Ancient Panegyrics Addressed to Constantine

I would do, most sacred Emperor, what a good many people advised me a little while ago—that since your majesty had granted to my humble self this most celebrated day for speaking in this city, I should draw the opening of my discourse from that very subject itself—were I not called back from this by a twofold consideration: reflecting that a man of middle age ought not to display a sudden faculty of speaking, and that nothing ought to be brought to the ears of so great a divinity unless it has been long written and often worked over. For he who speaks extempore before the emperor of the Roman people does not feel how great the empire is. To this is added the fact that already quite enough people think I am going to say far too much: and this, I believe, they measure not from my talent, which is modest, but from the abundance of your praises. Their expectation I shall disappoint, though unwillingly, by brevity of speech.

In truth I had thought of more things to say, but I prefer that my oration be found wanting. And so I shall make this first economy: that whereas I look up with due veneration to all of you, most unconquered Princes, whose majesty is harmonious and united, yet this discourse, however small it be, I shall dedicate to your divinity alone, Constantine. For just as we worship the immortal gods themselves, though we revere them all in our mind, yet at times we venerate each one in his own temple and seat; so I declare it right for me to remember the devotion of all the princes, but to celebrate with praises the one who is present.

I shall begin, therefore, from the divine power of your origin: which very many perhaps still do not know, but those who love you most do know. For from that deified Claudius there flows to you an ancestral kinship—he who first reformed the dissolved and ruined discipline of the Roman empire, and destroyed the monstrous forces of the Goths that had burst forth through the straits of Pontus and the mouth of the Ister, by land and sea; would that he had been a restorer of men for longer, rather than a companion of the gods so soon. Although, therefore, that most blessed day, celebrated with the nearest religious observance, is held to be the birthday of your reign, since he was the first to adorn you with that distinction; yet from that founder of your line the fortune of empire has descended to you.

Nay indeed, your own father was advanced by that ancient prerogative of the imperial house; so that you now stand at the highest step, and above the fates of human affairs, the third emperor after two princes of your family. Among all the sharers in your majesty, this, I say, is yours alone, Constantine, this is your distinction: that you are emperor, and so great is the nobility of your origin that the imperial office has added nothing to your honour, nor can fortune claim credit for what is yours, setting aside canvassing and solicitation. III. No chance agreement of men, no sudden outbreak of popular favour made you emperor. You earned the empire by being born. This indeed seems to me the first and greatest gift of the immortal gods: to come into the light already blessed, and to receive at home, already secured, what others can scarcely attain by the labours of a whole lifetime.

For although great and admirable is the good fortune that ascends to that pinnacle of majesty through service duly rendered in its proper rank, and through the degrees of military advancement duly traversed, and that has grown strong to such a height of power resting on the roots of virtue alone—which indeed you too have achieved as far as your age permitted, and although fortune had placed you above all delays in the winning of glory, you chose to grow through soldiering, and by facing the dangers of war and engaging the enemy even in single combat hand to hand, you made yourself better known to the nations, though you could not be more nobly born—great, I say, it is to set out from oneself and arrive at the greatest things; yet it is far otherwise to strive through steep places and to seek the mountain ridges from the plain, and otherwise, supported by the very height of one's birth, to hold the summit of fortune, and not to hope for what is highest, but to possess it.

IV. You entered that sacred palace not as a candidate for empire, but as one already designated, and straightway those paternal household gods saw in you their rightful successor. For there was no doubt that the inheritance belonged to him whom fate had granted as the emperor's firstborn son. For you alone did that man—emperor on earth and god in heaven—beget in the first flower of his age, still vigorous in his whole body, endowed with that energy and courage with which he waged many wars and above all the campaign on the plains of Vindonissa. Hence it is that so great a likeness of form has passed from him to you, that nature seems to have stamped and impressed it upon your features.

For it is the same countenance that we revere again in you, the same gravity upon the brow, the same tranquillity in the eyes and in the expression. So does the blush bear witness to modesty, so does speech testify to justice. Receive, Emperor, receive the confession of our feelings. We grieve that Constantius has departed from us, but while we behold you we cannot believe that he has departed. And yet why do I say that he has departed, whose immortal deeds live on and pass through the mouths and before the eyes of all men?

V. For who—I will not say remembers, but who does not still in some manner see—by what great deeds he enlarged and adorned the commonwealth? He, upon being admitted to the empire, at his very first arrival shut out the Ocean seething with the enemy's countless fleet, and hemmed in by land and sea alike that army which had occupied the shore of the town of Boulogne, when he had severed the tidal courses of that element by driving stakes into the waves, so that those whose gates the tide lapped had lost the sea and even what they touched of it. He, having taken that same army by valour and preserved it by clemency, while fleets were being built in preparation for the recovery of Britain, cleansed the Batavian land—once occupied under his very own foster-child by various peoples of the Franks—of every enemy, and not content with victory, transplanted those very peoples into Roman territories, so that they were compelled to lay aside not only their arms but also their savagery.

For why should I speak of the recovery of Britain? To which he sailed over so calm a sea that that Ocean, struck with awe at so great a passenger, seemed to have ceased its own movements; and he arrived in such a manner that victory did not accompany him, but awaited him.

VI. What shall I say of the mercy with which he dealt temperately with the vanquished? What of the justice with which he restored to the despoiled what they had lost? What of the foresight with which, having joined allies to himself, he so conducted himself in judgment that liberty restored aided those who had suffered servitude, and impunity recalled to repentance those who were conscious of guilt? What shall I say again of the innermost peoples of Francia, torn not merely from those places which the Romans had once invaded, but from their own original seats and from the uttermost shores of barbarism, so that, settled in the deserted regions of Gaul, they might both aid the peace of the Roman empire by their cultivation of the land and its arms by their service in the levy? What shall I recall of the victory at Langres, made glorious even by the wound of the emperor himself? What of the plains of Vindonissa heaped with the slaughter of the enemy, yet still covered with their bones?

What of the monstrous multitude drawn from various peoples of the Germans, whom the Rhine hardened by frost had enticed to attempt crossing on foot to the island which that same river embraces in its bifurcation, and who were suddenly shut in when the river thawed, and were at once blockaded by vessels sent down upon them, and so compelled to surrender in such a manner that—what is harder than the common lot—they were made to choose, and were handed over to captivity on equal terms, destined to carry back with their survivors the infamy of their kinsmen's treachery.

VII. The day will fail me before my speech, if I run through all the deeds of your father even with this brevity. His final expedition too did not seek British trophies, as is commonly held for certain, but, with the gods already calling him, he drew near to the innermost threshold of the lands. For he, after so many and so great achievements, did not deign to acquire—I will not say the forests and marshes of the Caledonians and other Picts, but not even Ireland close at hand, nor Thule at the farthest, nor even the Isles of the Blessed themselves, if any there be—but, what he was unwilling to utter to anyone, being about to go to the gods, he gazed upon the Ocean, looking toward that father of the gods who warms the fiery stars of heaven, so that, being thenceforth to enjoy perpetual light, he might already behold there the day that is almost unbroken.

For truly and indeed the temples of the gods above were opened to him, and he was received into the assembly of the heavenly ones, with Jupiter himself extending his right hand. Nay more, when straightway asked his opinion as to upon whom the empire should be decreed, he spoke as befitted Constantius Pius: for by his father's vote you were manifestly chosen emperor. This indeed truth bids us say, and I see it is most welcome to your filial devotion. But why should we flatter only your private feelings, when that was the vote of all the gods, and one indeed long since prescribed by their authority, though it was then confirmed by full deliberation? For even then you were being called by heavenly suffrages to the salvation of the commonwealth, when at the very moment at which your father was crossing to Britain, your sudden arrival shone upon the fleet already spreading its sails: so that you seemed to have come not conveyed by the public post, but to have flown thither by some divine course.

VIII. For no arrows of the Persians or Cydones, aimed with however certain aim, ever struck their mark so surely as you were present in timely companionship to your father who was about to leave the earth, and with the security of your presence you relieved all those cares which he was turning over in his prescient and silent mind. Ye good gods, with what great happiness did you endow Constantius Pius even in his passing! The emperor, about to make his passage to heaven, saw the heir he was leaving behind. For immediately upon his being taken from the earth, the whole army united in you, the minds and eyes of all marked you out, and although you had referred to the senior emperors the question of what should be done regarding the supreme direction of the commonwealth, they nevertheless anticipated in their zeal what those men soon approved by their judgment.

The soldiers, as soon as your first going forth gave them the opportunity of approaching you, serving the public interest rather than your own feelings, cast the purple upon you as you wept. For it was not right that one already consecrated as emperor should remain so any longer without it. It is also said, unconquered emperor, that in your ardour to flee the army demanding you, you spurred your horse with your heels. Which indeed, to tell you the truth, you did through the error of youth. For what Cyllarus or Arion could have carried you away, when empire was following you? That majesty, I say—that majesty, subject to the nod of Jupiter, entrusted not to Iris the messenger of the gods, but first committed to Victory—attended you as easily as things sent from heaven to earth arrive swiftly. Thus did the felicity of the commonwealth both reveal your modesty and devotion and your attempts to defer the empire, and overcome them.

