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5
GI L L I A N C L A R K

Augustine’s Virgil

‘I deferred the discussion to another day, as we had begun when the sun
was already setting, and most of the day had been spent in organizing farm
business and reading Virgil book 1’ (Contra academicos 1.5.15). Augustine
set his earliest surviving work (386 ad ), a philosophical dialogue, in a
country house where the participants are at leisure. His model was Cicero’s
dialogue Academica. There the participants are leading Romans who own
villas near the bay of Naples; Augustine’s, in a borrowed farm at Cassiciacum
outside Milan, are his mother, his teenage son, his brother, two cousins,
his friend Alypius, and two students, all from Thagaste in North Africa.
Augustine had been a student, then a teacher, of literature and rhetoric. He
crossed the sea from Carthage to Italy and taught briefly at Rome before his
appointment in 384 as Professor of Rhetoric at Milan, then a base of the
western imperial court. His duties included praise speeches (Conf. 6.6.9);
panegyrics by others show how Virgil could be evoked in poetry and prose.1
Two years later, Augustine made a commitment to a celibate Christian life
of prayer and study. In late summer 386 he left for Cassiciacum, where he
read Virgil with the students, and everyone, whatever their level of educa-
tion, took part in philosophical discussion. On return to Milan, Augustine
resigned his post, and after his baptism in 387 he decided to return to Africa.
There he became a priest, then bishop, of the seaport Hippo Regius.
Augustine deserves a chapter in this Companion because he has so much
to offer on the experience and the effect of reading Virgil, whom he called
poeta noster (‘our poet’, Contra Acad. 3.9) because Virgil was Latin, but
later ‘their poet’ because Virgil was not Christian.2 In late antiquity Virgil
was central to the education and culture of Latin speakers, as Homer was for
Greek speakers. If parents could afford education, their sons studied with

1
Rees (2017); Ware (2017).
2
MacCormack (1998) remains the classic study.
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a grammaticus who taught language and literature, especially Virgil, and

especially the Aeneid.3 The commentaries of Augustine’s contemporaries
Donatus (teacher of Jerome) and Servius show how students were trained
to appreciate Virgil’s choice of words, figures of speech, and techniques for
conveying emotion, and to understand Virgil on the history, traditions and
religious rituals of Rome.4 Virgil, who told how the dutiful Aeneas founded
Rome as Jupiter willed, with the promise of empire without limit, could also
be read as a source of inspired wisdom on human life in a world governed by
a divine power which is active under many names.5 This was not necessarily
a problem for Christian parents: everyone knew that poets make things up,
so Virgil’s gods could be seen as traditional poetic ornament, just as statues
and temples of the gods could be seen as civic and artistic heritage.6
Quoting a line or phrase of Virgil, in Africa or in any other part of
the Latin-speaking empire, signalled a shared culture; Augustine did not
suggest that Africans felt differently about Aeneas abandoning Carthage for
Rome. Some students, like Augustine and Jerome, responded so intensely
to Virgil that his lines came to mind in almost any circumstances, just as
Shakespeare still does for some English speakers. Augustine’s many works
include quotations from every book of the Aeneid (not just from the best-
known books, 2, 4 and 6) as well as the Georgics and the Eclogues.7 Some
Christians saw Virgil as himself a prophet of Christ, especially in Eclogue 4
on the birth of a wondrous child.8 Christian poets could write in dialogue
with Virgil, appropriating or adapting phrases and lines to make ‘our poet’
convey a Christian message. The extreme case is Proba, who in the intro-
duction to her Virgilian cento wrote, ‘I shall say how Virgil sang of Christ’s
pious gifts.’ In recent years these poets have come to be seen as innovative
rather than imitative.9 Augustine did not attempt Christian classical poetry,
or show awareness of contemporaries who did.10 But he too used Virgil for
Christian purposes, differently at different times, but always prompting the
question: How much Virgil did he want his readers to remember?
Augustine’s early philosophical dialogues provide a first example. ‘We
had not engaged in discussion for seven days, but were reading three books

