For such is the depth of the Christian Scriptures that, even if I were attempting to study them and nothing else, from boyhood to decrepit old age, with the utmost leisure, the most unwearied zeal, and with talents greater than I possess, I would still be making progress in discovering their treasures.I don't see "in discovering their treasures" in the Latin. Brown's translation appears in his Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (1967; rpt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), p. 263.
tanta est enim christianarum profunditas litterarum, ut in eis quotidie proficerem, si eas solas ab ineunte pueritia usque ad decrepitam senectutem maximo otio, summo studio, meliore ingenio conarer addiscere.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Friday, July 24, 2026
Inexhaustible Riches
Augustine, Letters 137.1.3 (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, vol. 44, pp. 99-100; to Volusianus; tr. Peter Brown):