As Christianity spread in the Roman Empire, it was especially successful in Northwest Africa, and Carthage became a Christian city even before Christianity was legal. Saint Augustine, born in Thagaste (modern-day Algeria), considered himself Punic, and left some important reflections on Punic cultural history in his writing. One of his more well known passages reads: "It is an excellent thing that the Punic Christians call baptism itself nothing else but ‘"salvation"’, and the sacrament of Christ's body nothing else but ‘"life"’".