3
Kaster (1988).
4
See Fowler, Casali, and Stok in this volume.
5
On Servius and Macrobius, see Pelttari (2014: 32–43).
6
See Braund in this volume on Virgil’s gods. See Ware (2017) on poetic fiction.
7
Hagendahl (1967).
8
Augustine thought Virgil was citing a prophecy by the Sibyl of Cumae (De civitate Dei
10.27). See further Hadas (2013: esp. 113–25).
9
See Pollmann (2017) on borrowing the authority of classical poets; Kaufmann (2017)
on varieties of allusion; McGill (2005) on the cento.
10
Clark (2017).
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of Virgil after the first, and I was lecturing [tractaremus] when it seemed
appropriate’ (Contra acad. 2.4.10).11 The student Licentius, entranced by
Aeneid books 2–4, declared his devotion to poetry. In another dialogue,
Licentius transferred his passion to philosophy, and Augustine’s joy broke
out in words taken from Virgil:12
Hic ego multo uberius cernens abundare laetitias meas quam vel optare
aliquando ausus sum, versum istum gestiens effudi: Sic pater ille deus faciat!
Perducet enim ipse, si sequimur quo nos ire iubet atque ubi ponere sedem, qui
dat modo augurium nostrisque illabitur animis. Nec enim altus Apollo est, qui
in speluncis, in montibus, in nemoribus, nidore turis pecudumque calamitate
concitatus implet insanos, sed alius profecto est, alius ille altus veridicus, atque
ipsa (quid enim verbis ambiam?) veritas, cuius vates sunt quicumque possunt
esse sapientes. Ergo aggrediemur, Licenti, freti pietate cultores, vestigiis nostris
ignem perniciosum fumosarum cupiditatum opprimamus.13

Here, perceiving that my joys were more richly abundant than I had ventured
even to wish, I exultantly uttered the line ‘May God the Father so grant!’ For
he will lead us if we follow where he tells us to go and to settle, he who now
gives the augury and slips into our souls. For it is not ‘lofty Apollo’ who in
caves, in mountains, in groves is aroused by fumes of incense and slaughter
of cattle and fills insane people, but clearly it is another, another is that lofty
truth-teller and (why circumvent with words?) truth itself, whose prophets
are all those capable of wisdom. So let us advance, Licentius, ‘worshippers
relying on devotion’, and tread down with our footsteps the pernicious fire of
smouldering desires. (Aug. De ordine 1.4.10)

‘Words taken from Virgil’ is a precise description. These sentences link parts
of three prayers to Apollo, taken from different contexts in the Aeneid,
and adapted to Augustine’s concerns. The first citation presents a diffi-
culty, because the line Virgil wrote is sic pater ille deum faciat, sic altus
Apollo (‘may the Father of gods so grant, may lofty Apollo!’, Aen. 10.875).
Augustine, or a Christian copyist, changed pater ille deum (‘the father of
gods’) to pater ille deus (‘God the Father’), and left out Apollo.14 If it was
Augustine who made the change, he left his readers to supply Apollo, and
continued by reporting in indirect speech an earlier prayer of Aeneas to
Apollo at Delos: quem sequimur? quove ire iubes? ubi ponere sedes? |
da, pater, augurium atque animis inlabere nostris (‘Whom do we follow?
Where do you tell us to go, where to settle? Give us an augury, father, and

11
Pucci (2014: 179–82) lists all the references to Virgil in the early dialogues.
12
Licentius continued to write poetry with allusions to Virgil. See Augustine, Epistula 26.
13
Text as in CCSL 29:94; words from Virgil in bold.
14
Wills (2010: 127) and Pucci (2014: 108) think that Augustine quoted the line.
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slip into our souls’, Aen. 3.88–9). But, Augustine declared, it is not ‘lofty
Apollo’ who gives guidance, and the god who ‘slips into our souls’ is not
the god, aroused by incense and blood sacrifice, who takes possession of a
prophet. Then Augustine exhorted Licentius with a third citation, from a
prayer by the Etruscan warrior Arruns to Apollo of Mount Soracte in Italy.
It invokes an unusual fire-walking rite to which Augustine gave moral sig-
nificance: medium freti pietate per ignem | cultores multa premimus vestigia
pruna (‘we worshippers, relying on devotion, through the midst of the
fire press our footsteps on the deep live coals’, Aen. 11.787–8). Licentius
abandoned poetry for philosophy, and Augustine used Virgil to show how
Christians abandon Virgil’s gods for devotion to the true God who gives
them direction and moral strength.
The envisaged audience for these dialogues would immediately hear
Virgil, but did Augustine want them to read Virgil differently, taking only
what could be used for Christian purposes and dismissing Apollo and the
rest of the story, as builders of churches reused columns and ornaments
taken from temples?15 In Augustine’s outburst to Licentius, sometimes the
unstated context is appropriate. The second prayer to Apollo comes from
a plea by Aeneas when the Trojan refugees have set sail not knowing for
where: ‘give us a home of our own; we are weary, give us walls and a people
and a city which will last’. But the first and third prayers must be removed
from their contexts in the fight for Italy. In the first, Aeneas responds to the
challenge of Mezentius, father of young Lausus whom Aeneas kills and then
pities; in the third, Arruns asks that his spear hit the virgin warrior Camilla,
and Apollo grants this but not the rest of his prayer, so he achieves glory
but dies.16
In his early career Augustine the teacher assumed that his hearers had
some knowledge of Virgil, but as a bishop in Africa his task was to expound
Christian scripture. He used the techniques he had learned for Latin lit-
erature, asking whether the text was correct, how it should be read, what
readers need to know, whether the author speaks in person or in char-
acter, whether the passage is literal or figurative. To understand a word or
phrase, he considered other uses by the author, believing that the same Spirit
inspired every writer of scripture.17 But he rarely quoted classical literature,
because preaching had to be inclusive. Some hearers, especially women,
lacked formal education; in the early dialogues Augustine’s mother Monica

