on the beach near Ostia on a beautiful autumn morning, watching the little waves lapping on the sand, and boys playing duck-and-drake with pieces of tile, when Caecilius kisses his hand, in the ordinary pagan usage, to an image of Serapis which they pass. The incident draws them on to a theological discussion. Caecilius sets forth the argument against Christianity in detail, and Octavius replies to him point by point; at the end, Caecilius professes himself overcome, and declares his adhesion to the faith of his friend. Both in the attack and in the defence it is only the rational side of the new doctrine which is at issue. The unity of God, the resurrection of the body, and retribution in a future state, make up the sum of Christianity as it is presented. The name of Christ is not once mentioned, nor is his divinity directly asserted. There is no allusion to the sacraments, or to the doctrine of the Redemption; and Octavius neither quotes from nor refers to the writings of either Old or New Testament. Among early Christian writings, this method of treatment is unexampled elsewhere. The work is an attempt to present the new religion to educated opinion as a reasonable philosophic system; as we read it, we might be in the middle of the eighteenth century. With this temperate rationalism is combined a clearness and purity of diction, founded on the Ciceronian style, but without Cicero's sumptuousness of structure, that recalls the best prose of the Silver Age. The author of the _Octavius_ was a lawyer, who practised in the Roman courts. The literary influence of Quintilian no doubt lasted longer among the legal profession, for whose guidance he primarily wrote, than among the grammarians and journalists, who represent in this age the general tendency of the world of letters. But even in the legal profession the new Latin had established itself, and, except in the capital, seems to have almost driven out the classical manner. Its most remarkable exponent among Christian writers was, up to the time of his conversion, a pleader in the Carthaginian law-courts.