Augustine ─ De Civitate Dei the City of God

This volume continues P. G. Walsh's admired translation with commentary of Augustine's City of God. Books I-XIV which have been published in eight earlier volumes between 2003 and 2016, and this ninth volume in the collection looks at books XV and XVI. After completing the first ten books of De Civitate Dei, in which Augustine sought to refute the claim that pagan deities had ensured that Rome enjoyed unbroken success and prosperity in this life and guaranteed its citizens a blessed life after death, Augustine devoted the remaining twelve books to discuss the origins, development and destiny of the two cities of Babylon and Jerusalem, with the predominant emphasis on the city of God. This is the only edition of these books in English which provides not only a text but also a detailed commentary on one of the most influential documents in the history of western Christianity.

P.G. Walsh was Senior Research Fellow and Emeritus Professor of Humanity at the University of Glasgow. He is editor of Augustine, De bono coniugali and De sancta uirginitate (Oxford), translator of Paulinus of Nola (Letters, Poems) and of Cassiodorus, Explanation of the Psalms (Ancient Christian Writers). He is also editor of many volumes of Livy, including separate editions of Books XXXVI to XL in the Aris & Phillips Classical Texts series. Livy is a main source of Augustine in these books of The City of God.

Christopher Collard was Professor of Classics at the University of Swansea until 1996 and has published widely on tragedy and scholars of tragedy. His work includes editions with commentary of Euripides, Suppliant Women (1975, 1984) and Hecuba (1991), and he is co-editor of Selected Fragmentary Plays of Euripides (1995, 2004).

Dr Isabella Image is a private scholar of Patristics, working in Oxford.