Minucius Felix — Octavius 1

I. As I was thinking and reviewing with my mind the memory of Octavius, my good and most faithful comrade, such sweetness and affection for the man clung to me that I somehow seemed to myself to return into past things, not to call back by recollection those things that are already finished and run through: so much has contemplation of him, as far as it is withdrawn from the eyes, been entwined in my breast and almost inmost senses.

And not without reason did that excellent and holy man, departing, leave us an immense longing for himself, inasmuch as he himself always burned with such love of us that in sports and in serious matters he would harmonize with equal will with me—to will or not will the same things: you would believe one mind had been divided in two.

So he alone was confidant in loves, himself partner in errors: and when, the fog shaken off, I was emerging from the depth of darkness into the light of wisdom and truth, he did not refuse me as companion, but—what is more glorious—he ran ahead.

And so, when my thought was turning through the whole age of our living-together and familiarity, the attention of my mind settled especially on that discourse of his by which with a most weighty disputation he reformed Quintus Caecilius, still clinging even now to superstitious vanities, to the true religion.