The City of God · Characters
Character guide
Key figures in The City of God by Augustine of Hippo.
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Augustine
major
Also known as Hippo, Compare Augustine, Augustine De Genesi, Augustine of Hippo
Augustine begins this work in AD 413, the year after Rome was sacked, addressing cultivated Romans like Volusian whose doubts are political and social, not merely speculative. He carries the weight of a task he suspects may exceed even his own learning and eloquence, yet he refuses to offer the threadbare arguments of earlier apologists. His answer will reframe all of history as the slow, hidden growth of two cities, and that ambition is what makes the early books so urgent.
Jesus Christ
major
Also known as Christ, the Lord Christ, our Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus, Jesus, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Man Christ Jesus, Man, Christ Jesus, the Saviour, Saviour, the same Mediator
Christ stands at the center of Augustine's counter-history: not a rival emperor but the founder of a city whose builder is God, growing silently alongside the kingdoms of this world. Against pagan philosophers' contradictory theorizings and Rome's unhinged morals, Augustine points to this city's superior morality and heavenly origin as the true cause of history's unfolding. The whole arc of the work, from creation and the fall to the last judgment, is arranged to show why Christ's kingdom endures when empires do not.
Abraham
major
Also known as Abram
Abraham is the hinge of Augustine's sacred chronology, the man whose departure from Haran at seventy-five anchors the timeline from promise to exodus. His household is messy and human: Sarah's barrenness, Hagar's pregnancy and contempt, the jealousy that follows, and later Keturah after Sarah's death. Augustine reads each union carefully, insisting Abraham used Hagar for progeny rather than lust, obedient to his wife rather than enslaved to appetite, and in that discipline finds a model of faith that predates the law.
Marcus Varro
supporting
Also known as the same Varro, Varro, Mark
Varro is the pagan scholar Augustine most respects and most enjoys cornering, a man who disbelieves the scandalous myths about the gods yet still records them as civic history. He gives Athens its name through a contest between Neptune and Minerva, and traces Aeneas into Italy with the same sober precision he applies to divine genealogies. That tension, between Varro's private skepticism and his public defense of Roman religion, is exactly the crack Augustine widens to show that even Rome's best minds could not believe what they asked others to worship.
Plato
supporting
Also known as the good Plato
Plato is granted real insight: his wise men, momentarily freed from the body, catch the supreme God's presence like a flash of lightning in darkness. But Augustine presses the gap, asking why Plato's lesser gods must remain so sublimely remote from human contact, as if men would pollute them. If the stars are visible gods and are not contaminated by our gaze, the excuse collapses, and with it the need for demons as mediators. Plato's philosophy, admirable as it is, cannot bridge the distance it describes.
Jupiter
supporting
Also known as god Jupiter
Jupiter presides over a divine order Augustine finds morally incoherent: he sends the three goddesses to Paris for judgment, yet the contest ends in votes, punishments, and quarrels among gods who should be above such things. Varro himself disbelieves these tales as incompatible with the nature of the gods, and yet they are sung and danced in the theatres meant to please them. That contradiction, between what Rome's gods are said to do and what Romans insist they are, is one of Augustine's sharpest early weapons.
Romulus
supporting
Also known as Numa Pompilius, who succeeded Romulus in the kingdom, Numa, Numa Pompilius, Pompilius, King Numa Pompilius
Augustine pairs Romulus with his successor Numa to expose the moral poverty of Rome's founding legends: the sanctuary that stocked the city with fugitives foreshadows the churches that sheltered Rome's own destroyers. His deification, granted because Romans could claim him as their own, becomes Augustine's prime exhibit that vanity, not reason, built the pagan pantheon. He matters because Rome's self-image as a sacred city rests on him.
Cicero
supporting
Also known as M. Tullius Cicero, Tully
Cicero stands in Augustine's argument as the pagan thinker who came closest to glimpsing a moral order beyond the empire, yet whose eloquence never earned him a shrine while Romulus did. Augustine turns him into an unwitting ally, using his writings to show that even Rome's finest mind found the old religion hollow. He matters because he proves the critique of paganism comes from within Rome's own intellectual tradition.
