Panegyric on Constantine

I. About to speak the most august praises of Constantine, who stands as far above the princes of all ages as other princes have stood apart from private men, and about to speak in an assembly of rejoicing exultation and leaping gladness, which the first quinquennalia of the most blessed Caesars have made more abundant than usual; I feel that no eloquence can be wished for or conceived that would bring worthy grace to the occasion, or fullness to the subject, or capacity to your eager expectations. For now above all does the joyful and blessed devotion of all men boast itself with the greatest animation. Nor is it necessary to probe the hidden recesses of minds; the beauty of the public gladness stands forth on every countenance, and the judgments of souls are read in serene brows. For the greatness of overflowing joy does not contain itself, but, disdaining the hiding-places of the breast, so abundantly and brightly shines forth that it is understood to be no greater than it is genuine.

Nor indeed do they rejoice over moderate blessings who have no measure in their exultation.

II. We enjoy indeed the greatest pleasure of present things, but the prospect of things to come already lends them charm; and what are separated in time are joined by the anticipation of our minds. The greatest prince is passing his fifteenth year of a salutary reign, yet we already augur the vicennalia, and confirm our faith in what is to come by the felicity of what is past. The quinquennalia of the most blessed Caesars hold us occupied in rejoicings, but in the destined decennalia our hastening vows and swift hopes have already taken their stand. Possessed of these in turn, we shall extend the series of so desirable a good. Thus all things that come prosperously from our princes bear continuous fruit, nor do received blessings delight more than expected ones have cheered. But what are we doing, circumscribing within twenty or even thirty years what we feel to be eternal? The merits of our princes are greater than the wishes of our vows.

Let the course of a happy reign go on into the immeasurable, and let those who always meditate on divine things take no heed of human limits. Certainly we are not frustrated in our desires, who, when we wish for the greatest things, do so more generously than confidently; for on account of the heavenly favor toward him, the hope of attaining is as certain as the freedom of wishing is unrestrained. Who then of all men could satisfy by speaking the most ardent eagerness of his hearers for these congratulations, which are stirred by present blessings, which are kept alive by the memory of past ones, or which an eager thought devours as if about to overflow into the future? And indeed when I would embrace only the public benefits, and each man privately considers his own, let my trembling speech be brought forth, which must be surpassed by silent reflection.

Even in the avowed praise of great public deeds, which carries with it the desire of amplification, those things which have taken away the hope of enlargement by reason of their very greatness not unjustly cause a fear of diminishing them. III. Who, I ask, O greatest Constantine?—for I seem to address you as present, who, though absent to sight, cannot be torn from our minds—who, I say, could aspire to praise you with any hope of equaling rather than with the grace of not being silent? Who is so powerful in speech, whose abundance is so large, so fortunate, that when it has touched upon your virtues it does not either, overwhelmed by their number, stand amazed in hopeless conclusion, or crush their greatness, or, dimmed by their splendor, retain only so much brightness as it has gathered from the light of the things themselves?

When your divine virtue, and victory its companion and attendant, and its mercy, received the city of Rome not as she was rushing headlong, but raised, refreshed, and restored her afflicted and utterly prostrate; and when your other most fortunate expeditions, both earlier and later, have embraced no less of achievement in themselves than the saving of Rome from the very jaws of fate; what worthy of your greatness can be devised and said, in whose praises that is not the greatest thing which is the foremost thing in the whole world? To wish also to set forth the praises of the most noble Caesars is indeed a sweet endeavor, but no slight care, in whose years of youth there appears not the swelling bud of virtue about to burst forth, not the flower that heralds a good nature, more joyful than abundant, but already deeds of great fruit, and, contrary to the reckoning of their age, a mature gathering of the greatest harvests.

Of whom one, already heavy upon the enemies to be crushed, has begun to draw to his own name the paternal terror at which all barbarians have ever trembled; the other, already feeling the consulship, already the reverence due to himself, already his father, declares that he will soon be a conqueror who already in spirit conquers his age, if anything remains untouched by parent or brother. For every excellent nature is drawn swiftly to the likeness of its own, and does not slowly and tardily give token of good, when a vigorous genius bursts the wrappings of infancy. For whence comes so lavish a spirit in the greatest prince toward his children, unless because he already beholds in them the image of himself? IV.

Let mere natural necessity commend their children to lesser men, and let those love them whatever they be who find not in them what they desire from themselves: the most excellent prince is aided most by this, that in their earliest years the lines are already drawn within which the likeness of his virtues can be contained; and the best of fathers, but a still better emperor, rejoices not so much for himself as for the state when he beholds his children like himself. To whom, for the perfecting of the good qualities implanted in them, discipline, no sluggish artificer of virtues, is joined: so that the hope of equaling their father may be assured. For alike in natural endowment, but with the happier fortune of learning under the same master. Beholding him from their tender years, turned toward him with eyes and mind, they turn nothing away from his contemplation, uncertain whether they admire or love him: save that both must of necessity be done at once and intermingled.

For love also is a commender of deeds, whence admiration is born; and deeds, when they are wonderful, in turn create love. Thus to the children as they watch, whatever is most nobly done by him, since it pleased the more on his account, grows into them by the zeal of imitation. For you indeed, best of emperors, in your own upbringing, not all things were set before you that you might wish to follow. Save that you, a most keen observer of right actions, if anything was done otherwise, drew away your modest eyes from the care of watching. For your clemency will grant pardon if truth makes me bolder. V.

