In his early youth (Confess. i. 23) St. Augustin disliked and neglected the study of Greek; and he frankly owns that he read the Platonists in a Latin version (Confess. vii. 13). Some modern critics have thought that his ignorance of Greek disqualified him from expounding the Scriptures; and Cicero or Quintilian would have required the knowledge of that language in a professor of rhetoric.