It is unquestionable that Carthage, with its buildings and statues, its squares, avenues and public gardens, looked like a large capital, and was a perfect example of that ideal of rather brutal magnificence and strength which the Romans obtruded everywhere.
And even while it dazzled the young provincial from Thagaste, the African Rome shewed him the virtue of order--social and political order. Carthage, the metropolis of Western Africa, maintained an army of officials who handled the government in its smallest details. First of all, there were the representatives of the central power, the imperial rulers--the Proconsul, a sort of vice-emperor, who was surrounded by a full court, a civil and military staff, a privy council, an _officium_ which included a crowd of dignitaries and subaltern clerks. Then there was the Proprætor of Africa who, being in control of the government of the whole African province, had an _officium_ still larger perhaps than the Proconsul's. After them came the city magistrates, who were aided in their functions by the Council of the Decurions--the Senate of Carthage. These Carthaginian senators cut a considerable figure: for them their colleagues at Rome were full of airs and graces, and the Emperors endeavoured to keep them in a good-humour. All the details of city government came under their supervision: the slaughter-houses, buildings, the gathering of municipal taxes, and the police, which comprised even the guardians of the Forum. Then there were the army and navy. The home port of a grain-carrying fleet which conveyed the African cereals to Ostia, Carthage could starve Rome if she liked. The grain and oil of all countries lay in her docks--the storehouses of the state provisions, which were in charge of a special prefect who had under his orders a whole corporation of overseers and clerks.
Augustin must have heard a good deal of grumbling at Carthage against this excess of officialism. But, all the same, so well-governed a city was a very good school for a young man who was to combine later the duties of bishop, judge, and governor. The blessings of order, of what was called "the Roman peace" no doubt impressed him the more, as he himself came from a turbulent district often turned upside down by the quarrels of religious sects and by the depredations of the nomads--a boundary-land of the Sahara regions where it was much harder to bring the central government into play than in Carthage and the coast-towns. To appreciate the beauty of government, there is nothing like living in a country where all is at the mercy of force or the first-comer's will. Such of the Barbarians who came in contact with Roman civilization were overcome with admiration for the good order that it established. But what astonished them more than anything else was that the Empire was everywhere.