38. Ibid. 28. 4-5.
39. Ibid. 28. 17.
40. Ibid. 28. 18.
41. Ibid. 28. 19.
42. Ibid. 28. 19.
43. Gaius and Seius appear frequently as the John Doe and Richard Roe of Latin authors. Gaius is most commonly used, perhaps because of the Ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia, of the marriage ceremony. In Cod. Just. Titius is used instead of Seius. Tertullian uses Gaius Seius and Lucius Titius; cf. Ad nationes I. 4.
44. Romans 1.27-28.
45. Tertullian, himself a native of Africa, does not include Carthage in the list of apostolic churches ( Liber de praescriptionibus 32), but in Salvian's time the orthodox church of Africa claimed an apostolic origin in their controversy with the Donatists, and it was natural that Salvian should accept their claim.
46. See Tertullian De idololatria 16: "Finally I find no type of clothing censured by God, save the feminine when worn by a man."
47. Matthew 6. 22-23.
48. I Corinthians 5. 6.
49. Ibid. 6.9-10.
50. Exodus 13. 5.
51. That Salvian spoke too soon is suggested by Procopius Be Bello Vandalico II. 6. His description of the habits of the Vandals ''since the time when they gained possession of Libya" includes all the luxuries and vices that Salvian thinks they rejected.
52. I Corinthians 7. 2.
53. Note the phrasing in Cod. Theod. IX. 7.1 (a.D. 326): " . . . those women, the vileness of whose lives has proved them unworthy of the protection of the law."
54. With this chapter compare Lactantius hist. div. III. 21.
55. The ultimate source of this passage is of course Plato Republic V. 457; it is not clear through what channel Salvian derived it. He does not appear to have read Greek, and the Latin of the paragraph does not suggest Cicero's De re publica as a direct source. It was, however, a well-known topic, and may have been the subject of rhetorical exercises in the schools.
56. The locus classicus for this is Lucan Be bello civili II. 329-333, from which Augustine ( Bon. coniug. 21) clearly drew his example of the Younger Cato, handing his wife Marcia to a friend "to fill another's house with sons." See Souter, Classical Review, XIV (1900), 164. This was a popular exemplum, especially among Christian writers, as is shown by H. Kohl, De scholasticarum declamationum argumentis ex historia petitis (Paderborn, 1915), p. 104.
57. Salvian here confused Socrates with the "Socratic dialogues" of Plato.
58. Compare Augustine Sermo de tempore barbarico (Migne, PL, XL, col. 703) : "Neither by the enemy, nor by the barbarians, but by their own action are all men slain in their souls by seeing, consenting and not preventing. We have all abided in quiet, and as long as we do not wish the perverse peace of our state disturbed, we do not receive the true peace that we deserve. We scorn to preserve the peace of a good life, and so the peace of our times has come to an end."
This text was transcribed by Roger Pearse, 2005. All material on this page is in the public domain - copy freely.
Greek text is rendered using the Scholars Press SPIonic font, free from here .