To form a judgment about princes is lawful for no one: for the reverence that confronts one repels the inquirer even at their vestibule, and if any have pressed their mind more closely, what happens to eyes that strain toward the sun befalls them—their sight is dazzled and they lose the faculty of seeing; but you, greatest of princes, cause those things to seem open which were formerly closed, you who desire so wholly to be seen as others were reluctant to be. Terror is not used as a screen, nor does a fair show of ostentation prevent the gaze from lingering and conceal what for the most part lies hidden within. You receive the gaze of men with kindness, nor does an unkind glare beat back the beholder, but a serene light invites him: now at last we understand what was to be desired in former times, since we venerate in you unveiled what we feared was hidden in others.

Therefore, as you are doing, most blessed Caesars, walk securely along all the paths of your father's praises. His many virtues do not indeed proceed by a single road, but all lead to the same glorious end. No deflections of desires, no winding of error: so that a costly retracing of steps need not be feared by those who go forward. And so you have set out on a more mature course, you who have no delay of deliberating the way. But for me, surrounded by this very abundance of matter, it is uncertain which way above all is to be taken, which approach is to be made: so many things of equal appearance, congruent in greatness, offer themselves.

VI. But as in great houses the vestibules themselves declare the inner adornment, so for us, coming to the awe-inspiring inner chambers of great virtues, Rome ought to furnish the entrance of our laudation and the gateway of our proclamation. She, once submerged in the evils of impious tyranny, and the greater she was the more pitiable, was bringing the glory of her former majesty to serve as an appeal for compassion. Yet to you, O greatest Constantine, she was venerable even in that her condition, because toward those whom we love deeply our reverence for them remains whole, even if their fortune has crumbled. Toward the cast down, those services are more welcome which come not from pity but from honor. But doubtless the philosophers rightly posit a connection between virtues that are fitted to one another. For so do they mutually both aid each other's works and share the fruit of those works, that the inseparable and undivided mingling is easily apparent.

You waged a war, greatest of emperors, upon which the burden of the City laid itself no less than her distress persuaded you. And so no more praise was given to your fortitude from it than was rendered to your piety, in that while you pursued the wicked you freed the wretched. For Rome was established and founded for ever, all who could have undermined her stability being destroyed together with their stock.

VII. For Mars, as is the wont of wars, did not wander in doubt through shifting and rolling chances, nor did the vicissitude of fortune, which for the most part fastens something grim onto prosperous affairs, wound the joy of the victors; but so great and so ample was the slaughter of the enemy, so fortunate and bloodless the victory, that you would believe it was not a contest of doubtful battle, but only the punishment of the impious that was sought. So greatly does a good conscience claim for itself even amid arms, that victory has now begun to belong to integrity no less than to valour.

For God, the arbiter of all things, looks down upon us from on high, and although human minds carry the deep recesses of their thoughts within them, yet the divine power insinuates itself entire, destined to preserve all things; nor can it be that, while it imparts to us the breath we draw and the many blessings by which we are nourished, it has renounced concern for the affairs of the earth, or refrains from judging among the lives of those whose interests it governs.

That power, therefore, that majesty which distinguishes between right and wrong, which weighs, balances, and examines every moment of desert: it protected your piety, it broke the wicked madness of that tyrant, it aided your unconquered army, burning with full hearts conscious of so many victories, with forces moreover as great as God could bestow or your love deserved; so that your lightning soldiers might overthrow the dreadful battle-lines, the unknown strength of iron and of bodies, and that whatever the long contrivance of long-standing wickedness had arrayed might be consumed in a fortunate encounter. VIII. O your clemency, Emperor, no less to be proclaimed than your victory! Even in your own heart the wicked perish with your reluctance. You fought unwillingly, you who conquered so easily.

For long since you had foreseen that this man was not fitted for rule, not capable of so great a majesty; because the greatness of a trust ill bestowed overflowed the narrowness of his soul: because those who cannot protect what they hold, when the weakness of fortune has collapsed under so great a burden, turn power into licence. Why should I recount the most unworthy slaughters of the unfortunate? Why the insatiable gratifications of lusts? Why the wretched plunderings of patrimonies? Let these things be passed over in silence, not only lest my speech rouse the sleeping memory of evils, but lest such discourse, while we bring forth the vices of another, defile the most holy praises of the prince.

The recounting of evils repelled is indeed an increment to attained felicity; yet as in harvests, even if much that had beset the ground must be torn away by toil, those who look upon the fruits brought forth know nothing of the labour of the cleared soil; so for the praises of Constantine it is enough that, while we behold the goods that are flowering, we do not reckon up the evils that have been cut away. IX. Yet you bore with him, Emperor, you bore with him as he made sport amid such great evils, and though you knew all things, you wore out the prayers of men by conniving and enduring: so that you might not even thus take up arms unjustly, though not yet provoked by the man in deed, yet already an enemy of his vices. But, as was consistent with your clemency, you tried gentler remedies, so that what you preferred to soothe rather than to cut away a milder medicine might heal.

Nay, you even wrested from your own soul both the desire for a meeting and the will toward concord—if it is right to call concord what is rather pardon, when one who is able to conquer chooses to forgive. And I do not doubt that your heavenly wisdom pursued this course for the reason that by union with you it might either wholly extinguish or moderately temper the most burning desires of that man. For there is no lust so senseless that it cannot be checked when temperance has come into fellowship with it. Shameful sloth casts down its eyes when the beauty of virtue is set before it. You might see wantonness turning aside and hesitating, confounded by gravity, modesty, and decorum: so that it is plain, most excellent Emperor, that in imposing concord you would not have granted him impunity for vexing the City, but sought a gentler victory; since you preferred to overcome his vices rather than his arms.