IX. O fortunate Britain, now more blessed than all lands, you who first beheld Constantine as Caesar! Rightly has nature endowed you with all the good gifts of sky and soil: in you there is no excessive rigour of winter, nor heat of summer; in you there is such great fertility of crops that you suffice for the gifts of both, of Ceres and of Bacchus; in you there are groves without savage beasts, land without harmful serpents; on the contrary, a countless multitude of gentle cattle, heavy with milk and laden with fleeces: and certainly for that which makes life dear, the days are very long, and the nights are never without some light, since those outermost flat shores cast no shadows, and the gaze passes beyond the boundary of night to the sky and the stars: so that the sun itself, which seems to us to set, there appears merely to pass by.

Ye good gods, what is this, that always from some uttermost end of the world new divine powers descend to be revered by the whole world? Thus Mercury from the Nile, whose source is unknown, thus Bacchus from the Indians who are almost witnesses of the rising sun, showed themselves as gods present among the nations. Places bordering on heaven are assuredly more sacred than those inland, and from there an emperor is sent more directly from the gods, where the earth comes to its end.

X. The son of an emperor, then, and of so great an emperor, and having yourself attained the empire so auspiciously, how did you begin to defend the commonwealth? Some ignoble band of barbarians, I suppose, attempted with sudden assault and unforeseen brigandage to test the auspices of your birth. You visited with punishment for their rashness the very kings of Francia, who had violated the peace during your father's absence: you did not hesitate to punish them with the utmost torments, fearing not at all the perpetual hatred and inexpiable wrath of that people. For why should an emperor reckon any offence caused by just severity, who is able to defend what he has done? Your clemency is that which spares enemies and looks more to its own interest than it pardons. But as for you, Constantine, let your enemies hate you as much as they will, so long as they tremble. For this is true virtue: that they do not love, and yet keep quiet.

More cautious perhaps is he who holds his conquered enemies bound through pardon, yet stronger is he who treads upon them in their anger. You have renewed, Emperor, that ancient confidence of the Roman empire which exacted vengeance by death upon captured enemy leaders. For then, when captive kings had honoured the triumphal chariots from the gates all the way to the forum, and the emperor had begun at the same moment to turn his chariot toward the Capitol, they were dragged off to prison and put to death. One Persian alone, at the entreaty of the very Paulus who had received his surrender, escaped the law of that severity. All the rest, deprived of light in their chains, gave to other kings the lesson that they should prefer to cultivate Roman friendship rather than to provoke Roman justice. So great is the benefit that punishment inflicted on enemies confers even in this respect: that not only do enemies not dare to be fierce, but even friends show greater reverence.

XI. Hence it is, therefore, Emperor, that we enjoy this peace. For we are now protected not by the waters of the Rhine, but by the terror of your name. However much that river may dry up in summer heat or stand firm in frost, the enemy will dare to use neither as a ford. For nature has closed off nothing with so insurmountable a rampart that audacity does not penetrate it, when some hope of attempting it is left. That is the impregnable wall which the fame of valour builds. The Franks know they can cross the Rhine—those whom you would gladly admit to their own destruction—but they can hope for neither victory nor pardon. They measure what awaits them by the torments of their kings, and therefore they are so far from contriving a crossing of that river that they rather despair upon learning of your power. Where now is that ferocity? Where is that ever faithless fickleness?

Now you do not even dare to dwell near the Rhine, and you scarcely drink in safety from the rivers further inland. On our side, by contrast, the forts disposed at intervals adorn the frontier more than they protect it. The unarmed farmer ploughs that bank once so terrible, and our flocks are bathed throughout the river with its two-horned stream. This is your daily and eternal victory, Constantine, from the punishment of Ascaricus and Regaisus, to be set above all former successes in battle. A battle is won once; an example without end. The common people, however many perish, do not know their own defeat; it is a short way to the conquering of enemies to have removed their leaders.

XII. Yet, so that the savagery of the barbarians might be broken in every way, and that the enemies might not mourn only the punishment of their kings, you also sent in a force to lay waste the Bructeri, unconquered Emperor. In this the first principle of your plan was that, by suddenly crossing with your army, you fell upon them unawares—not because you distrusted open battle, since you would have preferred to engage them in the open field, but so that that nation, accustomed to frustrate war by retreating into the hiding-places of forests and marshes, might lose the opportunity for flight. Countless numbers were therefore slain, very many taken captive. Whatever livestock there was, was either captured or slaughtered. All the villages were consumed by fire. Those of fighting age who fell into our hands—men whose treachery made them unfit for military service and whose ferocity made them unfit for slavery—were given over to punishment as a spectacle, and wearied the raging beasts by their sheer numbers.

This, Emperor, is what it means to trust in one's own valor and fortune; this is not buying peace by showing mercy, but seeking victory by issuing a challenge. XIII. Beyond this, by building the bridge at Cologne you insult the remnants of that afflicted people, so that they may never lay aside their fear, may always tremble, may always stretch out suppliant hands—though you do this more for the glory of your empire and the adornment of the frontier than for the convenience of crossing into enemy territory whenever you wish.

Indeed, since the entire Rhine is equipped with armed ships and soldiers posted along all the banks as far as the Ocean stand watch, yet it seems to you a fine thing—and truly it is most fine—that the Rhine should be trodden by a new bridge not only in its upper reaches, where it is shallow on account of its breadth or scanty near its source, but also there where it is at its fullest, where it has already received very many rivers—those which our great river here, and the barbarian Neckar, and the Main have brought in—where, already fierce with its immense current and impatient of a single channel, it strains to overflow into its own branches. Truly, Constantine the Great, nature itself serves your divine power, when in that depth of swirling waters the foundations of such massive structures are laid, destined to hold firm and stable. Though the most powerful king of the Persians once joined the narrows of the Hellespont with a bridge of ships, that crossing was temporary.

Though the third Caesar after Augustus spread a bridge of similar linked ships across the Bay of Baiae, that was a dainty excursion of an idle prince. This work is both difficult to accomplish and destined to be of eternal use. Certainly it has already, at its very beginning, moved the enemy to submission, for they have humbly sought peace and offered their most noble sons as hostages. From this no one doubts what they will do when the bridge is finished, who already submit to it while it is still begun. XIV. While you were intent upon such matters for the benefit and dignity of the state, the fresh disturbances of that man drew you to themselves—that man who above all others ought to have favored your successes. How I am to speak of him I am still almost uncertain, and I await guidance from the nod of your divine will.

For however justly he may be charged by the complaints of your dutiful heart, a private voice ought nonetheless to restrain itself, especially since he who has shown himself ungrateful to you despite your great benefits and the strong bond of kinship still compels consideration, so that however angry one may be, one should regard him with some reverence. What then shall I do, so that I may touch such deep wounds with a gentle hand? I shall avail myself of those common defenses of all wrongdoing which are nonetheless often asserted even by wise men: that no man sins except by fate, and that the very crimes of mortals are acts of fortune, while virtue on the other hand is a gift of the gods. Rejoice, Constantine, in your nature and character, that Constantius Pius begot you such as you are, that the decrees of the stars shaped you such, that you cannot be cruel.

But I do not believe that he, when about to come into the light and receiving a choice of the life he was to lead, fell into a lot to be shunned—one that would bring to many men an unjust end, and in the end a voluntary one even to himself. For to say nothing of other things, was it not the compulsion of fate that brought it about that he should return this recompense to your dutiful heart—he whom you, when he had been driven from the City, put to flight from Italy, rejected from Illyricum, received into your provinces, your forces, your palace?

XV. What, I ask, did he intend? What did he desire? Or what more could he obtain beyond what he had already received from you? To him you had given the highest and most diverse blessings—private leisure and royal wealth; when he departed you had sat with him to put on his rings; you had charged our attendants to show him even more deference than to yourself; you had resolved to obey all his commands in such a way that the title of emperor remained with you while the power of it rested with him. What was that so great passion—not for power, for what could he not do while you were emperor?—but rather the delusion of a mind already failing with age, that a man born so many years ago should take upon himself the gravest burdens and civil war?

The desires of those whose appetites reason does not bound are never filled by any gifts of fortune, and so prosperity flows beneath them unappreciated, so that, always full of hopes and empty of advantages, they lack what is present while they look ahead to what is to come. But that divine man who first both shared and laid down imperial power does not repent of his counsel and his deed, nor does he think he has lost what he voluntarily transferred. Truly happy and blessed is he whom the service of you, such great princes, honors even as a private man. And that other too, supported by manifold power, rejoices under your shade as well—he who knows that you have grown from his own stock and justly claims your glories as his own. Him, then—whom his brother had taken as a partner—it shamed to imitate; him it repented to have sworn an oath to this man in the temple of Capitoline Jupiter. No wonder that he also broke faith with his son-in-law.

XVI. Such is the loyalty, such the religion of one devoted to the inner shrines of the Palace—that slowly and hesitatingly, already of course with those plans of war in mind, with the journey completed, the resources of the stopping-places consumed, so that no army could follow, he should suddenly shut himself within walls in his purple, and seize the imperial power for the third time after having laid it down twice, send letters to stir up the armies, and attempt to corrupt the loyalty of the soldiers by dangling rewards before them—intending, no doubt, to make safe use of an army which he had taught to have hands for sale? By that error of his it was made clear, Emperor, how great a love of your soldiers embraced you—soldiers who preferred you to all the gifts he had promised, to all the offers of honors.

