BOOK X
or was she not aware that such was the case? Both alternatives are incredible.
But supposing that we even put Nature as an agent out of the question and explain that these things are "naturally" so, even then it would be absurd to assert that the parts of the whole are naturally subject to change, and at the same time to be astonished at a thing or take it amiss as though it befell contrary to nature, and that though things dissolve into the very constituents out of which they are composed. For either there is a scattering of the elements[1] out of which I have been built up, or a transmutation of the solid into the earthy and of the spiritual[2] into the aerial; so that these too are taken back into the Reason of the Universe, whether cycle by cycle it be consumed with fire[3] or renew itself by everlasting permutations.
Aye and so then do not be under the impression that the solid and the spiritual date from the moment of birth. For it was but yesterday or the day before that all this took in its increment from the food eaten and the air breathed. It is then this, that it took in, which changes, not the product of thy mother's womb. But granted that thou art ever so closely bound up[4] with that by thy individuality, this, I take it, has no bearing upon the present argument.
8. Assuming for thyself the appellations, a good man,[5] a modest man,[6] a truthteller,[7] wise of heart,
- ↑ vii. 32.
- ↑ iv. 4. Lit. the pneumatic or breath element. See Index iii.
- ↑ iii. 3. Justin, Apol. i. 20; ii. 7, contrasts the Christian theory of the destruction of the world by fire with the Stoic.
- ↑ προσπλέκει has no subject. ἐκείνῳ must be taken separately from τῷ ἰδίως ποιῷ and refer to τοῦτο ὃ ἔλαβεν.
- ↑ See on x. 16.
- ↑ Capitolinus and Ammianus call Marcus verecundus.
- ↑ Only two kings have had the honourable cognomen of Truthteller, Marcus and Alfred the Great. The former was given Verissimus as a pet name by Hadrian when a child, and the town of Tyras in Scythia stamped it on its coins and Justin and Syncellus use it to designate Marcus.
