mpares to a cup-bearer presenting a costly
goblet, but without anything in it. And when it became clear that this
high-priest of pretended wisdom was ignorant of the things in which he
was supposed to excel, but which Augustine himself had already learned,
his disappointment was so great that he lost faith both in the teacher
and his doctrines. Thus this Faustus, "neither willing nor witting it,"
was the very man who loosened the net which had ensnared Augustine for
so many years.

He was now thirty years of age, and had taught rhetoric in Carthage, the
capital of Northern Africa, with brilliant success, for three years; but
panting for new honors or for new truth, he removed to Rome, to pursue
both his profession and his philosophical studies. He entered the
capital of the world in the height of its material glories, but in the
decline of its political importance, when Damasus occupied the episcopal
throne, and Saint Jerome was explaining the Scriptures to the high-born
ladies of Mount Aventine, who grouped around him,--women like Paula,
Fabiola, and Marcella. Augustine knew none of these illustrious people.
He lodged with a Manichean, and still frequented the meetings of the
sect; convinced, indeed, that the truth was not with them, but
despairing to find it elsewhere. In this state of mind he was drawn to
the doctrines of the New Academy,--or, as Augustine in his
"Confessions" calls them, the Academics,--whose representatives,
Arcesilaus and Carneades, also made great pretensions, but denied the
possibility of arriving at absolute truth,--aiming only at probability.
However lofty the speculations of these philosophers, they were
sceptical in their tendency. They furnished no anchor for such an
earnest thinker as Augustine. They gave him no consolation. Yet his
dislike of Christianity remained.

Moreover, he was disappointed with Rome. He did not find there the great
men he sought, or if great men were there he could not get access to
them. He found himself in a moral desert, without friends and congenial
companions. He found everybody so immersed in pleasure, or gain, or
frivolity, that they had no time or inclination for the quest for truth,
except in those circles he despised. "Truth," they cynically said, "what
_is_ truth? Will truth enable us to make eligible matches with rich
women? Will it give us luxurious banquets, or build palaces, or procure
chariots of silver, or robes of silk, or oysters of the Lucrine l