"I am a professor of Roman literature, a teacher of Latin grammar. My father was a decurion at Constantine; my grandfather was a soldier and had served in the guard. Our family is of Moorish blood.... As for me, I am quite ignorant about the origin of the schism: I am just one of the ordinary faithful of the people called Christians. When I was at Carthage, Bishop Secundus came there one day. I heard tell that they found out that Bishop Cæcilianus had been ordained irregularly by I don't know who, and they elected another bishop against him. That's how the schism began at Carthage. I have no means of knowing much about the origin of the schism, because there has never been more than one church in our city. If there has been a schism here, we know nothing about it." When a grammarian talked thus, what could have been the thoughts of agricultural labourers, city workmen, and slaves? They belonged to an estate, or a quarter of a town, where no other faith than theirs had ever been professed. They were Donatists like their employers, like their neighbours, like the other people of the _cof_ to which they had belonged from father to son. The theological side of the question left them absolutely indifferent. If Augustin tried to debate with them, they refused to listen and referred him to their bishops. That was the word of command. The bishops, on their side, avoided all discussion. Augustin tried in vain to arrange an argument with Proculeianus, his Donatist colleague at Hippo. And if some of them shewed themselves more obliging, the evasions and reticences of the antagonist, and sometimes outside circumstances, made the debate utterly futile. At Thubursicum the audience raised such a noise in the place where Augustin was debating with the bishop Fortunius, that they were no longer able to hear each other. At other times, the meeting sank to an oratorical joust, wherein they tired themselves out passading against words, instead of attacking the matters at issue. Augustin felt that he was losing his time. Besides, the Donatist bishops presented an obstinate front against which everything smashed. "Leave us in our errors," they said ironically. "If we are lost in your eyes, why follow us about? We don't want to be saved." And they prohibited their flocks from saluting Catholics, from speaking to them, from going into their churches or into their houses, from sitting down in the midst of them. They laid an interdict on their adversaries. Primanius, the Donatist Primate of Carthage, upon being invited to a conference, answered proudly: "The sons of the martyrs can have nothing to do with the race of traitors."