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Reviewed by:
  • The City of God against the Pagans
  • Augustine J. Curley
Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans. Edited and translated by R. W. Dyson. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xxxiii + 1243. $64.95; $24.95, paper.

Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought has as its stated purpose “to make available to students all the most important texts in the history of Western political thought, from ancient Greece to the early twentieth century.” The translation under consideration, by R. W. Dyson, Lecturer in politics at the University of Durham, was done specifically for this series. He used the critical edition of B. Dombart and A. Kalb, published in the Corpus Christianorum series in two volumes in 1955, and he also consulted the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum edition of E. Hoffman (Vienna, 1899–1900).

There is a twenty-page introduction that briefly summarizes Augustine’s life and the occasion for his writing the work, develops at some length an analysis of Augustine’s political theory—useful for the undergraduate who is approaching the work for the first time—and ends with a brief justification for Augustine’s work as a proper object of study for the political thinker.

This volume joins two other one-volume translations that are currently available: the Penguin, with the Henry Bettenson translation, and the Modern Library edition, with the Marcus Dods translation.. The Bettenson translation is much freer, even to the point of rearranging phrases and sentences. The Dyson translation sticks much more closely to the Latin text, but even in doing so reads very smoothly. In fact, when I was comparing the opening paragraphs, I thought I was dealing with two different texts, so much has Bettenson rearranged. The only part of the translation I would seriously question is the translation of the quotations from the Bible. Dyson chooses a different style when translating the biblical quotations, keeping more to an RSV-like language. But I am not sure that this is really appropriate. It is highly unlikely that the language of the Bible [End Page 624] that Augustine would have used, generally the old Latin, but also other translations (including, possibly, Jerome’s) would have sounded to him the way the RSV sounds to us. I think it would have been better if Dyson had translated the scriptural passages himself and rendered them in a language more like Augustine’s.

The Dods translation (actually done by three different people), and now more than a century old, is much more literal than is the Bettenson translation, but not as literal even as Dyson’s. Dods did not have the critical edition to work from, whereas Dyson did, but Dyson does not indicate if there are any significant variant readings. (An alternate reading indicated by Dods at X.29 is not noted by Dyson.) Dyson’s apparatus includes a personal name index, as well as very helpful biographical notes, although it lacks a subject index, whereas the Modern Library edition has a fairly extensive one.

In comparing the notes, one finds a bit more reference to classical literature than is found in Bettenson. But there are also references in Bettenson that are not found in Dyson. So the reader will still want to consult the notes in Bettenson. The Modern Library edition has very many helpful explanatory footnotes. Dyson, for the sake of space, keeps footnotes to a minimum.

So while this new translation can be highly recommended for its faithfulness to the Latin text, readers will still want to keep the Penguin and Modern Library editions at hand for their critical apparatuses. The price of the hardcover edition of Dyson is a bit steep, but the paperback is offered at a price that would be reasonable for a required text.

Augustine J. Curley
O.S.B., Newark Abbey
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