Jacob
supporting
Also known as Joseph, the sons of Joseph, whom Jacob blessed, prophetically changing his hands
Jacob belongs to Augustine's genealogy of the city of God, the line running from Abraham through David to Christ, where divine election repeatedly overturns natural birth order. His prophetic crossing of hands over Ephraim and Manasseh becomes a type of the gospel's reversal of worldly priority. He matters because he shows that God's city advances not by inheritance or power but by hidden, often baffling, choice.
Isaac
supporting
Also known as Isaac Taylor
Isaac occupies the hinge of Augustine's sacred history, the child through whom the promise to Abraham passes and the figure whose near-sacrifice prefigures the cross. His story lets Augustine argue that the city of God was never built on human strength but on faith in a promise that looked absurd. He matters because he anchors the claim that Scripture's deepest meanings were planted long before Christ arrived.
Apuleius
minor
Also known as the Platonist Apuleius, Apuleius
Platonist philosopher and author, cited for his views on demons and magic.
Cain
supporting
Also known as Tubal-Cain
Cain is Augustine's founding citizen of the earthly city, the counterpart to Abel's pilgrim people, and his lineage runs through Tubal-Cain into every kingdom built on domination. His rejected sacrifice and fratricide dramatize the primal split between love of self and love of God that Augustine traces through all of history. He matters because Rome itself, in Augustine's reading, is Cain's city writ large.
Adam
supporting
Also known as XV That Adam
Adam stands at the origin of Augustine's whole scheme: one man's sin transmitted to all his descendants, making the human race a massa damnata in need of grace. His fall is not just a moral anecdote but the historical hinge that explains why the earthly city and the city of God coexist in conflict. He matters because every argument in the book about sin, death, and redemption runs back through him.
John
supporting
Also known as the blessed Apostle John, the Apostle John, Apostle John, John Damascene
John stands among Augustine's scriptural witnesses, the evangelist whose words on Christ's divinity and on God's prior knowledge of His people anchor the argument against pagan philosophers. His authority is invoked to show that God is said to know those He causes to know, not because He learns late but because He acts first. For readers entering the middle books, John is the quiet proof-text that keeps grace and incarnation at the center of the city of God.
Minerva
minor
Also known as the Greeks, The Greeks, Homer, the Minerva of Homer, who interposed in the ranks of the Greeks
Roman goddess of wisdom, often identified with Athena, and a subject of pagan worship critique.
Noah
supporting
Also known as righteous Noah
Noah belongs to the early genealogy of the city of God, the man through whom humanity and the covenant were carried past the waters. In Augustine's scheme he marks the age of infancy, before Abraham's call and the law, when the Hebrew tongue was first learned and the family of God was still small. His survival is not just rescue but a template: the city of God persists alongside the world's kingdoms, silent and growing.
Felicity
minor
Also known as felicity, the god Father Catius, who should make men cautious, that is, acute, when Felicity, Father Catius, goddess Felicity
Roman goddess of good fortune, discussed in the context of pagan worship of abstractions.
Aaron
minor
Brother of Moses and first high priest of Israel, representing the Levitical priesthood.
Sarah
minor
Wife of Abraham and mother of Isaac, a figure of faith and the promise of offspring.
Cyrus
minor
Also known as the Assyrians, the Jews, Chaldeans, the Chaldeans, Cyrus king of Persia, who also ruled the Chaldeans and Assyrians, having somewhat relaxed the captivity of the Jews, Jews
Persian king who allowed the Jews to return from exile, fulfilling prophecy.
Peter
supporting
Also known as the Apostle Peter
Peter stands in the book as a witness to the apostles' teaching, invoked alongside John and Paul when Augustine untangles how God is said to will what He causes His people to will. The tension is not Peter's own but the reader's: saints pray piously for things that never happen, and yet God is said to have wrought that very will in them. His presence keeps the discussion anchored in the church's lived experience of prayer and foreknowledge.
Juno
minor
Also known as Lucina, Juno Lucina
Roman queen of the gods, associated with marriage and childbirth, criticized as false.
Saturn
minor
Also known as Good Saturn, The father Saturn
Roman god of agriculture and time, often identified with the Greek Cronus.
Sylla
minor
Roman dictator and general, used as an example of cruelty and civil war.
Scipio Nasica
minor
Also known as the famous Scipio Nasica, Scipio, Scipio Nasica, Nasica
Roman senator praised for his virtue and opposition to the destruction of Carthage.