That rare virtue of self-restraint, scarcely ever maintained even by a few teachers of wisdom, has, for your sake, Constantine, become common to all men; and not only those whom reason, learning, and the quiet of life have softened, but even that ardor of military spirits, out of regard for you, despised gain. There may have been armies in other times equal to yours in eagerness and strength; to you alone has it fallen to have a wise army. Many a corrupt commander in former times, inferior in arms, competed by lavish giving, but their popularity was brief and fleeting, easily surpassed by whoever imitated them. This is the firm and eternal guardian of the state—one whom the soldiers love for his own sake, whom not flattery coaxed or purchased serves, but simple and sincere devotion. Your gifts, Constantine, are manifestly welcome to the soldiers, but all the more welcome because they are yours. Whatever you extend is made more acceptable by your hand. Who can compete with you in this kind of generosity?

It is an insurmountable form of largess when the emperor himself is the reward for the soldier. And so you bestow upon your armies even more than they desire, yet your name, your authority derived from the memory of your father, the grace of your age, and finally that venerable form of yours commend you all the more.

XVII. For what a beautiful and heavenly wonder, ye gods!—a young emperor, in whom that valor which is already supreme is yet still growing; in whom this radiance of the eyes, this majesty at once venerable and gracious, dazzles and at the same time invites the gaze. Such I conceive in my mind that great king, such the man of Thessaly—men whose supreme valor is celebrated in conjunction with their beauty. For not without reason do the most learned men say that nature itself measures out for great minds bodily dwellings worthy of them, and that from a man's countenance and the comeliness of his limbs one may gather how great a heavenly spirit has entered as their inhabitant. And so when the soldiers see you entering they marvel and love you, they follow you with their eyes, they hold you in their hearts, they think they are obeying a god, whose form is as beautiful as his divinity is certain.

XVIII. As soon therefore as they had heard of that foul deed, they of their own accord asked you for the signal to set out; and when you were giving them their travel-allowances, they said that this very thing was causing them delay, and that they already had more than enough from your generosity. Then, seizing their arms, they made for the gates and completed the march of so many days from the Rhine all the way to the Saône without any rest; and then, with bodies weary but spirits ablaze, with the ardor of vengeance growing day by day the nearer they drew. Then indeed your care, Emperor—by which you had provided vessels from the port of Chalon to refresh their strength—scarcely pleased them in their haste. That sluggish and lingering river seemed never to have been slower. As the keels glided silently and the banks receded slowly, they cried out that they were standing still, not moving.

Then, setting their hands to the work of their feet, they bent to the oars, and by their urging overcame the nature of the river, and at last, having struggled free of the Saône's delays, they were scarcely satisfied even with the Rhône itself: it seemed to them to rush too slowly, to hasten to Arles less than usual. In short—it must be confessed, Emperor—with this bodily vigor of yours and this ardor of mind, you labored at times to follow the army you were leading. For all were carried forward with such impetus that, when they learned he had left Arles deserted and gone to Marseille, they instantly flew thither by ship, and with headlong speed outstripped not merely the currents of the Rhône but in some measure even the blasts of the winds themselves.

So great a love of your name had inflamed them that, although they knew they would have to assault a most strongly fortified city, they believed it sufficient merely to arrive.

XIX. For Marseille, as I hear, jutting out into the deep sea and girt by a most strongly fortified harbor—into which the inland gulf flows back through a narrow entrance—is joined to the land for only fifteen hundred paces, on which side a very strong wall, thick with towers, is set against attack. Indeed, the Greeks and Italians who once gathered there as settlers, excelling in arts and intelligence, were taught by the very site to lavish more generously on that side which could be approached all that would be of use in war, since nature had relieved the cost of labor on all other sides.

And so that city, which at that time by a grim fate closed its gates against Caesar in favor of an older commander, was attacked by land and sea with engines brought up, with ramparts built, with naval battles repeatedly—more terrified than subdued—and a long siege barely opened it, even though the petty Greek magistrates had repulsed Caesar himself, and soon his generals and forces, not so much by their own strength as by their walls. But at your first arrival, Emperor, and at the first assault of your army, neither the height of the walls of that same Marseille, nor the very numerous towers, nor the nature of the site delayed you from taking the harbor and the city immediately, had you so wished. For the soldiers had attacked the entire wall with such confidence that they would straightway without doubt have scaled it, had not the height deceived the estimate of their eyes in the preparation of the scaling-ladders they had brought up.

But even so, many, deceived by the shortness of the ladders, made up what remained of the ascent by stretching out their bodies, and, lifted on the shoulders of those coming up behind, had already seized the gaps between the battlements with hooked hands—so little did they fear any danger in the execution of their vengeance, that they seemed to themselves not to be scaling a wall but to be fighting on equal ground.

XX. But, O singular devotion of yours, Constantine, ever maintaining its own duties even amid arms! You gave the signal to withdraw, and you deferred victory, so that you might be free to pardon all, lest the soldiers in their anger do anything more harsh than your clement nature could endure. In this, while you took care with the solicitude of an excellent emperor that the soldiers who had been drawn in by deceit should receive time to repent and of their own accord beg for pardon, we nonetheless, who look upon your most gentle feelings—for nothing is so transparent as the goodness in your heart—understand that you spared him whom, had the first assault had the opportunity, no one could have snatched from the sword. Thus, so far as your dutiful heart is concerned, Emperor, you preserved both him and all whom he had received.

Let whoever was unwilling to make use of your benefit blame himself, and let him who judged himself unworthy of life when through you it was permitted to live bear the consequence: for your conscience it is enough that you showed mercy even to those who did not deserve it. But forgive the saying—you cannot do all things: the gods avenge you even against your will.

XXI. This indeed is what we must always pray for, that you may have successes even beyond our hopes, we who place all our hope in the bosom of your majesty, and everywhere seek your presence, as though it could be granted. For behold, while you had withdrawn a little from the frontier, with what terrors the treachery of the barbarians had been boasting—namely, while they put to themselves the questions: when will he arrive? When will he conquer? When will he lead back a weary army?—suddenly, upon hearing of your return, they fell prostrate as if thunderstruck. Nor did your concern for the republic touch you for more than the space of a single night.

For on the day after you had taken up the doubled labor of the journey upon receiving that news, you learned that all the tumult had subsided and all the tranquility you had left behind had returned; fortune herself so ordering this, that the happiness of your affairs should remind you there to bring to the immortal gods what you had vowed, when you had turned aside to the most beautiful temple in the whole world—nay, to the god himself present, as you came. For you saw, I believe, O Constantine, your Apollo, accompanied by Victory, offering you laurel crowns, each of which bears the omen of thirty years. For that is the number of human generations, which is surely owed to you beyond the old age of Nestor. And indeed—why do I say "I believe"?—you saw, and recognized yourself in his likeness, to whom the divine songs of the seers have proclaimed that the rule of the whole world is owed.

This I now judge at last to have come to pass, since you are, like him, a young, and joyful, and health-bringing, and most beautiful emperor. Rightly, therefore, have you honored those most august shrines with such great gifts that they no longer seek after the old ones. Now all the temples seem to call you to themselves, and especially our Apollo, in whose boiling waters perjuries are punished—which you above all must needs abhor.

XXII. O immortal gods, when will you grant that day on which this most present god, with all peace composed, may also walk about those groves of Apollo, and the sacred seats, and the panting mouths of the springs? Whose welling waters, misty with gentle warmth, seem to smile upon your eyes, O Constantine, and to wish to press themselves to your lips. You will surely marvel also at that seat of your divinity, and at the warm waters with no sign of burning soil, whose taste has no bitterness of flavor or of breath, but such purity in drinking and in scent as that of cold springs. You will give gifts there also, you will establish privileges, and finally you will restore my own native land by the very veneration of that place.

The ancient nobility of that city, once glorying in the brotherly name of the Roman people, awaits the aid of your majesty, so that there too the public places and most beautiful temples may be repaired by your generosity; just as here I see this most fortunate city, whose birthday is celebrated by your piety, rising again in all its walls, so that it rejoices in some measure that it once fell in ruin, made greater by your benefactions; I see the great circus, a rival, I believe, to the Roman one; I see basilicas and a forum, works worthy of a king, and a seat of justice raised to such a height that they promise themselves worthy of and close to the stars and the sky. All these are indeed gifts of your presence.

For in whatever places your divine power most frequently shines, in those places all things increase for men, in walls and in gifts alike: nor did the earth put forth new flowers more abundantly for reclining Jupiter and Juno than cities and temples rise up around your footsteps, O Constantine. And therefore this suffices for my prayers, that you may see my native land, led by your piety, because it will straightway be restored if you have seen it. But whether that happiness is yet owed to my own lifetime—time will tell. XXIII.

Meanwhile, since by your condescension I have attained the summit of my prayers, in that I have consecrated this voice of mine, such as it is, exercised in the varied duties of leisure and of the palace, to your ears, I give the greatest thanks to your divine power; and to you I commend, for the rest, my children, and especially him who is now handling the highest duties of the treasury, into whom I have wholly transferred myself by fatherly affection; whose happy service, if ever you shall look upon it, will be most fitting to your age. But what I have said concerning all my children is, O emperor, an ambitious claim. For beyond those five whom I have begotten, I count also as my own those whom I have advanced to the guardianship of the forum and to the offices of the palace. Many streams not ignoble flow from me; many of my followers even administer your provinces.