15
On spolia, see MacCormack (1998: 37–44). Pucci (2014) argues for Augustine
‘recuperating’ Virgil.
16
In contrast, Macrobius (Sat. 5.3.7) discusses the prayer of Arruns and its precedents
in Homer.
17
E.g. Conf. 13.6.7–7.8.
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shows no awareness of Virgil, but quotes a hymn of Ambrose, Bishop of

Milan (De beata vita 4.35).18 Classical poetry was difficult, because metre
required unfamiliar words or word order, and metre was difficult to hear,
especially in the region where ‘African ears’ did not distinguish long from
short vowels; students, then as now, had to learn scansion.19
In letters to educated people, Augustine could cite Virgil; for example, in
a letter to the senator Volusianus, former proconsul of Africa:
nunc ergo quod Maro ait, et omnes videmus: amomum Assyrium vulgo
nascitur, quod autem ad adiutorium gratiae pertinet, quae in Christo est, ipse
est omnino quo duce si qua manent sceleris vestigia nostri, irrita perpetua
solvent formidine terras.

Now we all see what Virgil says: ‘Assyrian balm is born everywhere’; and in
relation to help from the grace which is in Christ, it is he with whom ‘as leader,
if any traces remain of our crime, they will be annulled and release the lands
from perpetual terror’.20 (Aug. Epist. 137.12)

In Confessions, written (397 ad ) after ten years of studying scripture,

Augustine assumed readers who recognized both scripture and Virgil.
Confessio means ‘acknowledgement’, of Augustine’s failings and of God’s
love. Augustine asked why, at school, he had to memorize the errores of
‘some man called Aeneas’ while forgetting his own wanderings (Conf.
1.13.20), and why he was made wretched by the suicide of the fictional
and adulterous Dido, not by his own spiritual dying. The wanderings of
Aeneas in search of a homeland, tossed on a stormy sea and following
divine commands he cannot understand, offered one (not the only) model
for Augustine’s wanderings in search of his true home.21 He made this evi-
dent in narrating his own stealthy departure from Carthage for Italy, leaving
on the shore an anguished woman who loves him (5.8.15). But Augustine’s
life did not follow the Virgilian model. Dido’s false gods bring her to des-
pair and suicide, whereas Monica’s devotion to the true God ensures that
her son is not lost; instead, like the mother of Euryalus (Aen. 9.492–3),
she follows her son ‘over land and sea’ to Italy when others stayed behind
(Conf. 6.1.1). Augustine’s God-given destination is not Rome, of which
he says little, but Milan and its Bishop Ambrose. The mother of Euryalus