X. But assuredly those things cannot be joined by any force which are at variance by natural separation; nor is any bond so faithful as to hold by its tie things that tend in opposite directions. Your excellent wisdom, with piety ever joined to it, weighed within itself all the advantages of concord: that it is the foundation and root of peace, the seedbed of civil blessings, the harvest of public quiet, and the kindly nurse of peace. But oh, how sick is the return to honour for those who have already taken a step out of wickedness! You call him to partnership; he flees your offer, opposes it, recoils from it; he thinks he has nothing in common with you, because nothing is alike; and now assuredly it is no longer open to virtue to remain at rest. For to wage war in the mind while abstaining from arms is not the condition of concord, but a cowardly dissension. XI.

Although reason is not to be sought in those who have once begun to rush headlong from the path, yet I cannot but marvel that he did not embrace what was offered to him, which it would have been shameless to dare to hope for. Did he think you would bear that fatal laceration of the City slowly and tamely? But nature brings it about that the wrongs done to one you love, even if in themselves they are grievous, become yet more grievous through love: or did he believe that in a trial of arms he would not be inferior? How impossible it was for him to think this, the outcome has shown, since with standards so often matched, there was never anything that hope could catch at or fortune promise. By treachery, I suppose, he thought you could be deceived. But your valour is no more secure against an encounter than your prudence is against deceit. For who is more keen to foresee? Who more watchful to observe?

Who contemplates the present more sharply, the future more far-sightedly, the doubtful more surely, the ensnaring more successfully? Not that Lynceus would contend with you in this, who, as the poets tell, easily pierced with his gaze the walls of houses and the trunks of trees; nor even that other of whom the same antiquity has spoken, who, when stationed on a watch-tower in Sicily, was accustomed to descry ships entering the harbour of Africa; since no overcast air, made thicker by the exhalation of the sea, no great distance of regions so far apart, impeded the sight of that man.

XII. When every hope ought to have grown cold, and the will toward peace has been estranged, who can doubt that he was delivered up to your arms by divine will, since he proceeded to such madness as even to provoke of his own accord the one he ought to have courted? Oh, how sharp are the stings of pain that the insult inflicted by an inferior causes! For behold—alas, words scarce suffice—the bitter casting down of venerable images, and the foul defacement of a divine countenance. O impious hands! O savage eyes! Did you not thus grow blind? In obscuring the light of the world, did you not yourselves drink in the darkness you deserved? Stir yourself at last, O conscious virtue, and permit not this to the fury that was allowed no other act against you. But what do you finally achieve, blind madness? This countenance cannot be abolished.

It is fixed in the hearts of all; nor does it linger by the recommendation of wax or the deceits of pigments, but it blooms in the longing of souls: in short, the only oblivion of Constantine is the fall of the human race. Now indeed your injury will make his patience more commendable; they will seek more eagerly him whom a painting does not render. The longings of souls are more ardent when they have lost the consolations of eyes.

XIII. Nothing assuredly did you grieve more deeply, nothing more wretchedly, O Rome. Although you groaned more deeply within, and sustained griefs heaped upon you daily with a kind of callus of hardened endurance, yet your less-restrained grief confessed itself, and feared not to be detected, and the signs of ill-concealed sorrow passed out through the witness of your countenance. For this, O Rome, wounded by so many wounds, you wished to be avenged, while yet the most excellent prince, heedless of his own injury, preferred to avenge yours. Thus both of you, generous reckoners of duties, made things equal—you by the wish, which was your only power, he by love equally and by ability—so that he might bestow upon you as great a measure of blessings as he recognised you to wish for yourself. You fought then, Emperor, compelled indeed, but you most deserved the victory for this very reason, that you did not desire it. You sought peace, but pardon it if the prayers of all prevailed the more.

Nor did that divinity, accustomed to favour your undertakings, oppose you in this; but something did not yield to your intention, so that it might enter more fully into your deserts. Concord was denied to him for whom victory was prepared.

XIV. It is on the lips of all the Gauls that armies were seen who declared themselves sent by divine will. And although heavenly things are not wont to come before the eyes of men, because the simple and uncompounded substance of a subtle nature eludes the dense and murky line of sight, yet those helpers of yours, permitting themselves to be seen and heard, when they had borne witness to your merit, fled the contagion of mortal sight. But what is said to have been their appearance? What vigour of bodies? What amplitude of limbs? What eagerness of will? There blazed from their gleaming shields I know not what of awe, and the terrible light of heavenly arms burned: for such had they come, that they might be believed to be yours. This was their own declaration, this was what they bore among their hearers: we seek Constantine, we go to the aid of Constantine. Assuredly even divine things have their pride, and ambition touches heavenly beings too.

Those who had descended from heaven, those sent by divine will, gloried that they served under you. These, I believe, Constantius your father was directing—he who had yielded to you in earthly triumphs for your higher glory, and now as a god was conducting divine expeditions. This too is a great fruit of your piety, that although he, as a sharer of heaven, has felt himself made greater by your grace, and he whose gifts could now flow out to others, upon him your gifts have in turn overflowed. XV. Let the antiquity not of recent ages only, but of all memory yield to you, although that antiquity, eager for right and never corrupted in any duty, may glory that the fame of holiness stood on its side. But neither are the praises of men read where the judgements of the divine are sought.

Those men of old, therefore, praised as governors of life, who lived strictly and decorously in curbing their desires, whose every age was worn away in arms—when did they have so great a divine aid in battle as a reward for the merit of their integrity? So that those who stand far from your virtues may at least be placed in the nearest rank of justice. They tell that in a certain Roman war two young men with horses, remarkable alike for beauty and strength, because they had been conspicuous beyond the rest in fighting, were sought out by order of the commander to be rewarded for their service. When they were found nowhere, it was believed they had been divine, because, having diligently shared the toil, they had disdained the reward of toil. I for my part assent to this history not unwillingly. Nor indeed is she to be held an adulteress of truth in this matter, who promises herself to be no vain herald of antiquity.

