Ironically, I switched my major at Grinnell College from history to religion because of this book. We had just read Thucydides in the Historiography class, the last course required to complete the major, when Professor Kintner assigned De civitate Dei. That weekend, openig the tome and beginning to read, I decided it was simply too much. Augustine seemed to be psychotic polemics, not history. Being a junior and having accumulated a lot of religion credits almost by chance, I determined a switch was doable in the time remaining and that I'd learn more of the history I was interested in by making the switch.

Years later, working part-time for Ares Press, a publisher of books about the classics and ancient history, and seeking employment at a great books college which included De civitate Dei in its reading list, I picked up the book again and this time read through the thing.

It wasn't fun, nor was it particularly interesting, but it did make a lot more sense that it would have when I was twenty. The Grinnell religion degree, the subsequent M.Div. and graduate program in philosophy all helped to prepare me for the thought-world of Augustine.