the same, the importance which went with such a position. In his township,
Patricius was a kind of personage. His son assures us that he was poor, but
we may suspect the holy bishop of exaggerating through Christian humility.
Patricius must certainly have owned more than twenty-five acres of land,
for this was made a condition of being elected to the _curia_. He had
vineyards and orchards, of which Augustin later on recalled the plentiful
and sweet-tasting fruits. In short, he lived in considerable style. It
is true that in Africa household expenses have never at any time been a
great extravagance. Still, the sons of Patricius had a pedagogue, a slave
specially engaged to keep them under his eye, like all the children of
families comfortably off.

It has been said that as Augustin's father was a member of the _curia_,
he must have been a ruined man. The Decurions, who levied taxes and made
themselves responsible for their collection, were obliged to supply any
deficiency in the revenue out of their own money. Patricius, it is thought,
must have been one of the numerous victims of this disastrous system. But
no doubt there were a good many exceptions. Besides, there is nothing in
Augustin's reminiscences which authorizes us to believe that his father
ever knew embarrassment, to say nothing of actual poverty. What seems by
far the most probable is that he lived as well as he could upon the income
of his estate as a small country landowner. In Africa people are satisfied
with very little. Save for an unusually bad year following a time of long
drought, or a descent of locusts, the land always gives forth enough to
feed its master.

To hunt, to ride horseback, now and then to go on parade, to look after
his small-holders and agricultural slaves, to drive one of those bargains
in which African cunning triumphs--such were the employments of Patricius.
In short, he drifted through life on his little demesne. Sometimes this