I rejoice in their successes, and count the honor of all as my own, and if perchance today I shall have spoken below my own expectation, I trust that in them I have found favor. If nevertheless your divine power shall also have granted me this, that from this oration I may carry away a testimony not of eloquence—that would be too much—but of some measure of wisdom and of a mind devoutly yours, let the ignoble cares of private studies give way: I shall have a perpetual subject for speaking, who have found favor with an emperor.

I.—If Flavia, at last named with an eternal name among the Aedui, most sacred emperor, could have roused herself utterly and come hither, she would surely have spoken in one voice, all together, in your presence, of your greatest and most splendid benefactions toward her; and would have given thanks to you, her restorer—or rather, to speak more truly, her founder—in that very city whose likeness you have begun to make of her. But since she cannot do this, she yearns in spirit for what nature does not permit; and the intervening distance of her remoteness does not allow the cries with which she daily raises your praises to the sky to be heard by you: I have willingly taken upon myself what it was fitting should be done, to be the messenger of the joys of my native land, so that I might be now not the orator of private literary study, but of public thanksgiving.

For I was unwilling, most sacred emperor, to give thanks to your name when, in that entrance of your palace, you raised with your divine voice and with this outstretched unconquered right hand the order prostrated before your feet, yielding to your indulgence. Nor would words have failed me, however unprepared: for who could either have prepared himself for benefits so unhoped for, or have restrained himself from such great rejoicing? But I had regard for the place and the time, lest that ardor of my spirit and eagerness for speaking should indeed be approved by you—which would suffice me for immortality—but, on account of the small number of those present, should reach the people less worthily than you deserved; and lest a speech which could not hasten in proportion to the greatness of your merits should delay you, as you were treating in a single day of many matters concerning our welfare.

II. Now therefore, since in this city, which still enjoys your continual presence more than the rest—for it will have our Flavia as a rival in happiness—the whole company of your friends and all the apparatus of empire stands by you, and since all men from almost all cities, either sent publicly or as suppliants on their own behalf, are present before you; I will speak, O emperor, of things which you may gladly acknowledge, and which others would not believe had been granted to us, had I not spoken with your knowledge. Now the first thing in giving thanks, most sacred emperor, is to show that what has been granted was not the result of chance fortune, but of just clemency. For while it is the mark of a good prince to help all men present who are in need, it is above all the mark of a wise man to come to the aid of those who have deserved well and have been gravely afflicted.

When I have shown this, not so much from eagerness to extol my native land as from the duty of demonstrating your foresight, I shall then above all set forth the greatness of your benefactions, with a desire greater than my talent. What nation in the whole world, then, would claim to be placed before the Aedui in love of the Roman name? They were the first of all among those savage and barbarous peoples of Gaul to be called by many decrees of the senate brothers of the Roman people, and while from the other peoples from the Rhone to the Rhine not even peace could be hoped for without suspicion; they alone both gloried in the name of kinship, and recently—to pass over what lies between—called the Divine Claudius, your ancestor, alone to recover the Gauls, and a very few years ago, which is most to be proclaimed, they rejoice to have received the very many benefactions of your father, partly accomplished in deed, partly signified in intention.

III. Saguntum was once an ally, but when all Spain was already longing to change its allegiance out of weariness with the Punic war; Massilia was a friend, rejoicing to be protected by the majesty of Rome; the Mamertines in Sicily and the Ilians in Asia laid claim to themselves on the basis of a legendary origin; the Aedui alone, not terrified by fear, not driven by flattery, but by an ingenuous and simple affection, were believed to be and deserved to be called brothers of the Roman people: by which name, beyond all other terms of kinship, both a community of love and an equality of dignity is made manifest.

Then when the neighboring nations, envying the very brotherhood with Rome rather than its glory, and inflamed with hatreds even to their own destruction, had called in the Germans as auxiliary lords over themselves, a leading man of the Aedui came into the senate, set forth the matter; and indeed, when the assembly was offered to him, claiming less for himself than was given, he pleaded leaning on his shield. Having obtained the requested aid, he was the first to lead the Roman army and Caesar across the Rhone. For the path into Gaul up to that time was called Transalpine Gaul. But the Aedui handed over to the Roman empire all that is contained by the Rhine, the Ocean, the Pyrenean mountains, and all the Alps, by hospitably providing winter quarters, by supplying provisions abundantly, by forging arms, by assisting with infantry and cavalry forces. Thus, having united all the peoples of the Celts and Belgians into one peace, they wrested from the barbarians whatever they joined to the Romans.

IV. Someone will say: These things are old; and indeed they are the more sacred for being old. For good services gain dignity and weight with age. And just as we venerate and honor aged parents more and more with each passing day; while the equality of brothers and the offspring of children touches the spirit with a more winning, yet lighter affection; so ancient benefits are weightier, even though present ones seem sweeter. But yet if those have grown stale with age, what of these recent ones which we witnessed as boys? Consider, I pray, O emperor, how great it is that they were the first to urge the Divine Claudius, your ancestor, to recover the Gauls, and awaiting his aid, shut in for seven months and having endured all the pitiable hardships of want, at last left the gates to be broken open by the Gallic rebels only when, exhausted, they could no longer keep watch.

For if fortune had favored both you and the efforts of the Aedui, and that restorer of the republic had been able to come to our aid when we implored him, without any loss of Roman strength, without the slaughter at Châlons, the brotherhood of the Aedui would have brought a shortcut to peace with the provinces reconciled. For these merits, therefore, both ancient and recent, your divine father wished to raise up the fallen city of the Aedui and restore it from ruin, not only by bestowing money for the calendars and by constructing the baths that had collapsed, but also by transferring settlers from all sides, so that that city might be as it were a single mother of the provinces, which had first made the other cities in some measure Roman.

V. I have said how well-deserving were the Aedui whom you have aided, O emperor; it follows that I should say how gravely afflicted they were: a topic which would supply me with far too much material for speech, if it were right to dwell on sadder matters in your hearing. Therefore, just as in proclaiming the praises of my native land modesty set a limit, lest I rise up arrogantly, so in recounting the same land's misfortunes both my own grief and the custom of your ears will restrain me. For you gladly hear nothing except what you may rejoice over on behalf of those who are yours. But yet, I pray, O emperor, impose patience upon your senses, so that just as physicians eminent in knowledge do not disdain to inspect the wounds they heal, so you may now for a little while hear of the sufferings of the Aedui which you have removed. For you cannot arrive at the praise of clemency without the experience of mercy.

That city lay prostrate, not so much leaning upon Roman support as cast down by the failure of its strength, from the time when the harshness of the new census had crushed it. Nor could it justly complain, since we both held the fields that had been assessed and were bound by the common formula of the Gallic census, we who in our resources can be equaled to no one. For which reason all the more, O emperor, do we give thanks to your clemency, who by remedies voluntarily granted have caused what we could not seek by right to appear to have been justly obtained.

VI. For we have, as I said, both the number of persons that were registered and the measure of the fields, but both are worthless; the men through sloth, the land through barrenness. For whence do we get a Reman or a Nervian field, or that very Tricassin land close by, or a ploughman, whose returns contend with their labor? Although one might rightly pardon the cultivators themselves, who are loath to labor without fruit. For a field that never repays its outlay is of necessity abandoned, even by the poverty of the country folk, who, wavering under their debts, have been able neither to drain the waters nor to cut down the forests. Thus whatever of the soil was once tolerably productive has either been corrupted by marshes or choked with brambles. Indeed even that very district of Arebrignus is tilled by a grudging hand, whose vine-cultivation in one spot is very small: for the rest, impassable with forests and crags, it is the lair of undisturbed beasts.

But that plain which lay below and stretched as far as the Saône was indeed, as I hear, once pleasant, when through the bounds of individual properties a continuous cultivation carried the flow of springs along open valleys; but now, with the channels blocked by desolation, whatever had been more fertile by reason of its low-lying nature has been turned into swamps and pools. The very vineyards themselves, which the ignorant admire, have so aged with old age that they scarcely feel cultivation any longer: for the roots of the vines, whose age we no longer know, heaped up by a thousandfold intertwining, exclude from the trenches the depth that is owed, and put forth the shoot itself not as it should be, but covered over, to be washed away by rains and scorched by suns. Nor can we, as is customary in Aquitaine and other provinces, mark out a place everywhere for new vines, since above there is continuous rock, and below a frosty lowland.

VII. For why should I speak of the other cities of that region, over which you yourself confessed that you wept? For you saw, not as through the fields of other cities, nearly everything cultivated, open, flourishing, the roads easy, navigable rivers washing the very gates of the towns; but immediately from that bend where the road turns back toward Belgica, everything waste, uncultivated, squalid, silent, gloomy; even the military road broken and rough, steep and precipitous with alternating hills, so that it barely allows half-laden wagons, and sometimes empty ones, to pass. From this it often happens that our services are slow, since the transport of our few crops is more difficult than that of the most abundant crops of others. For which reason the more, O Emperor, do we give thanks to your piety, who, knowing that the approach and aspect of the roads through our regions was so foul and so harsh, nevertheless deigned to turn aside thither, and to honor with your presence that city living by the sole expectation of your aid.

