Books V – IX of Augustine's Confessions follow Augustine from Carthage to Rome and then to Milan. This geographical journey is tied up with a journey of intellectual and religious conversions, in which Augustine grapples with ideas of Manichaeism, Neoplatonism, and Christianity. Some of the best-known episodes fall within this volume: Monnica's abandonment, Ambrose's silent reading, Alypius’ bloodlust at the games, and Augustine's crisis in the garden at Milan as he agonises over his conversion to a life of chastity.
White's introduction situates the reader in this extraordinary text with a succinct discussion of important points of content, context, and style. A section on ‘Confessions in the life and literary career of Augustine’ gives a brief sketch of Augustine's life at the time of the composition of Confessions, before discussing puzzles of the text's purpose and genre. A section on ‘The Latinity of Confessions’ draws attention to the ways in which Augustine's Latin, while strongly influenced by his study and admiration of Cicero, differs from classical Latin, and explores how Augustine adopts the language and rhythms of Scripture in his writing. Following on from this discussion of Augustine's use of biblical style, White discusses the influence of classical rhetorical devices, drawing on Augustine's On Christian Teaching for illumination. A final section examines the book divisions and narrative structure in Confessions. What a reader new to Confessions may miss from this introduction is a brief overview of the ideas behind some of Augustine's earlier conversions; Manichaeism and Neoplatonism are mentioned only in passing in this introduction. They are, however, introduced briefly in G. Clark's 1995 commentary on Books I – IV.
The text itself is based on that of O'Donnell (Augustine's Confessions, Oxford, 1992). It is unusual for a ‘Green and Yellow’ in supplying no apparatus criticus, but there are few textual problems in the work, and these are discussed in the commentary when they appear (for example on the inclusion or omission of se at 5.3.4, discussed on p. 88). This approach follows that of Clark's commentary on the preceding four books.
The commentary is aimed at two audiences: students of Classics and students of patristics. White acknowledges ‘the possible cost of sometimes supplying one of them with information that the other may not need’ (p. ix). The commentary does indeed give information that might seem rather basic to one or other of these audiences – for a classicist, this is particularly felt in some explanations of the language – but, overall, its admirable thoroughness in anticipating confusion over grammatical and theological points renders the text accessible to both sets of readers. Scriptural and literary allusions are identified and explored in further detail at interesting points, for example at 5.8.15, where White assesses the allusion to Aeneid 4 in the story of the abandonment of Monnica while also drawing attention to intertexts with Genesis and Aeneid 9 (p. 104). Philosophical issues are helpfully and concisely clarified, for instance at the discussion of the will which Augustine introduces to the account of his conversion to chastity (8.8.20ff., p. 262ff.).
Like any commentary, the book is limited by its size and its aims and must therefore be selective. White's prudent selections allow this volume to serve as an effective introduction to a text of considerable historical, literary, and philosophical interest.
Open access