But yet those who bound this in the records of their annals feared lest among posterity the credibility of the miracle might limp. Be at ease, O most weighty authors, concerning the faithfulness of writers; we believe the deeds, we who have now experienced greater things. The greatness of our prince wins credence for the deeds of the ancients, but takes away the wonder. The account of the aid must be measured by the scale of the affairs. Two young men once, but now armies were seen. This is assuredly more abundant, nor weaker in truth. The credibility rests supported by a double argument. So did Constantine deserve to be aided, so did Rome deserve to be saved. XVI. This is great, most great Emperor, but not marvellous given your piety. That that supreme majesty is present with you in all things, encompassing and protecting you, we held by the conjecture of our minds, even though it was not yet open to the proof of eyes.

For since your mind, set apart from mortal contagion, wholly pure, utterly sincere, everywhere commends itself to God by deserving well of him, since your glory has surpassed the measure of humanity, what man is there who does not believe that God aids you, when both your life merits it and the greatness of your deeds attests it? Let us therefore withdraw for a little from our set course by a not unwelcome digression. I will maintain this manner of speech, that it be neither inhumanly silent about the rest, nor offensively disparaging about the present. You, most excellent Emperor, at the beginning of your principate, still immature in years but already mature for empire, showed that the course of age need not be awaited in the hastening of virtue. You thereafter, equally good at home and in the field, never advanced a step without glory attending you everywhere like a shadow.

You inaugurated your military career with such great praise in the capture of the most fierce kings Ascaricus and his companion, that we already held a pledge of unheard-of greatness. As they say Hercules, still tender and at the breast, crushed two serpents with his hand, so that even in his infancy the nature of his future strength shone forth, so you, Emperor, in the very cradle of your reign, as though slaying twin dragons, made sport through the famous punishment of most savage kings.

XVII. The Franks themselves, fierce beyond all others, whose force, when it boiled up for war, was carried by the surge of its fury even beyond the Ocean itself, and kept even the shores of the Spains harassed by arms: these then fell so completely under your arms that they could have been utterly destroyed, had you not, by that divine instinct by which you govern all things, reserved those whom you yourself had crushed to be finished off by your son. Although that nation, fertile in its own misfortunes for your glory, grew up so swiftly and was so vigorously renewed, that it gave to the most valiant Caesar the first-fruits of a great victory, fighting with the memory of the defeat received not broken but made fiercer.

Let us defer for a little the Italian expeditions, in which, having broken open with force and valour the city of the Segusians, which, set against the Alps, bars the gateway of Italy, as though forcing the door of war, thence through opposing battle-lines, through armies standing in the way, the unimpeded onrush of your victories ran all the way to the walls of Rome.

XVIII. Why should I recall the Bructeri? Why the Chamavi? Why the Cherusci, the Vangiones, the Alamanni, the Tubantes? Their names ring with the sound of war, and the savagery of barbarism lends horror to the very words. All these, first separately, then together in arms, had blazed up in a conspiracy of federated alliance. Yet you, Emperor, when you saw so great a mass of war, feared nothing more than that you yourself might be feared. You approach the barbarians, and concealing the bearing of a prince, you drew as near as you could with two companions. Never is sovereignty more exalted than when it submits itself to public duty. You speak words, you stir their hopes, you turn their credulity, you deny that you are present. O truly blind barbarity, that in that countenance you did not see the marks of a prince—you who did not even perceive him thus, when he stood secure within javelin-cast, that it was Constantine!

He who could fear nothing in this—can you doubt that he goes forward in all things submitted to God? You lead invincible armies, and you alone are feared. So many kingdoms, so many peoples, and the gathering of such great nations, are indignant that they are matched against one whom they believe to be absent. Yet for you the increase of glory comes from the multiplication of terror; you crush more magnificently what is gathered together, which you would have pursued with greater difficulty if dispersed. Countless nations at once were driven to war, but scattered by your single onset; while they were assembling their combined strength, they furnished a swift victory.

XIX. On this one war alone, if there were leisure to dwell upon its due praises, an entire day would be consumed. Now my speech, flying past all things in such fashion, has not unrolled the sum of your victories but pointed out their ornaments. In these affairs always conducted in the interest of the state with such force and such success that your valor never trembled, your prudence never faltered, your good fortune never limped, it is sufficiently proved, as I think, that a perpetual stream of gracious majesty flows in you: so that the heavenly armies appear not to have been sent to you for the first time then, but only then to have been recognized. In such a manner, therefore, and with such security do you advance to liberate Italy, that although military affairs have uncertain outcomes, you nevertheless held within yourself the will to fight as a pledge of victory, even had divine aid been absent.

For there was present a vigorous and flourishing army, full of strength, full of spirit, joyful in arms, and performing the duties of military service from zeal rather than necessity—an army for which battles are more frequent than pay. When I say battles, I mean victories; and moreover an army as devoted to you as it is dear to you. For forgive me, proud valor—however great the confidence and spirit you may claim—the example of a prince makes the soldier braver.