It is the mark of a good prince to gladly see his people prosperous, but of a better one to visit even those who are struggling. Ye good gods! What a day then dawned upon us—for now my speech has arrived in its proper order at the proclamation of the remedies of your divine power—when you entered the very gates of that city as the first sign of salvation to us. The city seemed to receive you with a kind of embrace, with its front drawn back into a bay and its towers running forward on either side.

VIII. You marveled, O Emperor, whence so great a multitude poured forth to meet you, since you had seen only solitude from the neighboring hill. For all the people from the fields, of every age, came flocking together to see one whom they would gladly wish to survive themselves. For that which is sworn for the prolonging of other princes' lives in the customary form of words, for you alone, Constantine, who shall outlive the fates of all of us, we vow with confidence, to whom so long a life of your own is owed. Great indeed is the force of joys that rise up after long sickness and sorrow. Our spirit was kindled within us beyond our strength toward gladness, and, lifted up by a certain foreboding of future happiness, we received you with such exultation as though we already possessed the indulgence you were about to bestow.

We adorned the streets by which the way leads to the palace with poor furnishings indeed: but we brought forth the standards of all the guilds, the images of all our gods, very few instruments of distinguished musical modes, to meet you more often by shorter routes. One who judged the truth by our zeal would have thought us rich. But yet our poverty, however well disguised, could not escape your foresight; you understood the dutiful and honorable vanity of the poor.

IX. Of your own accord you call us to approach your divine presence; of your own accord you deigned to address us, of your own accord to ask what aid we needed. These, O Emperor, are true benefits, which are not wrung out by entreaties but flow from your voluntary goodness, and bestowed the pleasure of obtaining without any burden of asking. For it is no small matter to petition the emperor of the whole world on behalf of one's own community, to harden one's face in the presence of such great majesty, to compose one's expression, to steady one's spirit, to frame one's words, to speak them tremblingly, to conclude fittingly, to await the reply. All these difficulties, O Emperor, you spared our modesty, not only by asking of your own accord what remedy we sought, but also by yourself suggesting what we kept silent, while you raise us as we lie at your feet with your most gracious address. We saw your compassion shining forth from your moist eyes.

Tears flowed over those features—tears salutary to us, glorious to you; and we in turn, our grief now dispelled, wept for joy. For as the long-awaited rain enriches fields parched by prolonged heat, so your tears watered our hearts with joys: so that, though you were weeping, we could rejoice, and yet our gratitude overcame our reverence, since those tears were tokens of piety, not of grief.

X. And these things indeed could have sufficed for our fullest rejoicing, even if you had deferred the hope of our remedies and left uncertain by what resources you would relieve us: but so prompt in you is the nature of goodness that what you have conceived in your pious mind you immediately declare in words. Thus generous and noble springs hasten on their way to be of service everywhere; thus things sent from heaven reach the earth swiftly; thus finally that divine mind which governs this whole world, whatever it has thought, has immediately done. In this, however, O Emperor, if you were to admit the counsel of a more cunning friend, there might perhaps be something to find fault with; namely, that you too readily disclose what you are about to bestow, and without any artifice quickly reveal what ought to be hoped for a long time. You do not know, O Emperor, how to commend your own benefits; by the swiftness of your giving you forestall the time of wishing.

But yet, O Emperor, by the swiftness of your indulgence you have surpassed the very elements by which we are animated and live. Long is the birth of a man yet to come awaited; long do the inarticulate cries of infancy defer the voice that will one day speak; long does winter hold back the crops, spring draws them forth, summer solidifies them in flower, heat ripens them; you gave us life entire all at once; you bade us reap at once the fruits of your merits and store them in our granaries. About to relieve the census, you fixed the number. About to remit the remaining debts, you asked how much we owed. That question was a manifest promise. For when one who can do all things asks what is owed to him, he does not inquire curiously in order to know, but generously desires to hear how much he may remit.

XI. I will therefore speak of each separately: for such great benefits are not to be confused together as if in a jumble. You remitted seven thousand heads, more than a fourth part of our census assessments; and yet you repeatedly asked whether this was sufficient for us. O shall I call us too modest, or sufficiently grateful? We who kept silent, who hesitated, who set a limit to your indulgence flowing so abundantly. You desired to bestow still more, had we dared to ask. How great this benefit is, O Emperor, how necessary to us, how useful also to the duties of our devotion, I cannot say sufficiently. By that remission of seven thousand heads, you gave strength to twenty-five thousand, you gave them resources, you gave them salvation; and you gained more in what you strengthened than you cut away in what you remitted. Four times as much has been rendered firm and certain to you, that which was sought in vain.

For indeed the despair of bearing the debt restrained even what could have been given, nor was there reason to make the attempt when there was no hope of completing it. O divine, O Emperor, your medicine in healing the city! Just as sick bodies burdened with the torpor of numbed limbs are healed by the cutting away of some part of themselves, so that what was swollen and torpid may thrive when diminished; so we, weighed down by too great a burden, rise up when the load is lightened.

XII. He does not know how to measure your indulgence, who thinks you gave only seven thousand heads. You gave all that you caused to stand firm. For although we still totter under the former burden, yet it seems lighter, because not all of it is borne: the presumption of being relieved gives patience for enduring. Certainly even now parents hold their children more dear, and husbands support their wives without reluctance, and parents of grown children do not repent of their sons whose burdens they rejoice to have had remitted to them. Thus the piety of all, long exhausted, breathes again, and each one is glad to count his own in safety, since more are helped by the services of fewer. By which we are the more lifted up by hope of the time to come. The spirit is refreshed by the security of the past, and with the arrears remitted there is nothing that need be looked back upon with fear, nothing that might kill some portion of strength for future payments.

Thus we have been freed from the burden of two periods of time, which are the greatest; one, and that the least, we pass through with brief labor. For since the past time is long in proportion to its extent, and the future is infinite; the present time is brief and always changeable in either direction, since it is both left behind by the past and passes into the future; this one year has almost no sense of difficulty, compressed as it is by the indulgences of two periods of time, and placed as a kind of boundary and border between both felicities, which makes us free from the past and secure in the future.

XIII. You remitted to us the arrears of five years. O lustrum more fortunate than all lustra! O lustrum which deservedly equaled this age of your reign! For us therefore above all did the gods create you as prince, for whom this happiness was born individually from the moment you began to reign. Your quinquennial celebrations must be observed by us as already complete. For those which were undertaken at the beginning of the fifth year, rightly shared in common by all peoples, these which are full are our own special possession. The famous speech of Cato concerning the good fortune of his lustrum is celebrated. For even then in that ancient republic, it pertained to the praise of the censors if they had concluded a prosperous lustrum, if the harvest had filled the granaries, if the vintage had overflowed, if the olive groves had flowed in abundance. What then is it fitting for us to give thanks for concerning this lustrum of your indulgence?

A lustrum in which, though no abundance of crops has ceased, you have nevertheless made it appear that everything was more plentiful than it was. For it avails us to have had as much as we cease to owe; it avails that the granaries were full, the storerooms full, since we are stuck in no arrears. This bounty of yours is to us what mother earth is of crops, what Jupiter is as ruler of the winds. Whatever they had given more sparingly, for us nevertheless it has been born from your beneficence.

XIV. What mines of gold and silver throughout the whole world are so abundant, what Tagus, what Pactolus has flowed with so much gold, as we have obtained by your liberality? For it is no lesser a gift to have received from you. Nay rather, by as much as it is harder to have wrested away what was one's own than not to acquire what was another's; by so much is the remitted necessity of paying sweeter than the wished-for advantage of gaining. How many, O Emperor Augustus, whom poverty had compelled to lurk through the forests or even to go into exile, by that remission of arrears come forth into the light, return to their homeland, cease to accuse their former poverty, cease to hate the barrenness of their fields, take up their spirits for work, prepare for cultivation, strive under better auspices, revisit their homes, bring back their vows to the temples?

Especially since you, the preserver of all of us, have come, and as it were that companion and associate of your majesty, the whole city will blaze with joys, resound with gladness, and perhaps when you depart will seek to detain you. For you will grant pardon, you will bear the affront of our love. Though you are lord of all cities, of all nations, we nevertheless have now received your very name, and not the ancient one. Bibracte indeed has hitherto been called Julia, Pola, Florentia: but it is the Flavian city of the Aedui.

Whence comes so great confidence to me, most sacred Emperor, that after so many most eloquent men, whom you have heard both in the sacred city and here again, I should dare to speak: were it not that I should consider it impious, and should fear the scruple of a kind of sacrilege committed, if he who has always been accustomed to proclaim the deeds performed by your divine power, should pass over in silence these things so much greater than the former; by which not some part has been saved, but the whole republic has been restored to itself? For I am not unaware how far inferior our talents are to those of the Romans. Indeed, to speak Latin and eloquently is innate in them, in us it is the result of effort: and if we happen to say anything suitably, our imitation derives it from that source and fountainhead of eloquence.

But although conscious of my inborn weakness, and of a cultivation more begun than perfected, I cannot restrain myself in silence from attempting to say something myself also concerning the recovery of the City, the Roman empire, and its consolidation at last after long convulsion: so that among so many resounding voices of the eloquent, my own thin voice too may seem to have been heard. For if in military affairs and in battles themselves not only trumpets and bugles but even Spartan pipes are said to have had some power of incitement—I believe because great spirits can be sufficiently roused by even a small measure—why should I distrust your favor toward me, so that you may judge my speech by the zeal of my devotion to you rather than by its own powers? I will therefore attempt, as best I can, to whisper, so to speak, into your ears already filled, without confidence of rivaling, yet desirous of imitating.

