PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH psalmists The prophecies that exalt the kingdom of David and the Jewish priesthood and promise them everlasting duration must have their true fulWlment elsewhere since the institutions of Israel no longer exist (DCD XVII 7) We return to secular history with the eighteenth book, which narrates the rise and fall of a series of pagan empires: Assyria, Egypt, Argos, and Rome Augustine is anxious to reconcile biblical and secular chronologies, assigning the Mosaic exodus to the time of the mythical king Cecrops of Athens and placing the fall of Troy in the period of the judges in Israel He treats as simultaneous the foundation of Rome, the beginnings of philosophy in Ionia, and the deportation of Israel The destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, he tells us, happened in the reign of Tarquinius Priscus in Rome; the Babylonian captivity of the Jews ended at the same time as the expulsion of the kings and the foundation of the Roman Republic One of the purposes of his rather dizzying chronology is to emphasize that the teaching of the Hebrew prophets antedated the researches of the Greek philosophers (XVIII 37) In Augustine’s narrative Jerusalem becomes the emblem of the City of God and Babylon becomes the emblem of the city of the world Babylon was the city of confusion, where God had shattered the original unity of human language in order to frustrate the building of the tower of Babel (Gen 11: 1–9) In the city of the world philosophers speak with as many diVerent tongues as the builders of Babel Some say there is only one world; some say there are many; some say this world is everlasting, others say that it will perish Some say it is controlled by a divine mind, others that it is the plaything of chance Some say the soul is immortal, others that it perishes with the body Some place the supreme good in the soul, others in the body, others in external goods Some say the senses are to be trusted, others that they are to be treated with contempt In the secular city there is no authority to decide between these conXicting views: Babylon embraces all alike, without discrimination and without adjudication (DCD XVIII 42) How diVerent in the City of God, where all accept the authority of canonical Scripture! The most important disputations among philosophers are those that concern the ultimate good and the ultimate evil The ultimate good is that for which other things are desirable, while it is itself desirable for its own sake Philosophers have sought to place the ultimate good in the present 10