paul, which is Augustine’s way of admitting that he has reached the edge of what he can say.

Notes:

1) aerumna aliena et falsa et saltatoria – “someone else’s distress, fictitious, and danced.” Saltatoria is the detail that corrects a modern reader’s picture. What Augustine went to see at the theatre was overwhelmingly pantomime, the dominant theatrical form of late antiquity, in which a masked solo dancer mimed a mythological story to music and a sung libretto. He is not describing an evening of Sophocles.

2) histrionis – a stage performer. The word carried real weight: under Roman law actors were infames, subject to legal disabilities and formally disgraced. Augustine’s choice of noun registers the contempt in which the profession was held – including, and this is the point, by the people who adored it.

3) qua mihi lacrimae excutiebantur – “by which tears were knocked out of me.” Excutere is to shake or beat something loose. The tears are not offered; they are extracted, and the performer who extracted the most was the one he liked best.

4) infelix pecus aberrans a grege tuo… turpi scabie – “an unlucky beast straying from your flock… foul with mange.” The lost sheep of Luke 15 arrives and is immediately soured by veterinary detail. Scabies is mange – and mange itches, which brings back scalpi avida from the opening paragraph.

5) tamquam in superficie raderer – “as though I were being scraped on the surface.” The entire theatre argument compressed into one image. He wanted feeling that remained on the surface: non enim amabam talia perpeti qualia spectare – “for I did not want to undergo the sort of thing I liked to watch.”

6) quasi ungues scalpentium fervidus tumor et tabes et sanies horrida – “like the fingernails of people scratching: a burning swelling, and rot, and horrid discharge.” The most physically repellent sentence in the passage, and its climax. Scratching an itch produces an infected wound; shallow feeling produces something that is not shallow at all. The medical vocabulary that began with ulcerosa twenty lines earlier closes here.

7) Talis vita mea numquid vita erat, deus meus? – “was such a life of mine a life at all, my God?” Numquid expects the answer no. The chapter ends where it started, on a direct address, and on a word said twice – vita… vita – with the second one calling the first one into question.

If you have ever sat up too late finishing a film that was making you thoroughly miserable, Augustine already had this argument with you around the year 397. 🎭

Source:

Augustine of Hippo. Confessiones, ed. James J. O’Donnell, 3.1.1–3.2.4. In: Augustine: Confessions, 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. Electronic edition: https://www.stoa.org/hippo/.

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