XX. What I am about to relate is a very ancient matter, but not unworthy of mention. The Illyrians once, despising the infancy of King Eropus, provoked the Macedonians to war. And the first engagement went in their favor; but when the Macedonians were renewing the war, they carried their king in his cradle to the battle line. When anger inflamed the one side, and pity the other; when the sound of the standards fired the one, and the crying of the child fired the other, the course of the contest was changed; those who fought out of love were victorious. By as much, therefore, as love is more faithful than the memory of a benefit received in anticipation of one yet to come—since there the thing already received gives aid, while here the thing awaited merely flatters—by so much the more boldly did your soldiers fight, who were not bestowing upon a child the hope of future favor, but were repaying to a prince, the most generous born among men, the debt owed for merit already received.

XXI. The first city, therefore, that of the Segusiani, which had been the first to offer passage, was embraced by an easy victory. Its stubbornness in resisting so turned upon itself the force of the Emperor that it nevertheless did not forfeit his clemency. For when entry was being sought by force of arms, and the firing of the gates had spread the flames widely—a fire whose easy spread through adjacent structures was growing with pestilential increase—the greatest concern of the most gracious Emperor was not only that the fire, receiving no further aid, should die down, but that, once suppressed, it might be extinguished; and his clemency was seen to be far more laborious than his valor, since more toil arose in preserving the city than in capturing it. And so, as he departed, he made it so desirous of him that not the fear of victory but admiration of his gentleness disposed it to every act of obedience.

XXII. They say that the best remedies are those which arise for the purpose of correcting ourselves from another's calamity; but a mind impeded by wickedness, as by a disease, has no discernment of good. Behold, now at Turin a heavier battle awaits him as he comes, and the devastation of the Segusiani does not warn them to take heed for themselves; nor do they consider that they will have to deal with a prince whose force offers no hope of resistance, nor whose gentleness offers any reason for it. So great a soldiery had filled the broad plain that one who saw them drawn up would not have found their confidence unreasonable. For what is said to have been that spectacle—how fierce to behold, how formidable—horses and men alike shut in by a covering of iron? In the army they bear the name of clibanarii.

A coat of mail hanging down from above over all parts, let down over the chests of the horses and hanging to the level of their legs, protected them from the harm of wounds without impeding their movement.

XXIII. Yet you, Emperor, were not terrified—neither by the fact that the armor doubled the terror with so great a number, nor by the fact that numbers added force to arms. For it is certain that valor is bold in proportion to the nature of the task, since it regulates its own capacity according to circumstances: in small matters relaxed almost to unconcern, in moderate ones somewhat more intensely strung, when great things have come it rises to the height of the labor to be endured. That display of arms, and that army covered in iron, which would have wounded unwarlike eyes, stirred unconquered minds: because the soldier, imbued with the Emperor's example, burns with his whole soul when he finds an enemy worthy to be overcome. The cataphract horsemen, in whom the main strength of the battle had rested, you take upon yourself. Their discipline in fighting is, when they have charged the battle line, to maintain the course of their onset and, immune from wounds, to break through whatever is set against them without hesitation.

XXIV. But you, most prudent Emperor, who knew all the ways of waging war, found aid from your ingenuity—which is the safest course—to elude what is most difficult to withstand. Opening your line, you let the enemy pour out in an irrecoverable charge, then, drawing back your columns, you enclose those whom you had received in order to mock them. It availed nothing to press forward against you, since your men were yielding by design. Their iron rigidity did not allow them to turn in pursuit. Thus our men fall upon them as they are betrayed to them: with heavy iron-studded clubs they wore down by blows the enemy who offered no opening for wounds, and striking especially at their heads, they forced those whom they had stunned by the blow to fall.

Then they went headlong, they slid over backwards, they staggered half-dead, or were held fast to their saddles as they lay dying, entangled and lying amid the ruin of their horses, which, having found a place to wound them, were everywhere throwing their riders with uncontrolled pain. When all had been slain, with all your men unharmed, the dread of those arms was transformed into wonder at the victory—because those who had been considered invulnerable had perished without any wounds to your men. The Emperor Antoninus, distinguished in the toga and not inactive or useless in war, when he was testing his arms against the Parthians, upon seeing the cataphracts, was so wholly overcome with fear that he voluntarily sent to the king letters seeking to negotiate peace.

When the king, in his excessive arrogance, rejected them, the insolence of the barbarian was indeed overcome in war, but it was made plain that in these arms there resides such great violence that even he who was to be conquered trusted in them, and he who was to conquer feared them.

XXV. Why should I relate, after so great and so hard a battle, that at Brescia there was indeed a large and fierce cavalry force, more cunning in flight than in appearance, and routed by your first onset, it made its way all the way to Verona to seek greater protection? Nor was it a disgrace that those who yield to you flee with excuse. Let it even fall to wretched cowardice to display a flight that had dignity. Verona itself, trusting in the immense forces which the dread of your coming had gathered into one place, having already received the defeat of many, became for a time more cautious through fear, though not more fortunate through reason. It defends itself from your assault behind its walls. Present indeed was Ruricius, most experienced in war and the mainstay of the tyrant's commanders.

Along the entire circuit of the walls a great mass of men, and at Brescia most of them already broken: as in a body when some part is sick, the health of the whole is wont to be tainted; so a portion of that multitude, affected by the malady, had dissipated the whole army with the contagion of fear. How easy are the falls that weakness has, when untimely boldness has moved it—this was perceived as clearly then as at many other times, especially in that siege. The besieged make a sortie, and those who had for some time defended themselves from death by hiding, when the opportunity of fighting was given them, paid the penalty for the rashness of their sally. And Ruricius himself, driven back within the walls with great slaughter of his men, his hope now exhausted but his mind still frenzied, when he had thrust himself back to Verona, led new armies to the same place, and with the day now declining did not refuse battle, more eager for fighting than for safety.

