Augustine s De Civitate Dei, or The City of God, written between (413-427), expresses a political realism that makes love the subversion of ideological projects of power. Disordered loves tend to idolatry which stimulates political ideology; but the Augustinian politics of the affections carries an intrinsic critique to this logic of domination. The motif of how love subverts pretenses to power will be discussed through three main parts. Firstly, De Civitate Dei builds an argument that deglamorizes the Roman Empire, arguing that Rome s decline is due to their pursuit for vainglory and lust for domination. Secondly, since this idolatrous polytheistic society is bound to enslavement to its pride, Augustine presses his readers to love God and his eternal city. Thirdly, as Augustine deconstructs Roman patriotism and questions its idolatries, one must think on the relevance of the Augustinian vision to the deglamorization of contemporary political ideologies. By associating idolatry with the libido dominandi, the lust to dominate, and by criticizing the violence and the dynamics of domination and enslavement which founded the civitas terrena, Augustine discards ideological and theocratic attractions that rise from assigning a messianic role to politics.