Paul
supporting
Also known as the Corinthians the Apostle Paul, the Apostle Paul, the Corinthians
Paul is Augustine's most quoted authority for the argument that the promise to Abraham about all nations is fulfilled not by the old law but by the advent of Christ and the faith of the gospel. He is the counterweight to Moses in the book's scheme: the law was given through Moses, but the land of promise and the gathering of the nations come through Joshua and through Christ. For the early-middle arc, Paul supplies the theological engine that keeps the two cities distinct.
Virgil
supporting
Virgil stands on the pagan side of Augustine's ledger, the poet whose Aeneid gave Rome its sense of divine mission and whose lines Augustine turns against the philosophers. The tension is that Rome's own best poet cannot deliver the city from its unhinged morals or its contradictory theorizings about the gods. His presence matters because Augustine needs a worthy opponent: to show that even Rome's finest imagination falls short of the city whose builder and maker is God.
Socrates
minor
Also known as Socrates the Athenian
Greek philosopher, mentor of Plato, known for his method and opposition to pagan myths.
Jove
minor
Also known as supreme Jove, the same Jove, Almighty Jove, Almighty
Another name for Jupiter, chief Roman god, often used in poetic and philosophical contexts.
Jeremiah
minor
Also known as holy Jeremiah, Zephaniah, the prophet Zephaniah, who prophesied with Jeremiah, Zephaniah
Old Testament prophet who foretold the destruction of Jerusalem and the new covenant.
Moses
supporting
Also known as the Israelites, the Israelites Moses, Israelites, Moses carnally
Moses dominates the giving of the law, the passover, and the fifty days to Pentecost, but Augustine makes his exclusion from Canaan theologically pointed: the law cannot bring the promise to fulfillment. The tension is that Israel's greatest leader is also the sign that the old covenant is not the end. His death and Joshua's succession mark the transition from the age of the law to the age of the promise, which the book's middle books trace toward Christ.
Hermes Trismegistus
minor
Also known as Trismegistus, Hermes
Legendary Hellenistic figure associated with wisdom and occult philosophy, cited on idolatry.
Mars
minor
Also known as Venus, Venus or Mars
Roman god of war, often paired with Venus in discussions of pagan morality.
Apollo
minor
Also known as the Cuman Apollo
Roman god of prophecy, music, and healing, associated with the Sibyl and oracles.
Marcus Attilius Regulus
minor
Also known as Regulus, Marcus Regulus
Roman general and consul, famous for his stoic return to Carthage and death.
Sallust
minor
Roman historian whose works on the Catilinarian conspiracy and Jugurthine War are cited.
Shem
minor
Son of Noah, ancestor of the Semitic peoples, through whom the line of Abraham descends.
Aeneas
minor
Trojan hero and legendary founder of Rome, central figure in Virgil's Aeneid.
Lot
minor
Nephew of Abraham, rescued from Sodom, an example of righteous living among the wicked.
Antichrist
minor
Figure of end-times opposition to Christ, discussed in the context of prophecy and judgment.
Terah
minor
Father of Abraham, who set out for Canaan but settled in Haran.
Job
minor
Also known as Cato, Cato the saintly Job, who endured dreadful evils in his body rather than deliver himself from all torment by self-inflicted death, conquered Cato
Patient sufferer from the Old Testament, an example of endurance and faith in trials.
Janus
minor
Two-faced Roman god of beginnings and transitions, keeper of gates and doors.
Seth
minor
Third son of Adam, ancestor of the line leading to Noah and the patriarchs.
Brutus
minor
Also known as Junius Brutus
Founder of the Roman Republic, who expelled the Tarquins and established liberty.
Heber
minor
Also known as Salah, Salah begat Heber
Ancestor of Abraham, from whom the term 'Hebrew' is derived.
Marius
minor
Roman general and consul, known for his military reforms and rivalry with Sulla.
Mercury
minor
Also known as Trismegistus, Mercury Trismegistus
Roman messenger god, also identified with the Egyptian Thoth and Hermes Trismegistus.
Samuel
minor
Also known as holy Samuel
Prophet and last judge of Israel, who anointed Saul and David as kings.
Hercules
minor
Also known as This Hercules, whose great deeds are reckoned as twelve (not including the slaughter of Antaeus the African, because that affair pertains to another Hercules), Antaeus the African, Antaeus
Legendary hero known for his twelve labors, often cited in pagan mythology.