18
On the education of women, see Clark (2015: 80–95). ‘Monica’ is the traditional
spelling; for ‘Monnica’, now preferred by many specialists, see Clark (2015: 126).
19
Clark (2017). On ‘African ears’, see De doctrina Christiana 4.65.
20
Augustine quotes Ecl. 4.25, 4.13–14. ‘Assyrian balm’, an exotic healing plant, is
accessible to all because the gospel is preached everywhere. See further Hadas
(2013: 121–4).
21
Bennett (1988) argues that Augustine modelled himself on Aeneas.
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laments her son’s death; Monica dies knowing that her son is Christian, and
he laments but hopes for her eternal life. The narrative part of Confessions
ends with Monica’s death at Ostia Tiberina, as Augustine and his friends
await return from Italy to Africa (9.8.17). This might prompt a memory of
Karthago, Italiam contra Tiberinaque longe | ostia (‘Carthage, far off, over
against Italy and the mouths of the Tiber’, Aen. 1.13–14); but Augustine
ended Book 9 not by reversing the Aeneid, but by requesting prayers for his
parents and his fellow Christians.
Augustine did not think that Christians should reject pagan literature.
He preferred the example of the people of Israel, who in their exodus from
Egypt borrowed from the worshippers of false gods real treasure which they
used in the service of the true God.22 Thus, even when writing on a central
Christian doctrine, Augustine could quote Virgil in arguing that the structure
of the human mind reflects the Trinity.23 But in Confessions he used Virgil
to condemn an education based on Virgil. He told (Conf. 1.17.27) how he
had won a school prize for a speech conveying verba Iunonis irascentis et
dolentis quod non posset Italia Teucrorum avertere regem (‘the words of
Juno angry and aggrieved that she could not turn the king of the Trojans
away from Italy’, Aen. 1.38). This was doubly wrong, because Juno was
fiction, and because her words conveyed damaging emotions. A fusion of
scripture and Virgil showed how it could have been:
laudes tuae, domine, laudes tuae per scripturas tuas suspenderent palmitem
cordis mei, et non raperetur per inania nugarum turpis praeda volatilibus.
Non enim uno modo sacrificatur transgressoribus angelis.

Your praises, Lord, your praises through your scriptures would have supported
the vine shoot of my heart, and it would not have been snatched away through
the follies of futility, a shameful spoil for birds. For there is more than one way
of sacrificing to the rebel angels. (Aug. Conf. 1.17.27)

The ‘vine-shoot of my heart’ (cor connotes both thought and feeling)

evokes the words of Jesus, ‘a vine shoot cannot bear fruit of itself unless it
remains on the vine … I am the vine, you are the vine shoots’ (John 15:4).
Turpis praeda volatilibus evokes Virgil’s words on the need to cultivate
fruit trees: otherwise they bear inferior fruit, et turpis avibus praedam fert
uva racemos (‘and the grape bears poor clusters, spoil for birds’, G. 2.60).
Studying Virgil instead of scripture is a failure to cultivate; turning from

22
Exod. 3:22; De doctr. Chr. 2.144–7.
23
De trinitate 14.11.14, quoting Aen. 3.628–9: ‘Ulysses was not forgetful of himself.’
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scriptural truth to fictional gods becomes a way of sacrificing to the ‘rebel

angels’ who turned from God to demand worship for themselves.
But is there such a sacrifice in every allusion to Virgil? Augustine’s
envisaged readers would recognize Virgil’s Juno, and might remember how
their teachers discussed the problem of an angry god who opposes the will
of the supreme god Jupiter.24 The fruit trees might be recognized only from
the metre. (If praeda volatilibus were translated ‘for daws to peck at’, how
many present-day readers would recognize Shakespeare and supply Iago’s
‘I will wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at; I am not what
I am’ from Othello Act 1, scene 1?) When Augustine said that his mother
married plenis nubilis annis (Aen. 7.53, Conf. 9.9.19), that may be only a
tag, a familiar phrase for ‘marriageable age’ that is not intended to evoke
Lavinia the bride of Aeneas (any more than ‘wearing your heart on your
sleeve’ evokes Iago), or even to evoke Virgil.
Augustine wrote in retrospect (Retractationes 2.6) that ‘the first ten books
[of Confessions] are about me, the last three about the holy scriptures’, but
even in the books ‘about me’, scripture, especially the poetry of the psalms,
displaces Virgil. In Confessions there is no mention of reading Virgil at
Cassiciacum: there Augustine is deeply moved by the psalms (9.4.8), as he
is by the psalms and hymns of the congregation at his baptism (9.6.14). At
Monica’s death a psalm and a hymn of Ambrose give consolation (9.12.31–
2). When Augustine reflects in book 10 on his present life, there are troub-
ling memories of sex, but no troubling memories of Virgil. Reflecting on
the sense of taste (10.31.46), Augustine did not draw on his mental con-
cordance for lines he used many years later, writing against a well-educated
bishop (Contra Iulianum 4.67), to distinguish satisfaction of hunger from
wanting to eat more.25 Reflecting on the sense of hearing (Conf. 10.33.50), he
wondered whether music distracts attention from the words of the psalms;
and it is a line from a hymn of Ambrose, not from Virgil, which provides the
example (11.27.35) for the movement of the mind through time.26
More than a decade after Confessions, Augustine began City of God (c.
ad 412) ‘to defend the city of God against those who prefer their own