II. And first I will seize upon that which I believe no one has yet dared; namely, to speak first of the steadfastness of your expedition before the praise of your victory. For with the nod of the adverse omen now past, and the offense of those who called you back, I will use the freedom of our love toward you, which we then held in suspense between fears and the prayers of the republic. Could you, O Emperor, have presumed so much in your spirit, as to be the first to attack a war kindled with such great resources, with such unanimous greed, with such contagion of crimes, with such desperation of pardon, while the partners of your empire then stood idle and hesitating? What God, what so present a majesty urged you, so that, while almost all your companions and generals not only murmured in silence but even feared openly, against the counsels of men, against the warnings of the soothsayers, you yourself by yourself perceived that the time had come to liberate the City?

You have assuredly, O Constantine, some secret intercourse with that divine mind, which, having delegated the care of us to the lesser gods, deigns to reveal itself to you alone. Otherwise, most valiant Emperor, even so, since you have conquered, render an account. You had indeed left the Rhine secure with armies stationed along the whole frontier: but we conceived the greater fear on your behalf for this reason, that you were consulting our interests rather than your own, and had secured our peace more than the war you were undertaking.

III. Indeed, Emperor, through excessive love of us you did not know how to provide truly for our security; for you did not move all your arms with you, since your preservation is our safety. And what need was there for the Rhine itself to be furnished with both soldiers and fleets, when the terror of your valor had long since blocked it against the barbarian nations? Did you wish to display your diligence, by dividing your forces between the keeping of peace and of war; or even to prove boastfully and gloriously that you were sufficient with few men to liberate the City? For you crossed the Alps against a hundred thousand armed enemies with scarcely a fourth part of your army: so that it was apparent to those who considered it deeply—what escaped us as we trembled in our love—that you were seeking not a doubtful but a divinely promised victory. Severus had led a great army, and deserted by treachery had armed his own enemy.

Maximianus had afterward brought up larger forces, and himself, hemmed in by deserters, seemed to have fled with good fortune. Finally he who was believed to be that man's father, having attempted to tear away and strip the purple rent from his shoulders, had felt his own fate pass over into that disgrace. That monster had heaped up riches gathered from the whole world over a thousand and sixty years, having bought hands for civil brigandage. Beyond this, by freely bestowing the marriages of others and the lives of the innocent together with their goods, he had bound parricides in devotion to himself even unto death; and all who had plotted against him, or had openly attempted anything on behalf of liberty, he had afflicted with punishments and crushed with arms. And amid all this he made use of the majesty of that city which he had seized; he had filled all Italy with satellites hired for every crime.

IV. When you considered, knew, and saw all these things, Emperor, and neither your father's gravity nor your own nature would suffer you to be rash; tell me, I pray, what did you have in your counsel but divine power? Or was it this reasoning that led you (for to each man his own prudence is a god), that in so unequal a contest the better cause could not fail to prevail; and that though he might throw his countless forces in his own behalf, yet justice would fight for you?

For, to pass over those things which it is not fitting to compare—that he was a supposititious son of Maximianus, while you are the son of Constantius Pius; that he was of the most contemptible depravity, with limbs distorted and slack, his very name mutilated by an abusive appellation; you, what suffices to say, so great and such as you are—to pass over these things, I say: paternal piety followed you, Constantine, and impiety followed him (not to begrudge it to his false lineage); clemency followed you, cruelty him; chastity devoted to a single marriage followed you, lust defiled by every kind of debauchery him; divine precepts followed you, superstitious sorceries him, and finally the guilt of plundered temples, a slaughtered senate, and the Roman people starved to death; the gratitude for abolished false accusations followed you, for forbidden informing, for the preservation and the rejoicing over the blood of murderers.

In so diverse a reckoning of causes, by divine counsel, Emperor—that is, by your own—you counted not the multitude of soldiers but the merits of the parties.

V. Alexander the Great, although he could have levied an innumerable conscription from all Greece and the whole of Illyricum beyond his own Macedonians, never led forces greater than forty thousand, judging whatever exceeded that number unfit to command, and a mob rather than an army. But you undertook a far greater war with even smaller forces; so much more powerful by your own valor, as he was better equipped in numbers. And he indeed accomplished his work against the light Medes, and the unwarlike Syrians, and the darting arms of the Parthians, and Asiatics desiring to change their servitude, by the outcome of a single battle; you had to conquer soldiers who were, O shame! But lately Romans, armed with all arms after the fashion of the first class, and who, for the consciousness of their crimes, would never yield except in death.

This was proved by the first obstinacy of those who, holding a town beneath the very ridges of the Alps with a most strongly fortified wall and position, dared to resist when you were at hand and to close their gates; not believing, as I hear, that you yourself were present—for who would have believed that an emperor with his army had flown so swiftly from the Rhine to the Alps?—yet who ought to have yielded not only to your present divine power but even to your name when merely announced. They therefore paid the penalty of their madness forthwith, since they had refused the pardon offered them by your clemency. For the siege was not begun with rampart and trench, nor by driving mines, nor by bringing up engines, nor were the walls tried and shaken by the battering ram, but torches were immediately hurled at the gates, ladders at the battlements; and not only with slings at a distance and with missiles, but with spears and swords.

Thus the affair was begun and finished at the same moment, and the attempt and the end were joined together for the rebels.

VI. Gomphi, a city of Thessaly, because it refused obedience, Gaius Caesar destroyed in a single day. But he attacked mere little Greeks, while you attacked men of the subalpine region; he only the inhabitants, you also a military garrison; he could not defend the captives from plunder, while you were able to command clemency upon your victors. But the destruction of the Gomphians served as a lesson to the rest, whereas for you a little later another battle was fought on the plains of Turin, not with rebels trembling from your victory, but with angry and inflamed spirits bent on revenge, whom the turn of fortune ought to have restrained; and not rashly and scattered with enemies wandering at large, so that they might easily be cut down in flight; but with a battle-line drawn up in the form of a wedge, its sides slanting back in depth; which, when its front eagerly engaged, would wheel around and encircle those hampered in the fighting.

But you, foreseeing this, sent forward on both sides men to meet them and at the same time to search out any ambush that might lie hidden; and yourself, having broken that head and driven the battle-line to flight, inflicted all the greater slaughter in the pursuit, the more amply it had been equipped with reserves when it stood. Thus routed and cut down all the way to the walls of Turin, and finding the gates barred by the inhabitants, they blocked them even with the mass of their own bodies.

VII. What else could you have hoped for, unhappy soldier, devoted at that time to that most shameful portent? For now I do not mock, but grieve. You compelled Constantine to shed so much blood. He, because he was not permitted to obtain your safety from you yourselves, was almost displeased by the victory itself. But the people of Turin, and the other cities of Italy, were not of the same mind; they, Emperor, exulting with joy, vied with one another in calling you to them. Embassies were sent from all, provisions offered from every side: so that it was apparent how long they had longed for one to whom they would so readily entrust themselves while the war was still unfinished. What was that day on which you entered Milan? What was the rejoicing of the leading men of the city? What the applause of the people? What the sense of security of the mothers and virgins gazing upon you?

With what twofold pleasure did they rejoice, seeing at once the beauty of a most handsome emperor and fearing not his license? All displayed themselves and danced for joy, with no fear of the remnants of the war, and they measured the auspice of your victory as though it were its completion. It seemed not that the province beyond the Po had been recovered, but Rome itself. For who would have believed, after such great successes of yours, that there would be any obstacle to prevent all armies from surrendering themselves to your clemency, once they had learned the proof of your valor? You had taken walls by force, you had openly conquered in open battle. Who seemed so mad as to dare either to be besieged or to engage? Especially since you, remaining some days at Milan, had given all time to take counsel for themselves, so that they might place their hopes in you.

VIII. But indeed that ill-fated Verona, stained with civil blood even in the middle of our own age, was held by a very great army of the enemy, with most fierce commanders and a most stubborn prefect; so that the colony which Gnaeus Pompeius had once founded, Pompeianus might destroy. O the pitiable calamity of the Veronese, whom not so much your siege as the internal oppression of the satellites pressed hard!

For that Adige, rough with rocks and swirling with eddies and fierce in its current, prevented attack, and kept all the region behind safe and protected for the conveying of supplies: yet lest it should serve the enemy any longer, your foresight brought it about that, having thrown part of your army across at higher points where the river was calmer and the enemy were off their guard, at twofold peril you compelled those shut in and besieged to experience worse things than arms, and you cut down all who had attempted a sortie so completely that even their commander himself with part of his forces left the walls to summon aid, the wretch destined to bring a larger army so that he might fall with a larger company in his destruction.

At that time indeed your care and greatness of spirit were especially apparent, Emperor, in that you preferred to engage him on his return with a smaller army rather than to raise the siege, lest those shut in should be allowed to breathe, or to escape, or to threaten your rear.

IX. And at first, as I hear, you had drawn up a double line; then, having taken account of the number of the adversaries, you immediately ordered the ranks to be deployed along the front and the arms extended more widely, measuring from your own spirit the spirits of all your men, though you believed that so heavy a mass could be broken by the charge of fewer men. Do you think I am praising everything you did in that battle, Emperor? Nay, I complain again. You had made all things prosperous, you had arranged everything, you had fulfilled the duties of a supreme commander—why did you yourself fight? Why did you plunge into the densest masses of the enemy? Why did you cast the safety of the state into such great dangers?