But the outcome deceived him more than his deserts warranted. For death subdued the frenzy which neither the counsel of a prudent man nor the fear of a conquered man had been able to cure.

XXVI. O that night, to be committed to the monuments of eternal ages! When, amid thick darkness, the full license of fortune's encounter was permitted, yet you, Emperor, no less safe in the hour than sheltered by God, pressed hard upon a most savage enemy in great force, and exulting in the freedom of slaughter you counted it the gift of night that no one watched over you as you fought; through hostile battle lines you advanced without fear, you broke through, cast down, and trampled the densest masses. Those whom you strike down in ignorance lose the glory of their death—except that your very force compels you to be recognized. For nothing moves you—not the broken blasts of the trumpets, the dreadful shouting of the soldiers, the wounds left to chance, the swords clashing at close quarters, the heavy groans of the falling, the far-resounding clash of arms, and the confusion of mingled noise driven into one single din—because all these things valor either disregards or anger does not feel.

The night itself, the most just cause of terror for those who fight, had made you more violent in dealing out slaughter. For the only impediment to your valor—pity—darkness does not possess: so that it may be understood how fully your force accomplished its work in that battle, with pity unrestrained and majesty secure. When the battle was scarcely finished after much of the night, weary with slaughter, breathless from war, covered with blood—but with the enemy's—you returned to the watches of the siege. O Fortune! O all-powerful Rome! What gratitude will you ever render for such great labors as these? Except that the most indulgent prince, as though he himself owed you this very thing, holds you the dearer the greater the labor with which he saved you.

XXVII. And since some chance has brought me to the mention of the City, not the order of events has led me there, and it is not right to call back from there the speech to which it had long been straining to come, I pass over you, Aquileia, you, Mutina, and the other regions, for which, on account of the benefits of incredible blessings that followed, the very injury of the assault itself was most welcome. For they felt, when the helm of their fortunes was transferred to a most valiant prince, how easily all things returned to a wholesome course which had been so steered that they would soon either be dashed upon the rocks of all their evils or run aground on the shallows of their miseries. I pass over, I say, both these things and many others, of which the burden is heavy even when taken separately, and heavier still when all are heaped together.

For what you cannot bear when spread apart, to take upon yourself when gathered, is the act of a hope too presumptuous rather than a confidence too ready. Italy therefore being recovered, this was the first step toward liberating the City, and the easy ascent to victory—that the power of divinity shook from his accustomed hiding-places that man who was always clinging to the vitals of the City to devour them. In this indeed there was so much weight toward the ease of accomplishing the thing, that your valor, most excellent Emperor, should not so much glory that you conquered him, as your good fortune should rejoice that you were able to draw him out to battle.

XXVIII. For let us not think it happened by chance, nor by confidence, that he even voluntarily led out his army against one at whose very approach he would shudder, unless a god hostile to his mind already straying through fear, and the ripeness of his destruction, had driven him on: as the very manner of drawing up his army showed that he was out of his mind and his counsel entangled, when he chose a position for battle so as to cut off retreat and impose upon himself the necessity of dying, when he had no hope of victory. This indeed was something greatly to be desired by our Emperor, who is most offended by this one thing above all—if the ready hope of flight makes a contest uncertain. If the line relaxes, or the front, once struck, begins to waver, confidence of hand migrates to feet. You do not love, Emperor, battles unless flight cut off holds the ardent enemy in his place, so that he either falls by the sword or is preserved by mercy.

By the Tiber, therefore, he drew up his men, stationed so close to the bank that the fatal wave lapped with a kind of presage of the coming disaster at the heels of those in the rear: and indeed with so great a multitude at his disposal that the extended battle line stretched further than sight could follow; not so that the front was led out in a weak and thin line, but with such reinforcement of reserves and ranks that the line, no wider than it was strong, presented a wall on either side—since neither crowding had compressed it nor length had thinned it.

XXIX. I shall pass over at this point, O greatest Constantine, the wondrous and incredible manner of your ordering of your troops: for I would wish to pursue this, what place the heavenly army, as I may call it, had held. Though I think they stood nowhere but with you; for you choose for yourself the most difficult part of the battle, and as though the measure of virtues were owed in proportion to one's station of fortune, so among your own men you wish to excel not more by rank than by toil. It is indeed the fullest duty of a prince, if he abstains from fighting with his hand, not to have abstained from counsel; but you are no less swift to act than to command, at once guiding your armies by exhortation, aiding them by your deeds, and kindling them by your example.

Which here also you do more readily than in other battles; because in the present contest the reward of fighting was as great as the fighter was illustrious; and Rome immediately the victor's. When I have taken up the image of this, I shudder as I am about to speak. You charge first into the battle line, you break through alone. The futile casts of weapons shadow you as you advance, the shield rings secure under blows. Those whom the heavy spear strikes down, you trample upon, fierce and exulting. Your noble helmet gleams, and the flashing light of its gems marks out your divine head. Your shield shines with gold, your arms blaze with gold. O what great power you possess, O valor, who in this attire display more terror than splendor! The bravest soldiers followed this ardor, and bearing witness that they were worthy of his leadership and command, so labored each man, as though the whole outcome rested upon each man's single hand.

XXX. I shall not recount here the banks covered with continuous heaps of slaughter, nor the Tiber choked with piles of bodies, and forcing its way out amid the masses of corpses heaped high with labored effort and barely struggling through, nor how that tyrant himself was betrayed not by a manly death but by shameful flight, and how the bloody waves drowned him with an end worthy of his cowardice and cruelty. It is enough to touch upon these things briefly, both because they were spoken of at greater length by me on the previous day, and because there is no opportunity to treat them with fitting dignity, and lest a battle swiftly fought seem to have been narrated longer than it was concluded. O if now the faculty were granted me of shaping speech in proportion to the dignity of the events! I would employ all the flowers of rhetoric, and make full use of a certain exquisite charm and beauty of expression.