24
MacCormack (1998: 132–41).
25
Aen. 1.216, postquam exempta fames epulis, mensaeque remotae; Aen. 1.184,
postquam exempta fames et amor compressus edendi.
26
In the early dialogue De ordine (2.14.39), Augustine used a line of Virgil (G. 2.480–1)
to illustrate the difference between hearing sound patterns and hearing what they
signify; in De musica, begun about the same time (c. 387), the technical discussion in
books 1–5 uses the opening lines of the Aeneid, but Book 6, on moving from physical to
immutable ‘numbers’, uses Ambrose. See further Clark (2017: 428–30).
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gods to its founder’. Virgil became a witness for the defence.27 Augustine
contrasted two cities (civitates), which prove to be two communities of all
rational beings, angels as well as humans.28 The citizens of the city of God
love God even to disregard of themselves, and are motivated by the wish to
serve God and neighbour. The citizens of the earthly city love themselves
even to disregard of God, and are dominated by the lust to dominate. In the
opening sentences, long before these civitates are clearly defined, Virgil says
what the earthly city wants to hear:
Rex enim et conditor civitatis huius, de qua loqui instituimus, in scriptura
populi sui sententiam divinae legis aperuit, qua dictum est: Deus superbis
resistit, humilibus autem dat gratiam [James 4:6]. Hoc vero, quod Dei est,
superbae quoque animae spiritus inflatus adfectat amatque sibi in laudibus
dici: parcere subiectis et debellare superbos [Aen. 6.853].

For the king and founder of this city, of which I have undertaken to speak, has
revealed in the scripture of his people a statement of divine law, in which it is
said, ‘God resists the proud, but gives favour to the humble.’ This belongs to
God, but the swollen spirit of a proud soul lays claim to it, and loves to have
said in its praise, ‘to spare the subject and fight down the proud’. (Aug. Civ.
1 pref.)

A central message of Christian scripture confronts a line of Virgil, from

Rome’s mission statement voiced by Anchises, which was so well known
that Augustine had no need to name its author.29
Augustine’s opponents did not recognize the authority of scripture, so
he said that he would cite authorities they did recognize and wanted their
children to study (Civ. 1.3, 4.1). He used the forensic technique of repeating
quotations from his chosen witnesses; and he presented quotations from
Virgil as statements of fact by ‘their most famous poet’. In deploying excessere
omnes, adytis arisque relictis, | di quibus imperium hoc steterat (‘all the gods
through whom this empire stood have left, abandoning their shrines and
altars’, Aen. 2.351–2), Augustine did not want his readers to remember that
the speaker is Aeneas, narrating to Dido his despairing words to his men as
Troy fell to the Greeks. He used Virgil’s gods as evidence that his opponents
worship gods who are subject to human passions and present humans with

27
Almost half of all Augustine’s citations of Virgil come from this work. See Hagendahl
(1967: 705).
28
Augustine had used the theme of the two cities for over a decade, and assumed that
readers knew what he meant. The fullest and most-quoted definition is at Civ. 14.28.
29
De doctr. Chr. 3.75, ‘Almost every page of the holy books proclaims, “God resists
the proud and gives favour to the humble”.’ On the Roman Empire in relation to the
earthly city, see Clark (2018).
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models of anger and cruelty, lust and grief: ‘Diana grieved for Camilla in
Virgil, and Hercules wept for Pallas who would die’ (nam Camillam Diana
doluit apud Vergilium et Pallantem moriturum Hercules flevit, Civ. 3.11).
Sometimes Augustine distinguished Virgil from Virgil’s poetry. Platonists,
he thought, were the best philosophers and the closest to Christianity, but
were overconfident in human reason, permitted worship of lesser gods, and
believed that the soul cannot be blessed until it is separated from the body,
which weighs it down and is the source of the basic emotions: fear and desire,
grief and joy. He cited Virgil for memorable expressions of Platonism, but
did not claim that Virgil was a Platonist. ‘Virgil seems to set out the Platonic
view in brilliant lines’ (Vergilius Platonicam videatur luculentis versibus
explicare sententiam, Civ. 14.3) introduces a quotation from the speech of
Anchises explaining to Aeneas what happens to souls in the Underworld.30
This passage reappears on one of the rare occasions when Augustine did
quote Virgil in a sermon, taking care that everyone understood. One Easter
week he contrasted Christian teaching on resurrection with pagan beliefs
about reincarnation:
One of their authors was horrified: he was shown, or he introduced, a father
showing his son in the Underworld. Almost all of you know this; I wish only
a few did!31 But a few know from books, and many from the theatre, that
Aeneas went down to the Underworld, and his father showed him the souls
of great Romans which would go to bodies. Aeneas was appalled, and said,
‘Father, are we to think some lofty souls go hence to heaven, and return to
bodies slow?’ Are we to believe, he says, that they go to heaven and come
back? ‘What dire desire for light afflicts these wretches?’ [Aen. 6.719–21] The
son understood better than the father explained. (Aug. Ser. 241.5)