Or do you think we do not know that, while you were carried away by excessive ardor, you had come into the midst of the enemy's weapons, and had you not opened a path for yourself by slaughter, you would have deceived the hope and prayers of all mankind? For you were borne forward with your whole impetus, like a torrent river which forests uprooted from their foundations and rocks torn up from their depths would follow. What have you to do, Emperor, with inferior fortune? It is right for those to fight to whom it falls to each man's fate either to conquer or to fall; but you, on whose life the fates of all depend, should you approach any danger? Should you be exposed amid so many weapons and swords? Who demands this of you? Or who could endure that anything should be permitted to the chances of war against you? Is it fitting for you, Emperor, to strike an enemy? Nay, it is not fitting even to toil.

X. Xerxes watched a naval battle from a high mountain. Augustus, occupied with other matters, conquered at Actium. There was also one who, raised on ladders joined together, watched from a distance armies clashing with one another, so that he neither shared the danger nor was absent from the outcome. These are cowardly examples, you will say: but safe ones; and the fear of your danger is more grievous than the joy of victory. Did not your companions and tribunes, after the enemies had been cut down and put to flight and their very commander slain, seize you weeping, and embracing that panting breast of yours, your bloodied hands, and whatever had emerged from the deep slaughter of blood, cry out on this side and that: what had you done, Emperor? Into what fate had you cast us, had not your divine valor rescued you? What is this impatience? Or what use to you are our hands, if in turn you yourself fight for us?

I would not say these things, Emperor, nor recall them as said by others, were not our boldness in words made safer by the benefit of your gentleness than your own in arms. For by a certain new variety of nature and a mingled blending of virtues, you are the same man—most fierce in battles, and most mild when safety has been secured.

XI. For when, having given those besieged time to repent, you had received Aquileia also from their envoys and suppliants, and all had surrendered themselves to you—those whom you had preserved by besieging them—you forgave all and restored the life they had despaired of. And indeed you ordered them to lay down their arms, so that they might be covered far more safely by the conqueror's mercy; yet that they might feel the deserts of their stubbornness, you ordered them to be seized and bound, not for punishment but for life; lest they should flee in fear of their conscience and commit grave offenses, and, if they had not been preserved, should not deserve to be preserved again. But whence, for so great a number of men, were there so many bonds as could restrain military and but lately armed hands?

The soldiers who had undertaken to bring them forth stood amazed and refused the charge of guarding them, and were utterly at a loss what to do; even those who were in your council, even the prefect himself, were at a standstill; when you, prompted by divine instinct, ordered that the double fastenings of their own swords be fitted to their hands, so that their own swords might keep the surrendered men whom they had not defended while they fought.

XII. O most beautiful triumph of your valor and clemency, which ought to have been set before the eyes of all! For it was the power of the same man to strip arms from enemies, and the humanity of the same man to bind the surrendered to impunity with their own arms, and so to bind them that they should daily repent of that iron which they had borne against you. That sword which the hostile enemy had drawn against you, itself held fast the hands of its own master, and, prepared for slaughter, was made a guardian for safety. The great poet, while describing the course and preparation of wars rising throughout the whole world, says: "And curved sickles are melted down into the rigid sword." A sad time indeed that was, when instruments prepared for the tending of flocks were turned to the slaughter of men.

But now those rigid and death-dealing blades are bent into saving bonds, and do not slay the disarmed man but restrain him; and the clashed and blunted swords protect the surrendered enemies, which when whole and sharp could profit them nothing.

XIII. All the ministries of arms therefore serve at your discretion for diverse ends, O Emperor: swords conquer for you, swords preserve for you; they strike when you fight, they guard when you pardon. As that God, creator and lord of the world, sends now sad, now glad tidings by the same thunderbolt of his: so under your divine power the same weapons distinguish enemies or suppliants by destruction or by preservation. You wrested the swords from your adversaries, Emperor, lest any man should yield to grief. You conquered, and rendered those same men harmless by their own hands. That you might satisfy both your clemency and your vengeance, you broke the arms of those whose blood you had spared. For the life of men, long in the winning, must always be preserved if it may be: iron is easy to find, changeable in use. Therefore you melted down what could be replaced, and kept what could not be restored to life. What do fables tell of like things? That human bodies were changed into springs, or cattle, or birds?

Such a transformation is foul and base. A sword changed into fetters: this is what security is after fear, what shade is after heat. The change lost the brightness, but blunted the edge. XIV. Your zeal and kindness, Emperor, have encouraged us thus far, that our exultation might sport with those things in words. But let us now return to weightier matters. When all Italy this side of the Po had been recovered, Rome herself was already stretching suppliant hands toward you—Rome, in which that portent had settled, daring to attempt nothing at the news of so many of her own disasters. For she was besieged by the cowardice of a most worthless man, and fear betrayed his degenerate spirit. That stupid and wicked creature dared nowhere to go outside the walls. For so he was warned, either by prodigies or by the forebodings of his own fear. For shame! Within the shelter of walls, Emperor. He could not breathe the open field, could not exercise in arms, could not endure the dust.

Cunning indeed, lest attempting the duties of men he should walk in that palace with its marble walls. For to go to the Sallustian gardens was reckoned a journey and an expedition. And these pleasures, throughout all that time in which he had besieged the world and shut himself in, were covering this most shameful timidity of his. For he wished to appear not unwarlike but blessed, not idle but secure. How often he summoned soldiers to assembly, boasting that he alone was emperor with them, while others served in his stead along the frontiers. Enjoy yourselves, he said, squander, lavish. This was the brief and fleeting happiness of those wretches. XV. And not even then, when he had learned of so many defeats of his men, did he make any attempt to go out to resist, though he might have used the line of the Po or the ridges of the Apennines; but he suppressed the letters that reported his disasters.

Sometimes even openly he expressed the wish that the enemy should come all the way to the gates; not understanding that the majesty of the City, by which he had once alarmed armies brought up against it, had now been disfigured by his own crimes, driven from its seat, and had passed over to your aid; nor could those be corrupted by any rewards whom, beyond your generosity and the loyalty of their oath, the glory of so many victories had consecrated to you. For what soldier, who had so often fought most successfully under your leadership and auspices, would sell you his wounds? Would yield the sum of a war already nearly finished? But you, perceiving this very thing from the ardor of the whole army, without any hesitation, by the shortest route through those regions, swept up your column and flew thither; displaying in action that swiftness of Scipio and of Caesar most especially to Rome, which longed for you.

This is the confidence of an unconquered emperor, relying on the spirit of his men, not to hesitate or to protract the war, but to count every nearest moment of battle as victory; for your situation was not, as Quintus Maximus had with Hannibal the victor, to watch for place and time after adverse events, but it was fitting for you to press your successes, to continue your victories, and to relieve the City as soon as possible. For it is the part of a wise commander to consult by delay when affairs are broken, and not to fail fortune when they prosper.

XVI. And so there was now but one fear: that he, terrified by these forces, grievously afflicted and reduced to straits, might take good counsel and defer the punishment due to the commonwealth by a siege. For having exhausted all Africa, which he had resolved to destroy, and having drained all the islands, he had amassed provisions for an unlimited time. But the divine mind, and the eternal majesty of the City itself, wrested the plan from that wicked man, so that he burst forth suddenly from that long-standing torpor and most foul hiding-places, and, having consumed his old age in sloth, marked the very day of his own birthday with his final slaughter, lest by beginning he should violate that sacred and hallowed number seven. But how did he draw up his line of battle, that creature of the purple reared in the palace through so many years?

In such a way, forsooth, that no one could escape, no one, as happens, could fall back from his position and renew the battle, hemmed in as he was by arms in front and by the river Tiber in the rear. In this he did not, by Hercules, reckon on the necessity of resistance, but on the nearness of flight. Unless perhaps, already feeling that his fatal day had come, he wished to drag with him as many as possible to the consolation of his own death, so that all who had been partners in his crimes might be companions of his end. For what else is he to be believed to have hoped, who had already two days before departed from the palace, and had of his own accord withdrawn with his wife and son into a private house—driven, as the fact shows, by terrible omens and routed by the avenging powers of the night—so that you, long awaited, might succeed as inhabitant to those sacred halls, long since breathed out and purified?

And so truly had he spoken truth to himself, and had yielded to you who were coming, even though he entered the battle armed, since by quitting the palace he had already abdicated the empire.

XVII. At the first sight therefore of your majesty, and the first onset of your whole victorious army, the enemies were terrified and put to flight, and shut out by the narrow passage of the Milvian bridge; excepting the chief authors of that brigandage, who, despairing of pardon, covered with their bodies the ground they had taken for battle, all the rest plunged headlong into the river, so that at last some saving of slaughter might come to the weary right hands of your men, when the Tiber had swallowed the impious. Even that man himself, with his horse and his distinguished arms, having vainly attempted to escape along the steep banks of the farther shore, was seized by the same Tiber and swallowed in its whirlpool, lest so foul a monster should leave even this report of his end, that he had fallen by the sword or weapon of some brave man.