Now the din of Mars, now the sounds of trumpets are exchanged for festive voices resounding with joyful acclamation. The entry of the emperor into the City must be described; and in expressing the supreme joy of the senate and people of Rome, the speech itself must be wanton, or it will be ungrateful. No day since the founding of the City has shone upon the Roman empire whose congratulation was or ought to have been so unbounded and so remarkable; no triumphs so joyful as those which the antiquity of the annals has consecrated in its records.

XXXI. Indeed no bound captive generals were led before the chariot; but at last the nobility walked free. No barbarians were cast into prison; but men of consular rank were led out of prison. No foreign captives graced that entry, but Rome now free. She received nothing from the enemy's spoils, but recovered herself, nor was she made richer by plunder, but ceased to be plunder, and, than which nothing greater can be added to the magnitude of glory, she who had endured servitude received back her sovereignty. To all it seemed that the subdued hosts of vices, which had grievously besieged the City, were being led in procession. Crime was tamed, treachery vanquished, audacity distrustful of itself and insolence in chains; fury bound, and bloody cruelty gnashed its teeth in empty terror: pride and arrogance were overthrown, luxury restrained, and lust held fast in iron bonds.

Following this retinue came the most hideous head of the tyrant himself; and, if any faith is to be given to those who report it, savagery still lurked within it, and death itself had not overcome the menaces of that dreadful brow. Utterances of the most contemptuous mockery were hurled upon it by the crowd. For it was pleasing both to inaugurate their freedom with insults upon their oppressor, and the terror conceived in life was crushed with wondrous pleasure by the mockery of his destruction.

XXXII. What triumph more illustrious? What sight more beautiful? What procession more blessed? I shall say therefore, O Emperor, the one thing by which I think I am sufficiently able to signify your divine glory. As many marks of baseness as you had extinguished in him, so many insignia of praise shone forth in you. The most indulgent prince wished no one to be deprived of that gratification, so that everything through which his hatred had spread might be expiated by the spectacle of the tyrant's funeral. Everywhere swift rumor had already diffused the joy of the accomplished deed, and victory winged to the speed of a messenger; yet the fruit of the thing itself followed with fuller joy, because what flows in through the channel of the ears reaches the mind more faintly than what is drunk in by the eyes. And so such great gatherings of men were stirred throughout Italy, such great outpourings from the towns, that the testimony of the terror that had grown could easily shine forth in the present exultation.

With equal zeal the head of that same tyrant, sent to pacify Africa, so that he who had most grievously afflicted her in life might make expiation in his mutilation, was conveyed thither; and though the sea was not yet seasonable, yet favorable breezes attended the voyagers, and following seas, and the very elements aided that most blessed victory. The Tiber gave back the head, in which the title of so great a glory was carried about; the winds escorted it, the seas preserved it. In what manner, O mighty Africa, with what roar of joy, with what unaccustomed exultation did you exult? For nothing is more immoderate than sudden joy after long sorrow. It seethes with its own impulse; nor, as soon as it is free, is it immediately clarified, immediately pure. For as pipes, when they have long been stopped, upon being given an outlet, the more copiously they flow, the more turbid the waters they vomit forth; so the prayers of men, shut in by fear, discharged something turbid when they burst forth in accumulated flood.

XXXIII. Such are the congratulations for the victories. Nor were the fruits of the remaining virtues less abundant. Indeed the unwearied force and surpassing valor of the emperor unraveled the City, entangled and beset as it was with the gravest evils: but how much good did prudence devise, how much did kindness and clemency contribute? It is difficult to estimate which of these helped more. For even to those oppressed by calamity, the end of their prayer is to be freed from misery, and soon the absence of miseries is but little welcome unless joy follows. Thus valor and the liberality of the emperor, each performing its own offices in turn, rendered the happiness of the City most abundantly complete, both in draining away its ills and in heaping up its benefits. The way of harming has always been easier and far more ready than that of benefiting, to wound the whole than to heal the wounded, to scatter what has been seized than to compose what has been torn apart; yet this condition of things yielded to our Prince.

For whatever evil the savage dominion had inflicted throughout the whole six years, a care of scarcely two months healed. I say healed: the restoration of the former state of things is sufficient to soothe grief, but not also to summon forth congratulation, nor should you demand more than that he who has achieved by solitary effort only that he should not grieve over the recovery of what he had lost, should not also rejoice in the acquisition of new things. I pass over the patrimonies privately restored to all those whom that monstrous plague had driven from their homes, I pass over this, I say, because speech is scarcely sufficient to set forth what was done publicly: although since the commonwealth is built up from individuals, and whatever is conferred upon it flows proportionally to all; and conversely it is necessary that what all obtain severally should redound to the common good of the commonwealth.

XXXIV. Now I scarcely dare to recall concerning so great a prince, that no matron of more refined beauty was ashamed of her good looks, since under a most continent emperor a striking appearance was not an incitement to license but an adornment of modesty. This is without doubt a great, or rather divine, praise, often boasted even among the philosophers themselves, not so much as a thing exhibited in practice as proclaimed in disputation. But let us leave this to our Prince, who so desires to implant temperance in all, that he thinks it should be referred not to the credit of his own virtues but to the innate honor of nature itself. What then? Who could worthily set forth his easy access, his most patient ears, his gracious answers, his very countenance, radiant with something venerable and lovable, blending the gravity of august dignity with cheerfulness?

