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| Argument: Minucius Relates How Delightful to Him is the Recollection of the Things that Had Happened to Him with Octavius While He Was Associated with Him at Rome, and Especially of This Disputation. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
The Octavius of
Minucius Felix.
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Chapter I.—Argument:
Minucius Relates How Delightful to Him is the Recollection of the
Things that Had Happened to Him with Octavius While He Was Associated
with Him at Rome, and Especially of This Disputation.
When I consider and
mentally review my remembrance of Octavius, my excellent and most
faithful companion, the sweetness and charm of the man so clings to me,
that I appear to myself in some sort as if I were returning to past
times, and not merely recalling in my recollection things which have
long since happened and gone by. Thus, in the degree in which the
actual contemplation of him is withdrawn from my eyes, it is bound up
in my heart and in my most intimate feelings. And it was not
without reason that that remarkable and holy man, when he departed
this life, left to me an unbounded regret for him, especially
since he himself also glowed with such a love for me at all times,
that, whether in matters of amusement or of business, he agreed with me
in similarity of will, in either liking or disliking the same
things.1716
1716 [Sallust,
Catiline, “Idem facere atque sentire,”
etc. Also, Catiline’s speech, p. 6 of The
Conspiracy.] | You would
think that one mind had been shared between us two. Thus he alone
was my confidant in my loves, my companion in my mistakes; and when,
after the gloom had been dispersed, I emerged from the abyss of
darkness into the light of wisdom and truth, he did not cast off his
associate, but—what is more glorious still—he outstripped
him. And thus, when my thoughts were traversing the entire period
of our intimacy and friendship, the direction of my mind fixed itself
chiefly on that discourse of his, wherein by very weighty arguments he
converted Cæcilius, who was still cleaving to superstitious
vanities, to the true religion.1717
1717 [Beautiful tribute to
Christian friendship, in a primitive example. We must bear in
mind that the story is of an earlier period than that of the work
itself, written at Cirta.] | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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