Shannon Costello

With what effrontery, then, with what assurance, with what impudence, with what folly, or rather insanity, do they refuse to impute these disasters to their own gods, and impute the present to our Christ! (106)

Augustine had hundreds of years of Roman history in which to locate a myriad of disasters to repeatedly make his point.

Between this book and Wikipedia I learned a lot of Roman history. I knew so little that the going was extremely rough at first (and extremely slow throughout the book). What was most helpful for me was getting the historical framework so I could understand individual events in context- the monarchy was first, then the republic, then the empire. Perhaps the most confusing aspect was the fuzzy no man’s land between myth and fact. It seems that Romulus (first Roman King, of Sabine women fame) existed, but it is less likely that he was descended from the gods.

I puzzled further over Augustine’s use of the same arguments to attack the Roman gods that were used earlier against Christians. I guess the above quote is helpful to me in that it provides context. Augustine decided to write The City of God in defense of his faith. The attackers were thinking hypocritically, or at least illogically, because they did not consider that the same questions might be asked of them, and they were without answers. Augustine first defends his own God and then attacks the Roman gods. I think I can live with that.