36 
Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
devastation of Africa at this hour by hordes of African barbarians, 
to whom no resistance is offered, while you are engrossed with 
such embarrassments in your own circumstances, and are taking 
no measures for averting this calamity! Who would ever have 
believed, who would have feared, after Boniface had become a 
Count of the Empire and of Africa, and had been placed in com¬ 
mand in Africa with so large an army and so great authority, 
that the same man who formerly, as Tribune, kept all these bar¬ 
barous tribes in peace, by storming their strongholds, and menac¬ 
ing them with his small band of brave confederates, should now 
have suffered the barbarians to be so bold, to encroach so far, to 
destroy and plunder so much, and to turn into deserts such vast 
regions once densely peopled! Where were any found who did 
not predict that, as soon as you obtained the authority of Count, 
the African hordes would be not only checked but made tribu¬ 
taries to the Koman Empire! ... If these benefits, though 
earthly and transitory, are conferred on you by the Roman Em¬ 
pire,—for that Empire itself is earthly, not heavenly, and cannot 
bestow what it has not in its power,—if, I say, benefits are con¬ 
ferred on you, return not evil for good. . . These, no 
doubt, are the words of a mediaeval transcendentalist, but they 
are hardly the language of a luke-warm patriot nor of an ill-bal¬ 
anced fanatic. 
Augustine misjudged the seriousness of the contemporary situation. 
As everyone knows, the rhetoric of the great church father is 
frequently characterized by a refrain of weariness and woe: Con- 
cutitur mundus, excutitur vetus homo; premitur caro, liquescit 
spiritus.^'^ To translate is to lose the sob of it. Perit mundus, 
senescit mundus . . . lahorat anhelitu senectutis.^^ Notwith- 
Ep. CCXX, in Goldbacher, op. cit., LVII, and Pat. Lat., XXXIII. Tr. Ounningbam. 
Of. Ep. COXXVIII, to bishop Honoratus, advising the clergy to remain by their flocks 
in time of danger. The advice rests on distinctly religious grounds but illustrates, 
none the less, the active and practical side of Augustine’s genius (Goldbacher and Pat. 
Lat., ut sup.) Of., also, Joseph McCabe, St. Augustine and His Age, 1903, 487 et seq. 
Pew first class biographies are less sympathetic in their treatment of their subjects. 
^ Sermo CCXCVI, ut sup. 
isSermo LXXXI, in Pat. Lat., XXXVIII. Of. Sermo CCXCVI; “Audistis fratres, 
simul audivimus: Erunt bella, erunt tumultus, erunt pressurae, erunt fames. Quare nobis 
ipsis contrarii sumus, ut quando leguntur credamus, quando implentur, murmuremus? 
Sermo CV: Virgil is made to say that he placed the famous lines: His ego nec metas 
rerum, nec temper a pono; imperium sine fine dedi, into the mouth of Jove as not be¬ 
lieving in their truth, and to affirm that his true views are to be found in the Georgies: 
non res Romanae perituraque regna. Ep. XCIX (to Italica) : omnes autem nos dominus 
consolatur, qui et haec temporalia mala praedixit et post haec bona aeterna promisit. 
Ep. CXXVII, in Goldbacher, XLIV and Pat. Lat., XXXIII: Labores et pericula et 
.exitia huius transitoriae vitae. Sermo XI. 
