Modelos teóricos sobre la causalidad de los accidentes

Augustine provides a wealth of information about his education in rhetoric, though always with a polemical bent. In most ways it was a standard course of studies beginning at a young age with grammar and ending with rigorous training in rhetoric.²⁴⁷ As with many provincials, he received his grammatical education close to home before being sent off to a city—in his case, Carthage—to begin his training in rhetoric.²⁴⁸ He describes his rhetorical education by stating, ‘My studies which were deemed respectable had the objective of leading me to distinction as an advocate in the law courts’.²⁴⁹ Those studies undoubtedly centred on Cicero—almost definitely De inventione and likely either De oratore, Orator or both—and Rhetorica ad

Herennium, which was believed to have been written by Cicero.²⁵⁰ C.S. Baldwin points out that in all of his works, Augustine never quotes or cites a rhetorician other than Cicero.²⁵¹ Although Augustine claims the he was a quiet and studious pupil in the midst of a rowdy bunch of classmates, he also admits that his devotion to the

‘books on eloquence’ had a less laudable purpose: ‘I wanted to distinguish myself as

247 Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 35-29 provides a brief but evocative account of Augustine’s education.

248 conf. 3.1.1.

249 conf. 3.3.6.

250 Victorinus states that De inventione is aimed at providing ars rhetorica while De oratore is aimed at forming orators. In Augustine’s ep. 118.34, he mentions that he is perfectly capable of commenting on De oratore and Orator, but will refrain from doing so lest he appear as a

‘trifler in his own eyes’. De doctrina Christiana also betrays a good knowledge of De oratore. Harald Hagendahl takes Augustine and Capella’s emphasis on Cicero as evidence that Cicero must have formed the basis for Carthaginian rhetorical instruction. See Hagendahl, Augustine and the Latin Classics, 533. See also Farrell, ‘The Rhetoric(s) of St.

Augustine’s Confessions’, 270-271.

251 Baldwin, ‘St. Augustine on Preaching’, 190.

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an orator for a damnable and conceited purpose, namely delight in human vanity’.²⁵² He does not here imply anything about the books on eloquence themselves; his criticism is directed towards his own ambition: he was learning rhetoric in a typical Second Sophistic fashion to become well-respected and loved. Not unlike teenagers today, he wanted to be a celebrity.

In the course of his training in ‘the eloquence wholly necessary for carrying conviction in one’s cause and for developing one’s thoughts’, Augustine practised declamation by delivering fictitious speeches.²⁵³ He mentions reciting a speech of

‘Juno in her anger and grief’ for which he and his classmates received marks for their style and pathos.²⁵⁴ Looking back on his lessons, Augustine was repelled by the focus on style over truth, and claims that he was actually being trained to be more confident in expressing falsehood. But he qualifies his criticism: ‘I bring no charge against the words which are like exquisite and precious vessels, but the wine of error is poured into them for us by drunken teachers’.²⁵⁵ In other words, he does not criticise so much the actual eloquence taught as the failure to unite that eloquence with truth. His disdain is for the priorities of Second Sophistic, the prizing of style over substance, self-promotion and praise over the pursuit of truth. His conclusion is that such an education led him towards vanity and a greater concern for the good opinion of his peers than for truth.²⁵⁶ Expectations were that through his training he

252 conf. 3.4.7. Note that Augustine does not use the term ‘orator’ himself but instead speaks of excelling in the eloquence that he was studying.

253 conf. 1.16.26.

254 conf. 3.17.27.

255 conf. 1.16.26.

256 conf. 1.19.30. See also Michael J. Scanlon, ‘Augustine and Theology as Rhetoric’, 39.

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would be able to use eloquence ‘to gain access to human honours and to acquire deceitful riches’.²⁵⁷

During his rhetorical education, Augustine encountered ‘a book by a certain Cicero, whose language (but not his heart) almost everyone admires. That book of his contains an exhortation to study philosophy and is entitled Hortensius’.²⁵⁸ This passage has been the subject of much debate: both Augustine’s phrase ‘a certain Cicero’ and his juxtaposing of ‘language’ and ‘heart’ have received conflicting commentary from scholars.²⁵⁹ Some interpret this passage as entirely negative, arguing that Augustine distances himself from the old orator by praising his style while not, from a Christian perspective, his heart.²⁶⁰ According to this interpretation, Augustine upholds Cicero as a typical example of those who, like his own teacher, promoted style over truth. But this does not make sense within the larger context:

Cicero’s Hortensius introduced Augustine to philosophy, the substance his own education had omitted. A better interpretation of this passage is that Augustine believes his contemporaries seek to imitate Cicero’s style without any regard for his actual theory, particularly his promotion of philosophy; such an emphasis on style

257 conf. 1.9.14. See Calvin L. Troup, Temporality, Eternity, and Wisdom (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999), 11.

258 conf. 3.4.7 (CCL 27.30): ‘...cuiusdam Ciceronis, cuius linguam fere omnes mirantur, pectus non ita’.

