In translating Augustine's third book you cone across his comments on Cicero's book Hortensius,
"inter hos ego inbecilla tunc aetate discebam libros eloquentiae, in qua eminere cupiebam fine damnabili et ventoso per gaudia vanitatis humanae. et usitato iam discendi ordine perveneram in librum cuiusdam Ciceronis, cuius linguam fere omnes mirantur, pectus non ita. " (III.4)
Augustine is talking here about how at a tender age he discovered an eloquent book (the Hortensius)
...and now in the ordinary course of study I had reached in the book of a certain Cicero..."
One of the comments on this flippant way of mentioning Cicero (as if people wouldn't know that there was one and only one Cicero that mattered) was that Augustine was trying to distance himself from the paganism of Cicero. In a way, he was saying "I know he is a pagan but maybe we can just overlook that for now..."
I'm not sure yet if I agree with this. He uses an awful lot of classical "pagan" quotes and allusions in his works to make me think he thought any less of them for being pagan. I don't know that he would apologize for their being pagan. Perhaps he was just being sarcastic?
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