Chapter VIII

Chapter VIII.—Clement’s Family History.

Then said Peter: “Is there then no one of your family surviving?” I answered: “There are indeed many powerful men, coming of the stock of Cæsar; for Cæsar himself gave a wife to my father, as being his relative, and educated along with him, and of a suitably noble family. By her my father had twin sons, born before me, not very like one another, as my father told me; for I never knew them. But indeed I have not a distinct recollection even of my mother; but I cherish the remembrance of her face, as if I had seen it in a dream. My mother’s name was Matthidia, my father’s Faustinianus: my brothers’, Faustinus and Faustus. 792 Now, when I was barely five years old, my mother saw a vision—so I learned from my father—by which she was warned that, unless she speedily left the city with her twin sons, and was absent for ten years, she and her children should perish by a miserable fate.