By the wonder of these things all were so bound to him, that not so much did all grieve that they had endured that tyrant so long, as that they were enjoying such a prince so late.

XXXV. It would be long to enumerate from that time the benefits of the prince, which returning upon the world without measure, shone forth interwoven with his kindness, so infinite in number, so great in their advantages, that neither the multitude of all of them nor the usefulness of each single one will ever cover gratitude with forgetfulness. You felt at last, O Rome, that you are the citadel of all nations and queen of lands, when from all the provinces you pledged the noblest men to your senate: so that the dignity of the senate was more illustrious in reality than in name, since it was composed of the flower of the whole world. And that venerable force and greatness of the Roman people, restored to the image of antiquity, does not exult in unbridled license, nor lie prostrate in abject languor, but has been so tempered by the constant admonitions of the divine prince, that, while it is led flexible and pliant at his nod, it shows itself obedient not to his terror but to his kindness.

For the nations subdued have established a calm peace of affairs and a deep tranquility for the City. Minds at leisure are free to apply the pleasures of peace. All the most celebrated parts of the City gleam with new works: nor are only those things that had grown shabby with age distinguished by a renewed splendor; but those very things which had previously been thought most magnificent now, blazing with the light of gold, have betrayed the inglorious parsimony of our ancestors. To the Circus Maximus itself lofty porticoes and columns gleaming with gold have given so much unaccustomed ornament, that men resort thither no less eagerly for the charm of the place than for the pleasure of the spectacle.

XXXVI. Rome, possessed of such great blessings, which indeed she shares with the whole world, drinks in besides the fruit of a great hope, which she has set before her in the most noble Caesars and their brothers, whose very names we already venerate, even though our prayers are meanwhile extended into the future. Nor could the Lacedaemonians more rightly have guarded their commonwealth by that institution, when they would have no king save from the stock of Hercules. Your children, O greatest Constantine, and thereafter your grandchildren, she prays that together with you they may be sought by as many as the greatness of their birth promises. Behold, the deeds of Crispus, greatest of the Caesars, declare the reason and the eagerness of these prayers, in whom swift valor, not retarded by the delay of years, has filled his boyish age with triumphal glories: whose praises already spring forth so abundantly that they might seem full, did we not reflect that he has but begun, and that his father is before us.

He indeed, most noble Caesar, now enjoys the sight of his venerable father, his brothers, and all his own, and offers himself to be enjoyed by all. In the raw winter still, he completed a journey impassable with frost, immense in extent, beset with snows, with incredible swiftness: so that we may understand that nothing is harsh to eager spirits, who has himself made so laborious the very desire which he sought from his own people.

XXXVII. What congratulation flooded your gentle heart, O greatest Constantine, to whom it was granted to see your son after so great an interval, and to see him a victor? He recounted, no doubt, the wars he had exhausted, and this to his own credit, not to his own display; how he was in receiving the enemy, how fierce against one who resisted, how gracious to one who supplicated. His brother listened to these things attentively, and glad hope and gentle joys tickled his boyish spirit; and as he marveled at his brother, he also favored himself, recognizing from his brother's years how near he was to so great a glory.

Now we all beseech you, O greatest Constantine, when you have praised him in his presence, when you restore him to the commonwealth that demands him, when you restore him to the Gauls that long for him, admonish him again and again as he returns, for it cannot easily be persuaded, that if ever the barbarians, crushed by your arms, should yet stir somewhat, he should be like you in spirit and in counsel. Let him only restrain his right hand, spare his hand, and let there be something, we pray, in which he is unwilling to imitate you again. But you, O Constantine Caesar, the greatest increase of the public good, with what prayers does Roman felicity embrace you? She expects from you as much as your name promises: and though your age still calls you back from the imitation of your father's virtue, yet nature already leads you toward his devotion; already apt for letters with matured application, already your fortunate right hand rejoices in fruitful subscription.

Your most indulgent parent delegates many things, and what he grants through you, he prefers to be referred to your credit. XXXVIII. What then is more fortunate in these times, when by the beneficence of the greatest Constantine, who gave us Caesars so timely, we enjoy their greatest advantages, and their age remains intact? Nothing is diminished, and very much is taken: so that, while the supply is abundant, hope nevertheless remains unimpaired. Therefore, as the quinquennalia have been happily begun, how earnestly it befits us to pray and beseech that the decennalia of the most noble Caesars be extended beyond our own posterity, we are reminded by the very blessings of the times and the utilities of the commonwealth. The barbarian lies prostrate on the flank of the Gauls, or poured out in your bosom: the Persians themselves, a powerful nation, and second in the world after the greatness of Rome, have sought your friendship, O greatest Constantine, no less tremblingly than lovingly. There is no nation on earth so fierce that it does not fear or love you.

All things abroad at peace, at home prosperous, with abundance of provisions, with plenty of fruits. Cities adorned in a wondrous manner, and founded almost anew. New laws established for the regulation of morals and the breaking of vices. The captious windings of the old laws have been cut away, and have lost the snares for entrapping simplicity. Modesty is safe; marriages are protected. Secure fortunes rejoice in their own ambition, nor is there any fear of having as much as possible; but in such great abundance of good things, great shame in having nothing. Finally the state of affairs is such that we cherish the prayer of maintaining our happiness rather than the desire of increasing it.

There is but one thing by which Rome could be made more happy, the greatest indeed, yet still but one: that she may see Constantine her preserver, that she may see the most blessed Caesars, that she may receive the fullness of enjoyment in proportion to her longing, that she may receive you with joy; and when the reason of the commonwealth shall have caused you to depart, may dismiss you with the expectation of your return.