Augustine’s Composition non mal

James J. O’Donnell notes in a superb introductory essay to Augustine’s City of God that the first 10 books, written in a classical, Ciceronian style that later yields to the plainer style of Christian exhortation, exhibit “measured symmetries” that “gradually disintegrate in books 11-22.” In particular, referring to the CCL printing of the Dombart-Kalb text, he observes, “Books 1 and 4 comprise 2569 lines together, Books 2 and 3, 2568; Books 6 and 7 comprise 2211, 8 and 9, 2222; both 5 and 10 are noticeably longer than the four books preceding to which they provide a conclusion.”