the case with the Church and
see of Sicca. At the time of which we write, history preserves no record
of any bishop as exercising his pastoral functions in that city. In matter
of fact there was none. The last bishop, an amiable old man, had in the
course of years acquired a considerable extent of arable land, and
employed himself principally, for lack of more spiritual occupation, in
reaping, stacking, selling, and sending off his wheat for the Roman
market. His deacon had been celebrated in early youth for his boldness in
the chase, and took part in the capture of lions and panthers (an act of
charity towards the peasants round Sicca) for the Roman amphitheatre. No
priests were to be found, and the bishop became _parochus_ till his death.
Afterwards infants and catechumens lost baptism; parents lost faith, or at
least love; wanderers lost repentance and conversion. For a while there
was a flourishing meeting-house of Tertullianists, who had scared more
humble minds by pronouncing the eternal perdition of every Catholic; there
had also been various descriptions of Gnostics, who had carried off the
clever youths and restless speculators; and then there had been the lapse
of time, gradually consuming the generation which had survived the
flourishing old days of the African Church. And the result was, that in
the year 250 it was difficult to say of whom the Church of Sicca
consisted. There was no bishop, no priest, no deacon. There was the old
_mansionarius_ or sacristan; there were two or three pious women, married
or single, who owed their religion to good mothers; there were some slaves
who kept to their faith, no one knew how or why; there were a vast many
persons who ought to be Catholics, but were heretics, or nothing at all,
or all but pagans, and sure to become pagans on the asking; there were
Agellius and his brother Juba, and how far these two had a claim to the
Christian name we now proceed to explain.

They were about the ages of seven and eight when their father died, and
they fell under the guardianship of their uncle, whose residence at Sicca
had been one of the reasons which determined Strabo to settle there. This
man, being possessed of some capital, drove a thriving trade in idols,
large and small, amulets, and the like instruments of the established
superstition. His father had come to Carthage in the service of one of the
assessors of the proconsul of the day; and his son, finding competition
ran too h