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Born at Tagaste (in North Africa near Carthage) during the final years of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, Augustine studied and then taught rhetoric - "the art of persuasion" - in Carthage, Rome and Milan. As a young man he joined a movement known as Manichaenism, a synthesis of Christianity and Zoroastrianism that spread throughout the Roman Empire and exerted most influence during the 3rd and 7th centuries and for a time rivaled the growing Christian religion.
... Under the influence of the Skeptics, Augustine eventually rejected Manichaenism as a religion and then discovered Plotinus, through whose writings he became a devout neo-Platonist, arguing on behalf of Plotinus' semireligious interpretation of Plato. Zoroastrian and Manichean influences, however, especially concerning the human struggle between good and evil, sin and salvation, remained the focal point of his thought even after his conversion to Christianity, and thus through Augustine's powerfully persuasive writings these ideas became a central aspect of later Christian dogma.
In Carthage and Rome, where he taught rhetoric, Augustine was highly regarded for his abilities to train young lawyers in the art of pleading unpopular cases. he became a leading professor of Rhetoric at the University of Milan until 387 when, at the age of thirty-two, he converted to Christianity. He returned to Africa where he established many monasteries, becoming a priest in 391. In 396 the papacy appointed him bishop of Hippo, a city near Carthage, a post retained until the end of his life.
