year. One may also read that Africa, which had by that time become a province of Rome, was visited by a prodigious multitude of locusts, which, after consuming the fruit and foliage of the trees, were driven into the sea in one vast and measureless cloud; so that when they were drowned and cast upon the shore the air was polluted, and so serious a pestilence produced that in the kingdom of Masinissa alone they say there perished 800,000 persons, besides a much greater number in the neighbouring districts. At Utica they assure us that, of 30,000 soldiers then garrisoning it, there survived only ten. Yet which of these disasters, suppose they happened now, would not be attributed to the Christian religion by those who thus thoughtlessly accuse us, and whom we are compelled to answer? And yet to their own gods they attribute none of these things, though they worship them for the sake of escaping lesser calamities of the same kind, and do not reflect that they who formerly worshipped them were not preserved from these serious disasters. FOOTNOTES: [115] Compare Aug. _Epist. ad Deogratias_, 102, 13; and _De Præd. Sanct._ 19. [116] Ch. iv. [117] Virg. _Georg._ i. 502, 'Laomedonteæ luimus perjuria Trojæ.' [118] _Iliad_, xx. 293 et seqq. [119] _Æneid_, v. 810, 811. [120] Gratis et ingratis. [121] _De Conj. Cat._ vi. [122] Helen's husband. [123] Venus' husband. [124] Suetonius, in his _Life of Julius Cæsar_ (c. 6), relates that, in pronouncing a funeral oration in praise of his aunt Julia, Cæsar claimed for the Julian gens to which his family belonged a descent from Venus, through Iulus, son of Eneas. [125] Livy, 83, one of the lost books; and Appian, _in Mithridat_. [126] The gates of Janus were not the gates of a temple, but the gates of a passage called Janus, which was used only for military purposes; shut therefore in peace, open in war. [127] The year of the Consuls T. Manlius and C. Atilius, A. U. C. 519. [128] Sall. _Conj. Cat._ ii. [129] _Æneid_, viii. 326-7. [130] Sall. _Cat. Conj._ vi. [131] _Æneid_, xi. 532. [132] _Ibid._ x. 464. [133] Livy, x. 47. [134] Being son of Apollo. [135] Virgil, _Æn._ i. 286. [136] _Pharsal._ v. 1. [137] _Æneid_, x. 821, of Lausus: "But when Anchises' son surveyed The fair, fair face so ghastly made, He groaned, by tenderness unmanned, And stretched the sympathizing hand," etc. [138] Virgil, _Æneid_, vi. 813. [139] Sallust, _Cat. Conj._ ii. [140] Ps. x. 3. [141] _Æneid_, ii. 351-2. [142] Cicero, _De Rep._ ii. 10. [143] _Contra Cat._ iii. 2. [144] _Æneid_, vi. 820, etc. [145] His nephew. [146] _Hist._ i. [147] Lectisternia, from _lectus_, a couch, and _sterno_, I spread. [148] _Proletarius_, from _proles_, offspring. [149] The oracle ran: "Dico te, Pyrrhe, vincere posse Romanos." [150] Troy, Lavinia, Alba.