259 See, for example, Hagendahl, Augustine and the Latin Classics, 579; Henry Chadwick, Saint Augustine: The Confessions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 38, n. 10; James J.

O’Donnell, Augustine: Confessions, 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 2: 165 proposes that Augustine here is criticising Cicero’s pride and ambition. Todd Breyfogle,

‘‘No Changing Nor Shadow’ in Kim Paffenroth and Robert P. Kennedy (ed.), A Reader’s Companion to Augustine’s Confessions (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 232, n. 33 agrees with this point.

260 While Henry Chadwick, Confessions, 38, n. 10 comments that ‘a certain Cicero’ ought not to be taken in a negative way, he does understand the second part of the passage as a criticism:

‘The antithesis between Cicero’s style and his heart (pectus) is genuinely negative: to a Christian, Cicero belonged to another culture’.

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over substance is, in fact, the very thing he accuses his original education of inculcating.²⁶¹

Hortensius,²⁶² a now lost work in praise of philosophy, written by a despondent Cicero after the death of his daughter, had an enormous impact on the young Augustine:

The book changed my feelings. It altered my prayers, Lord, to be towards yourself. It gave me different values and priorities. Suddenly every vain hope became empty to me, and I longed for the immortality of wisdom with an incredible ardour in my heart. I began to rise up to return to you....I was impressed not by the book’s refining effect on my style and literary

expression but by the content.²⁶³

At first glance, Augustine seems to be saying that Hortensius transformed him from being a budding rhetor into a budding philosopher. Of course, that he would go on from reading Hortensius to become a rhetor belies this first impression. This passage comes immediately after Augustine has criticised his youthful goal of obtaining the adoration and success that would feed his human vanity. After reading Hortensius that goal changes: now he longs for the ‘immortality of wisdom’; he says to God that he no longer desired vanities, but burned ‘with longing to leave earthly things and fly back to you’.²⁶⁴ The ‘immortality of wisdom’ is itself an interesting phrase. Behind it may lie a passage from Hortensius that he later preserves for posterity in De Trinitate: ‘it must be supposed that the more these souls keep always to their course,

261 It is surely noteworthy that later Augustine dedicated his first work, the now lost De pulchra et apto, to the then famous Roman orator, Hierius, whom Augustine admired because he was also ‘extremely knowledgeable in the study of philosophical questions’. See conf. 4.14.21.

262 See Paul McKendrick, The Philosophical Books of Cicero (London: Gerald Duckworth and Company, Ltd., 1989), 109-111, for an attempt to provide an outline for Hortensius through remaining references and fragments. John Hammond Taylor, S.J., ‘St. Augustine and the Hortensius of Cicero’ Studies in Philology 60:3 (1963), 487-498, argues that the influence of Hortensius had more to do with Augustine’s mood than with the merits of Cicero’s work itself.

263 conf. 3.4.7.

264 conf. 3.4.7.

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that is to reason and to eager inquiry, and the less they mix themselves up in the tangled vices and errors of men, the easier will be their ascent and return to heaven’.²⁶⁵ But it also suggests a similar outlook to that of Victorinus. In reality, Cicero performs for Augustine precisely the role of Victorinus’s orator-sage by turning Augustine from this world towards the divine through his eloquent wisdom.

He was assigned Hortensius as a model for eloquence but discovered there a

transforming wisdom. As a result, Augustine did not suddenly become a philosopher but a true Ciceronian attuned to the discovery of wisdom through eloquence.²⁶⁶

Any doubt about this Ciceronian turn is laid to rest by the very next episode in the Confessiones. Probably because of his own background, Augustine’s first step in his pursuit of wisdom ‘wherever found’,²⁶⁷ is to study Scripture. But he is

immediately repelled by its style: ‘It seemed to me unworthy in comparison to the dignity of Cicero’.²⁶⁸ Raymond DiLorenzo points out that Cicero defines dignitas as auctoritas, which explains why Augustine initially rejects Scriptural wisdom.²⁶⁹

Lacking the eloquence that his tastes have been trained to discern, he cannot imagine how the Bible can contain wisdom. His expectations are that while eloquence can be present without wisdom (as in the case of his pre-Hortensius education), expressed wisdom cannot be divorced from eloquence. Indeed, his later criticism of himself at

265 trin. 14.26. See Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 40 for further discussion.

266 See Troup, Temporality, 15-16. Troup correctly argues that Hortensius began Augustine’s conversion from Second Sophistic. Breyfogle, ‘No Changing Nor Shadow’, 42-47 provides a good discussion of this passage as a kind of aborted ascent that should be read in light of Augustine’s later contemplative ascent in Ostia.

267 conf. 3.4.8. The freedom to pursue wisdom ‘wherever found’ is a distinctly Sceptic notion much endorsed by Cicero to whom it gave permission to employ and modify attractive teachings from different philosophical schools.

268 conf. 3.5.9.