Holy Scripture
supporting
Also known as Scripture, divine Scripture
Scripture functions in The City of God less as a book than as a witness: Augustine sets its prophecies beside Rome's fall and finds them already fulfilled before his eyes. Its authority is total, yet it must be defended, interpreted, and harmonized against pagan critics who mock the faith. The tension lies in reading rightly—shadow versus light, prophecy versus history—and it is on this reading that the whole argument for the two cities rests.
Isaiah
minor
Also known as Isaiah
Major prophet who foretold the coming of the Messiah and the suffering servant.
Enoch
minor
Also known as Enoch begat
Righteous man who walked with God and was taken up without dying.
Marcus Cato
minor
Also known as Cato
Roman statesman and moralist, known for his strict virtue and opposition to luxury.
Lamech
minor
Also known as Methusael begat Lamech, the fifth Methusael, the sixth Lamech, Methusael begat
Descendant of Cain, father of Noah, and a figure in the genealogy of the patriarchs.
Ninus
minor
Also known as King Ninus
Legendary founder of Nineveh and the Assyrian empire, mentioned in historical chronology.
Judah
minor
Son of Jacob, ancestor of the tribe from which King David and Jesus descended.
Annaeus Seneca
minor
Also known as Seneca
Roman Stoic philosopher and playwright, cited on ethics and the nature of the gods.
Manasseh
minor
Also known as Joseph, Machir, Machir the son of Manasseh, grandson of Joseph
Son of Joseph, patriarch of one of the tribes of Israel, blessed by Jacob.
Egyptians
minor
Also known as the Egyptians, the oppressive Egyptians, Apis, Apis king of Argos, whom the Egyptians called Serapis, Serapis, V Of Apis king of Argos, whom the Egyptians called Serapis, and worshipped with divine honours
Ancient people and their gods, often used as examples of idolatry and oppression of Israel.
Lucretia
minor
Roman noblewoman whose rape and suicide led to the overthrow of the monarchy.
Alexander of Macedon
minor
Also known as Alexander
Macedonian conqueror who created a vast empire, discussed in historical examples.
Mucius Scaevola
minor
Also known as Mucius, Scaevola
Roman hero who demonstrated courage by burning his hand to prove his resolve.
Methuselah
minor
Patriarch known for his extreme longevity, son of Enoch and grandfather of Noah.
King Tarquin
minor
Also known as Tarquin, king Tarquin
Last king of Rome, whose tyranny led to the establishment of the Republic.
Liber
minor
Also known as Father, the Father, The Father, Father Liber
Roman god of wine and fertility, often identified with Dionysus or Bacchus.
Theodosius
minor
Also known as Theodosius Augustus, Augustus
Christian Roman emperor who made Christianity the state religion and opposed paganism.
Nero Caesar
minor
Also known as Nero
Infamous Roman emperor, persecutor of Christians, used as an example of tyranny.
Abel
minor
Second son of Adam, murdered by his brother Cain, a type of the righteous sufferer.
Rehoboam
minor
Also known as Israel, Rehoboam, O Israel
Son of Solomon, whose harsh rule caused the division of the kingdom of Israel.
Neptune
minor
Roman god of the sea, often invoked in discussions of pagan mythology.
Plotinus
minor
Also known as The Platonist Plotinus
Neoplatonist philosopher whose ideas on the One and the soul are discussed.
Radagaisus
minor
Gothic king who invaded Italy and was defeated, an example of divine judgment.
Ham
minor
Son of Noah, father of Canaan, whose descendants were cursed for his disrespect.
Augustus
minor
Also known as Caesar, Caesar Augustus
First Roman emperor, under whose reign Christ was born, a figure of political order.
Vesta
minor
Also known as Venus, Vesta Venus
Roman goddess of the hearth, often paired with Venus in discussions of domestic virtue.
Lactantius
minor
Early Christian author and apologist, cited on the errors of paganism.
Aesculapius
minor
Also known as O Aesculapius
Roman god of medicine and healing, son of Apollo, worshipped for cures.
Tellus
minor
Also known as mother Tellus
Roman earth goddess, personification of the fertile land, worshipped in agriculture.
Hesperius
minor
A contemporary Christian layman mentioned in a miracle story about relics.