In another sermon, preached after the Goths sacked Rome in 410, Augustine
made it explicit that Virgil did not always speak in his own person. He
imagined asking Virgil, ‘Why did you make Jupiter say “Empire without end
I gave”?’ Virgil, he suggested, would reply, ‘I know, but what was I to do,
selling words to the Romans, unless I flattered them by promising something
false?’ Virgil would also point out that he gave the words to Jupiter: ‘the
god was false, the poet a liar’, whereas in his own person, Virgil said, ‘not
Roman state nor kingdoms which will die’ (Ser. 105.10, citing G. 2.498).

30
Aen. 6.750–1, cited Civ. 13.19; Aen. 6.730–5, cited Civ. 14.3. For ‘Virgil the Platonist’,
see Fowler, Casali, and Stok, this volume; for Augustine on Virgil on the afterlife, see
Clark (2010).
31
Not because it is Virgil, but because most people knew from the theatre, of which
Augustine disapproved.
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Augustine could dismiss Virgil’s claims as poetic fiction, or could argue

that Virgil correctly portrayed gods who are deceptive demons; he could
treat Virgil as a source of wisdom and show that Virgil was wrong, or that
he was partly right. Near the end of City of God, in a long discussion of
works of mercy as compensation for sin, there is an unexpected parenthesis:
I always find it remarkable [mirari … soleo] that in Virgil too there is found the
Lord’s saying, ‘make yourselves friends from the mammon of unrighteousness,
that they may receive you in everlasting habitations’ [Luke 16:9] … for when
the poet described the Elysian fields where they think the souls of the blessed
dwell, he placed there not only those who were able to attain those dwelling
places by their own merits, but added, 'and those who by deserving made
others mindful of them’ [Aen. 6.664, as when Christians commend themselves
to saints with the words ‘be mindful of me’]. (Aug. Civ. 21.27)

In the final book, Augustine said that Virgil partly understood the truth
that souls yearn for a body: each soul yearns for its own body (Civ. 22.26).
Scripture did not displace Virgil altogether, for Augustine himself or for later
centuries in which education came to be based on scripture. In the Early
Middle Ages, monastic scribes copied the Bible and Augustine, not Virgil;32
but the transmission of Virgil did not depend on Augustine’s selective
quotation and adaptation, as was the case for some other classical texts.
Augustine did not offer distinctive literary readings of Virgil, but his ways
of alluding to Virgil do illustrate the cultural status of Virgil in late antiquity,
and exemplify late antique willingness to allow the reader’s involvement
with the text.33 Augustine insisted that the objects of love must be rightly
ordered, and he found Virgil his proper place.

FURTHER READING
There is an immense bibliography on all aspects of Augustine, updated
twice a year in the Revue d’études augustiniennes. There are also many
resources online: www.georgetown.edu/faculty/jod/augustine, maintained
by the Augustinian scholar and internet pioneer James O’Donnell, offers
an impressive range of material, including O’Donnell’s commentary on the
Confessions (1992), made available with the permission of OUP; www
.augustinus.de is maintained by the Zentrum für Augustinus-Forschung
(Würzburg); and texts are freely available at www.augustinus.it.

32
I owe this point to Daniel Hadas.
33
Pelttari (2014: 114–30); Pucci (1998: 51–82).
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For those new to Augustine, Brown (1967; rev. edn 2000) remains the
classic intellectual and social biography; the revised edition adds two major
chapters on new evidence and new directions, and shows how Brown’s per-
spective has changed. Vessey (2012) offers a wide range of introductory
essays, including Danuta Shanzer’s overview of ‘Augustine and the Latin
Classics’ (2012: 161–74).
MacCormack (1998) remains the fullest study of Augustine’s engagement
with Virgil throughout his writings. For the early philosophical dialogues
see Pucci (2014). Bennett (1988) is the most cited of many readings of the
Confessions in relation to Virgil. O’Daly (1999: 246–8) helpfully surveys
citations of Virgil.

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