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steadily and soberly on those examples and observe what love they should have towards the City on high, in view of life eternal, if the earthly city had received such devotion from her citizens ( Bk V, 16 ).
     
    The
City of God
is not an attack on the Romans or the Roman Empire. On the contrary it sees Rome as a vehicle ordained by Providence for the benefit of Christianity in relation to which she would have a new and enduring future.
     
    Augustine takes note of the conduct of the Christian Emperors, Constantine and Theodosius. He expects rulers who are Christians to rule with justice and ‘to put their power at the service of God’s majesty to extend his worship far and wide’ ( Bk V, 24 ). He does not suppose, nevertheless, that, although Theodosius was ‘constrained by the discipline of the Church to do penance’, and ‘never relaxed in his efforts to help the Church against the ungodly by just and compassionate legislation’ ( Bk V, 26 ), he or any Christian Emperor should be the obedient servant of the institutional Church: Augustine did not prescribe a theocratic State.
     
Attitude to Greek Philosophy
     
    In Books VIII–X of the
City of God
Augustine encounters those Greek philosophers who treat of theology, who admit the existence of a Divinity and of his concern for human affairs, but who consider that the worship of one unchangeable God is not sufficient for the attainment of a life of blessedness after death: they suppose that for this end many gods are to be worshipped. The philosophers he has mostly in mind are Apuleius (
c
. 124–170 A.D .), Plotinus (
c
. 205–270)and his disciple Porphyry (232–
c
. 305) – but especially Apuleius and Porphyry, the first of whom was an African who wrote in Latin, and the other the reigning philosopher of Augustine’s day. Plotinus was the founder of Neoplatonism, a revival of the philosophy of Plato, and both he and Porphyry wrote in Greek and lived at Rome.
    Augustine starts, however, with the threefold division of philosophy into natural, rational and moral (Physics, Logic, Ethics), a division he attributes to Plato. He expounds briefly and commends the Platonist doctrines under these heads and complements them later with a Christian gloss ( Bk XI, 26–28 ).
     
    But he quickly moves on to Apuleius, whose ideas on demonology were familiar to Augustine and generally current, and which receive considerable attention in the
City of God
. It is likely that he got some ideas on demons from Porphyry too. For Augustine these demons were really the fallen angels, who did their best to attract men’s worship away from the one true God, were endowed with some qualities, deriving from their angelic nature, superior to those enjoyed by man, and so were capable of helping or hindering man according as he did or did not do sacrifice to them. Apuleius himself treats of their character and says that they are liable to the same emotional disturbances as human beings. They resent injury, they are mollified by flattery and by gifts, they delight in receiving honours, they enjoy all kinds of rites and ceremonies and they are annoyed at any negligence about these. Among their uses he mentions divination by means of auguries, haruspication, clairvoyance, and dreams; and he ascribes to them the remarkable feats of magicians. He gives this brief definition of demons: species, animal; soul, subject to passions; mind, rational; body, composed of air; life-span, eternal. Of those five attributes, they have the first three, says Apuleius, in common with us; the fourth is peculiar to them; the fifth they share with the gods.
     
    Apuleius, according to Augustine, pronounces the demons worthy of divine honours. They are established ‘midway between the ethereal heaven and the earth, so that since ‘gods never mix with men (as Plato is reported as saying), they may carry the prayers of men to the gods and bring back to men the answers granted to their requests’ ( Bk VIII, 18 ). In