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He was born in Thagaste, a smallish town in North Africa. He came from an old Carthaginian family. His father, Patricius Augustinus, was a pagan who honored the old Punic gods. But his mother, Monica, was a devoted Christian, who persistently urged her religion on her children—and particularly on Aurelius, who showed brilliance.

Their family was a small part of a large and complex economy. Patricius scrimped to send Augustine to school, and still had to rely on the generosity of a wealthy patron, Romanianus. The very name Patricius suggests Augustine’s father may have come from a proud, patrician family. But if he’d ever had wealth, it was apparently gone now. So, though the Augustinus family may have owned a substantial estate, it seems the Roman tax collectors had milked their fluid income dry.

As a boy, Augustine was sent to school in nearby Madaura. He made friendships there that would last all his life. But when he was 16 the tuition money ran out, and Augustine had to come home for a year while his family saved. In writing about this time in his Confessions, Augustine portrays himself as a lazy underachiever. Yet his superior intellect was probably already apparent to his family and friends. He seems to have outshone his older brother, Navigius, who tags along in later episodes of Augustine’s life.

During that 16-year vacation from his studies, Augustine took part in the famous pear tree incident (see And a Saint in a Pear Tree…?). To some this might seem like mere juvenile antics, just a bunch of rowdy boys ripping off pears and throwing them to the pigs—and that’s probably how Augustine saw it at the time. But looking back on it later, as he reflected in the Confessions, he perceived it as sin most foul. In the Confessions he also notes his struggle with sexual passion, indicating that this too mushroomed during that 16th year. After that year we find him going off to school in Carthage, supported by Romanianus, who evidently saw Augustine’s great potential and wanted this prodigy on his team.

Augustine in Carthage was the backwoods boy in the big city. Carthage was the queen of North Africa, sophisticated and worldly. Five hundred years earlier Carthage had been Rome’s enemy. But the new Carthage had a solid place in the empire, basking in its Roman-civilization-with-Punic-twist.

The rowdy from Thagaste apparently continued sowing wild oats in Carthage. He doesn’t relate the specifics of his sexual activity, but we do know that he took a concubine. He never names her; in that culture her name wouldn’t have been important. He was a promising student-teacher, already making a name for himself in the school of rhetoric, on the first few rungs of the ladder of success; she was most likely from a lower-class family. He was 18 at the time.

His father had died a short time earlier, and possibly this made Augustine think about settling down and raising a family. But marriage at this point would impede his progress—he figured the sort of socially advantageous marriage he wanted would come later. Besides, taking a concubine was a socially acceptable thing at the time, not unlike unmarried couples living together today. One year later she bore him a son, and they named him Adeodatus—“a gift from God.”

Two philosophical influences emerged as Augustine began to excel in Carthage, first as a student and then as a teacher. One was Cicero. The young African read the old Roman, and light dawned in his mind. The book was Hortensius, now long lost, but it must have been a beauty. It would form the basis for Augustine’s rhetoric and philosophy for years to come. Even in Augustine’s religious classics, we see traces of Cicero’s influence.

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