269 DiLorenzo, ‘Ciceronianism and Augustine’s Conception of Philosophy’, 175.

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this stage in his life is not that he expected wisdom to be eloquent but that he was too proud to recognise the true eloquence contained in Scripture.²⁷⁰

Despite his new interests, Augustine left his education behind to become a teacher of the ‘art of rhetoric’ (artem rhetoricam), instructing his students in much the same way as he had been.²⁷¹ He admits that, motivated by greed, he tried to teach the ‘tricks of rhetoric’ not that his students could convict an innocent person but that they might save the life of a guilty one. If Victorinus’s distinction between De inventione and De oratore (the former studied for rhetorical theory and the latter for

providing an oratorical ideal) was a common one, then one can assume that

Augustine’s reference to his teaching ars rhetorica implies that he taught his students either De inventione or Rhetorica ad Herennium (or both).²⁷² He provided his students not so much with the overarching Ciceronian rhetorical theory but with the rhetorical ‘tricks’ that would make them successful declaimers. In other words, despite his personal pursuit of wisdom, his greed and ambition pushed him to become a fairly standard, though promising, Second Sophistic rhetor. Considering his own relatively modest background, this is not entirely surprising. The opportunities for one like him to become anything like Cicero’s orator were remote; such a role was still largely reserved for the aristocracy (Victorinus’s example notwithstanding).

270 Breyfogle, ‘No Changing Nor Shadow, 232, n. 37 misses the nuance of Augustine’s later reflection, arguing that at this age Augustine could not recognise wisdom ‘however inelegantly expressed’. This is something Augustine never actually does; what he criticises his younger self for doing was failing to recognise the true elegance that runs deeper than mere style: the elegance of wisdom itself.

271 conf. 4.2.2 (CCL 27.40).

272 See Chin, ‘Christians and the Roman Classroom’, 165-166 and Farrell, ‘The Rhetoric(s) of St.

Augustine’s Confessions’, 271-275. Catherine M Chin argues that Augustine’s discussion of memory in Book Ten of the Confessiones is very similar to that of Rhetorica ad Herennium.

Likewise, Farrell demonstrates how Augustine’s review of the motive behind the theft of the pear in Book One conforms to the Ad Herennium’s teaching about forensic rhetoric. Farrell argues that this suggests that Augustine had come to know forensic invention intimately and therefore must have taught either De inventione, Ad Herennium or both. For further discussion of this point, see chapter five.

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Instead, he joined the ranks of rhetors educating young men and living off the funds provided by the Imperial government and student fees.

With this in mind, one can easily understand why Augustine later decided to move to Rome. By his own admission, he went in search of ‘promised higher fees and a greater position of dignity’.²⁷³ Rome had the potential of introducing him to the kind of aristocratic patronage that might lead to a higher office like that enjoyed by Victorinus, which is in fact what happened. Other than his personal involvement in Manichaeism, there is no suggestion whatsoever that he attempted to become

anything like Cicero’s orator, even though he had by then come under the spell of the Academics (again probably through the influence of Cicero).²⁷⁴ Despite the profound influence of Hortensius, he largely continued along his original course of seeking

‘delight in human vanities’. The disconnection between Augustine’s private beliefs and his public profession must have increased his dissatisfaction with life in Rome.

Fortunately for him, he did finally come to the attention of an accomplished orator, Symmachus, who sent Augustine to Milan to become a ‘teacher of rhetoric’.²⁷⁵ At that point, it must have seemed like his life would be entirely devoted to working as a rhetor.

Augustine’s account of this period in his life presents a fascinating picture of a young rhetor attempting to pursue his career and form his beliefs in Late Antiquity.

On the one hand, he faced the powerful expectation to become a typical rhetor, training young men in rhetorical techniques derived from various handbooks. His colleagues, such as those who warned him about Roman students, would have been just this sort of teacher, and one can only imagine how many rhetorical performances

273 conf. 5.8.14.

274 conf. 5.10.19.

275 conf. 5.13.23.

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Augustine watched, critiqued, and discussed with those colleagues. His life was given almost entirely over to the ‘fluency of speech’ that Cicero despised but by Augustine’s day had come to be identified with eloquence. On the other hand, Augustine had been deeply affected by his reading of Hortensius, which had imparted to him an appreciation for eloquent wisdom, or a rhetoric ennobled by the content of philosophy. He was a practising Manichaean, appreciative of the eloquence of their leaders, though increasingly sceptical about the wisdom of their beliefs. In fact, he had begun to follow Cicero’s path towards Academic Scepticism. Interestingly, there is no evidence that he had begun to read the works of philosophers themselves, except for Aristotle’s Categories.²⁷⁶ Like most other rhetors he seems to have initially derived his philosophical knowledge through commonplaces and Cicero himself.²⁷⁷ It was also not atypical, again as Cicero himself demonstrates, for rhetors to

downplay their own profession in comparison to philosophy. It was a standard way for a rhetor to distinguish himself from all the others whom, he believed, taught only sophistry. No doubt Augustine’s colleagues would have found any expression on his part of being a true devotee of wisdom rather than of empty eloquence as arrogant as Augustine later found them.