Well, last week we left off.

Augustine was just a kid running around the streets of Thigast.

And around 365, he was sent off to school.

He was sent to Madorus.

It was about 15 miles away. It was what we would call a university town.

In that region, it was famous for its school. And so there, Augustine would have studied the Trivium, grammar, rhetoric, logic.

Cicero's writing was a staple.

Also on the reading list would be Virgil and Ovid in Seneca and as Augustine writes in his

confessions I loved it. He loved studying Latin. He loved studying the great writers

in Latin and not only did he love it but he was good at it.

He was moved by the persuasive writing and the emotional expression and this caused him to be

as we would say, all in.

A medieval painting depicts Augustine with his nose and a book,

while his classmates around him were getting disciplined for getting into fights and

being mischievous. As part of his studying and schooling he offered a one-man

reenactment of a scene from Virgil, and it so took the audience

that he won the prize in the whole town for that year.

Well, after four years in Madura, he outgrew it. And while he excelled as a student,

this is what he says about his time there later in life as he's writing the confessions and

after he's converted he says let me tell you

my God how I squandered the brains you gave me on foolish delusions. So he heads back home, his head full of foolish delusions,

and he spent about a year at home while his parents raised money to send him off to Carthage.

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