And the bodies and arms of the other enemies the headlong river rolled and carried away, but him it held in the very place where it had destroyed him, lest the joy of the Roman people should long remain in doubt, if it were thought he had fled somewhere, and proof of his death had to be sought.

XVIII. Holy Tiber, once the guide of the guest Aeneas, soon the preserver of the exposed Romulus, you suffered neither the false Romulus to live long, nor the parricide of the City to swim free. You, nourisher of your Rome by conveying her supplies, you, her fortifier by encompassing her walls, rightly did you wish to be a sharer in the victory of Constantine, that he might drive the enemy into you, and you might slay him. Nor are you always rapid and torrential, but temperate according to the measure of the times. You, calm, carried back the armed Cocles. To you, placid, the maiden Cloelia entrusted herself. But now, violent and turbid, you swallowed the enemy of the commonwealth, and lest your service of concealment be betrayed by casting up the corpse, you did not.

When therefore the body was found and mangled, the whole Roman people blazed up in joy and vengeance; nor did they cease throughout the whole City, wherever that expiatory head was carried fixed upon a spear, to defile it; while meanwhile, as is the way with triumphal jests, the injury of the bearer was laughed at, since he suffered the deserts of another's head.

XIX. But why do I dwell so long on jests? The very buildings, as I hear, seemed to stir, and the height of the rooftops seemed to be raised, wherever your divine presence was borne in the slow-moving progress of your chariot: so great a density of people, so great a throng of the senate at once propelled and detained you. Happy those who beheld you more closely; those placed farther off called out your name; those whom you had passed regretted the spot they had occupied. By turns all departed from one place and followed from another; the innumerable multitude strove and surged with varied impulse, and recalled how much spirit of men had survived in them after that disaster of six years. Some even dared to beg you to stop, and complained that you had reached the palace too quickly, and when you had entered, not only followed you with their eyes but almost broke through the sacred threshold itself.

Then, with all gathered round, they waited, looked out, wished, hoped for you to come forth again: that they might see him, by whom they had been freed from siege, besieged. Let the greatest orator boast, and truly, that Italy carried him home on her shoulders; the senate and people of Rome, Constantine, both on that day and on others, wherever you went forth, longed to bear you on their eyes. Nor could men on the days of the games and sacred shows look at anything other than you yourself; what was the radiance of your eyes, what the majesty diffused over your whole body, what the dignity of your countenance. All rejoiced in the delay of the spectacles, and favored the performers familiar to them for this reason alone, that they competed in your presence.

XX. For why should I speak of your opinions and acts in the senate, by which you restored to the senate its ancient authority, did not count as a debt the safety which they had received through you, and pledged that the memory of it would be everlasting in your heart? I would say more of your divine speeches, of your kindness offered rather than obtained by entreaty: did I not prefer to pass over what was said in silence, while I hasten to praise what was done. However well known to us your words spoken in the senate may be, yet what they were, the glory of your clemency has proclaimed. O Rome, at last happy in a civil victory! Once Cinna burst in upon you in fury, and Marius in anger, who were not satisfied with the single head of the consul Octavius alone, but having extinguished the lights of the city left behind examples of what you have now suffered throughout this whole six years.

Again Sulla conquered for you before the Colline gate: happy, had he avenged himself more sparingly; but indeed he filled the Rostra with many heads. Constantine confined the license of victory to the end of the battle: he suffered not the swords to be drawn even against the blood of those whom popular demand called for punishment.

XXI. That same Sulla slaughtered a surrendered and disarmed legion in the Villa Publica, and warned the senate, struck with horror at the groans of the dying, not to be afraid, since it was he himself who had given the order. But this man, conqueror not only of his enemies but of his own victory, reserved for you whatever soldiers survived the war. For they now serve you, those whom the emperor, having stripped of their arms, has armed again against barbarian enemies. Now forgetful of the pleasures of the Circus Maximus and the Pompeian theatre and the famous baths, they are stationed along the Rhine and the Danube, they keep watch, they suppress brigandage, they strive at last, though conquered in civil war, to be compared with the victors against the enemy. Nor can this seem wonderful, since you make whatever soldier brave by your own example, Emperor.

For you, not wearied by battles and sated with victories, as nature inclines, gave yourself to ease and rest, but with the same impulse with which you had returned, you pressed on into your Gauls and to the lower frontier of Germany; having begun war again immediately after a year's expedition, with a great interval of time and a short distance of places—from the Tiber to the Rhine, or rather, as the omen and likeness of name may promise, and your own greatness of spirit, Emperor, may pledge, from the Tuscan Albula to the Germanic Elbe, to extend the empire.

XXII. What is this so unceasing ardor? What divinity ever vigorous in perpetual motion? All things have their intervals of rest. The earth lies fallow in its seasons, rivers are said sometimes to stand still, and day itself rests in the night; you, Constantine, alone untiring, link wars to wars, heap victories upon victories. As though past deeds were blotted out if you should cease, you think you have not conquered unless you conquer. The fickle and slippery race of barbarians had broken faith, and it was reported that, with chosen leaders of the raid distinguished for strength and boldness, they had pressed upon the Rhine. Straightway you were there to meet them, and by your presence terrified them from daring to cross.

You seemed even to have made the outcome contrary to your wishes, in that by checking the raid there would be no material for victory; but employing an unexpected plan—for by departing, with a feigned report of a greater disturbance on the upper frontier, you offered to those stupid and brutish minds the occasion of coming into our territory—leaving behind in concealment leaders to attack them when off their guard. When they had come thither, fortune followed your plan. Having crossed the whole breadth of the Rhine with ships, you ravaged their lands and homes, sad and mourning, and inflicted such ruin and devastation upon that faithless race that it will scarcely hereafter have even a name.

XXIII. Go now, all you barbarian nations, if you please, and set in motion your destructive attempts: you have an example. For although our emperor admits the homage of friendly kings, and this very thing avails for the glory of victory, that he is feared and cultivated by the most noble kings, yet he rejoices that the glory of his valor is increased as often as he is provoked. For what is more splendid than this triumph, that he employs even the slaughter of enemies for the pleasure of us all, and heaps up the pomp of the games from the remnants of barbarian carnage, exposing so great a multitude of captives to the beasts, that the ungrateful and faithless suffer no less pain from the mockery of themselves than from death itself? Hence it is that when they may delay their end, they hasten to perish, and offer themselves to mortal wounds and deaths. From this very fact it is apparent how great a thing it is to have conquered men so prodigal of their own lives.

XXIV. It is easy to conquer the timid and unwarlike, such as pleasant Greece and the luxuries of the East produce—men who can scarcely endure a light cloak and silken folds as a shelter from the sun, and who, if ever they come into danger, forgetful of liberty, pray that they may be allowed to serve. But the Roman soldier, whom discipline orders and the sanctity of his oath confirms, whatever his quality, or the fierce Frank, swollen with nothing but wild flesh, who holds his life cheap on account of the meanness of his sustenance—how great an effort it is to overcome or to capture such men! This you, Emperor, accomplished both recently in Italy and in the very sight of barbarian lands a little while ago. Thus without any distinction all kinds of wars, of arms, of enemies yield to you alone; the records of virtues preserved in writing from every age of memory also yield.

Nor indeed have you surpassed only those ancient deeds of Dictators and consuls and thereafter of great princes, but also the most righteous and most glorious deeds of your divine father; for it is a mean thing to compare others from the nearest time—I say that you have, in the very first lustres of your reign, heaped upon the divine Constantius himself the praise of things accomplished.

XXV. Perhaps you receive this unwillingly, Emperor, but he, while we speak, rejoices in heaven, and, long since called to the stars, still grows in his son and ascends by the steps of your glories. He cleansed Batavia by driving out the foreign enemy; to you the native peoples from the uttermost barbarian lands surrendered of their own accord. He crossed the Ocean with a fleet; you occupied both the Alps on foot and the Italian harbors with fleets. He recovered Britain; you recovered the most noble islands of the African sea, which were provinces of the Roman people. Let the divine Constantius himself, I say, pardon this. What have I to compare with Italy, Africa, Rome? Rightly therefore, Constantine, the senate recently gave you the image of a god, and a little before that Italy dedicated to you a shield and crown, all of gold, that they might in some part relieve the debt of their conscience. For to divinity a golden image is owed, and to valor a shield, and a crown to piety.

XXVI. Wherefore thee, highest author of all things, whose names are as many as the languages of nations you have willed to exist—for we cannot know by what name you yourself wish to be called—whether there is in you a certain divine force and mind, by which, poured throughout the whole world, you mingle with all the elements and move yourself by yourself without any impulse of vigor coming from without; or whether you are some power above all heaven, who looks down upon this your work from a higher citadel of nature: thee, I say, we pray and beseech, that you preserve this prince for all ages; for it is too little merely to wish for so great a virtue and so great a piety the longest span that life affords. There is assuredly in you a supreme goodness, and there is also piety, and therefore you ought to will what is just; nor is there cause for refusal, since you are able.

For if there is anything that is denied by you to those who have deserved well, either your power has failed or your goodness. Grant therefore that what you have given as the greatest gift to the human race may endure forever, and that Constantine may live out all ages upon earth. For although, unconquered Emperor, your divine offspring has already succeeded to the hopes of the commonwealth, and a yet more numerous posterity is still to be hoped for, that posterity will nevertheless be truly blessed when, having brought your children to the helm of the world, you yourself are the greatest emperor of all.