The Lantern

Clementine Recognitions · Book 79

CCEL

Chapter VIII.-Clement's Family History.

Then said Peter: "Is there then no one of your family surviving? "I answered: "There are indeed many powerful men, coming of the stock of Caesar; for Caesar himself gave a wife to my father, as being his relative, and educated along with him, and of a suitably noble family. By her my father had twin sons, born before me, not very like one another, as my father told me; for I never knew them. But indeed I have not a distinct recollection even of my mother; but I cherish the remembrance of her face, as if I had seen it in a dream. My mother's name was Matthidia, my father's Faustinianus: my brothers', Faustinus and Faustus. Now, when I was barely five years old, my mother saw a vision-so I learned from my father-by which she was warned that, unless she speedily for the city with her twin sons, and was absent for ten years, she and her children should perish by a miserable fate.