Augustine remained a Manichee from ages 19 to 29. His schooling completed, he returned home to Thagaste to teach rhetoric. Although his students often used the skills of persuasion Augustine taught them for dishonest ends—as Augustine confesses he did, too—he credits himself for "try[ing] to teach them honestly” (59). Still, this was a period of great sin. Augustine had begun living and sleeping with a woman whose name he never reveals. Though they were loyal to each other, the fact that they remained unwed keeps Augustine from viewing this arrangement as any more virtuous than the promiscuity that preceded it.

Augustine pursued astrology and poetry as hobbies. He tells of “some sorcerer fellow” who offered to make animal sacrifices to secure Augustine’s victory in a poetry contest (59), an offer that Augustine rejected, though he regrets that his rejection was not rooted in Christianity. When he won the contest anyway, the man who crowned him, a doctor of some sort, learned of Augustine’s interest in astrology and warned him away from it, advice Augustine attributes to God even if he remained unpersuaded.

Augustine’s dearest friend fell ill and died. The friend had been Christian until Augustine lured him to

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