Panegyric 313
From what source would I obtain enough confidence, most sacred Emperor, to dare to speak after you have heard so many of the most eloquent men both in the sacred City and on your return here,’ if I did not consider that it would be wrong, and if I were not afraid to violate some trust if I, who have made it my habit to proclaim your deity’s accomplishments, were to pass these over in silence, achievements which are so much greater than anything before and through which you have saved not some part of the State but restored the entire republic to itself?’ What is more, I am not unaware of how inferior our abilities are to the Romans’, since speaking in Latin, and well, is inborn in them, but laboriously acquired in us, and if perchance we say something elegantly, our imitation derives from that font and source of eloquence.”
But however conscious I am of my natural weaknesses and of a study only begun rather than mastered, J cannot keep silent and restrain myself from making my own attempt to say something about the recovery of the City and the establishment of Roman power at last after a longstanding upheaval, so that amid the thundering sounds of fluent speakers my slender voice appear to have been heard as well. If in wartime and even in combat not only trumpets and clarions but even Spartan flutes are regarded as supplying some incentive‘ (because, | think, it is enough for great spirits to be roused by a slender melody), why should I despair of your favor in my case, of your judging my speech by my zeal in veneration of you rather than by its own strengths? Accordingly, although your ears have been filled up, if 1 may use the expression, I shall try as best I can to whisper into them, without the boldness of rivalry, desirous only of imitation.
And first I shall take up a topic which I believe no one up to now has ventured upon, to speak of your resolution in making the expedition before J praise the victory. Since the fear ofan adverse omen* has been put aside and the stumbling block removed, J shall avail myself of the freedom of our love for you, a love in which we wavered then among fears and prayers for the State.” Could you have had so much foresight, Emperor, that you were the first to embark upon a war which had been stirred up with such vast resources, so much greed, so extensive a contagion of crimes, so complete a despair of pardon, when all your associates in imperial power were inactive and hesitating!’ What god, what majesty so immediate encouraged you, when almost all of your comrades and commanders were not only silently muttering but even openly fearful, to perceive on your own, against the counsels of men, against the warnings of soothsayers,’ that the time had come to liberate the City?” You must share some secret with that divine mind, Constantine, which has delegated care of us to lesser gods” and deigns to reveal itself to you alone. Otherwise, mightiest of Emperors, even though you have won you owe us an explanation. You did leave the Rhine secure with armies stationed along the whole border,” but for this reason we were prone to greater fears on your behalf because you took counsel for our interests rather than for your own, and reinforced our security rather than the war which you were undertaking.
Truly, Emperor, when, in your excessive love for us, you neglected to take all your forces with you, you did not know how to make real provision for our security, since your preservation is our salvation. What need had the Rhine of having troops and fleets drawn up, since the terror of your might had long since walled it off against barbarian nations?” Or did you wish to display your carefulness by dividing your forces between guarding for peace and girding for war? Or even boastfully and ostentatiously to prove that you and a few men were enough to liberate the City? With scarcely the fourth part of your army you traversed the Alps against 100,000 enemies in arms,” so that it was plain to those who pondered the matter deeply (but it escaped us who were anxious in our love for you) that you sought no doubtful victory but one divinely promised.”
Severus had led a great army, and when abandoned through treachery he armed his own enemy;” afterward Maximian [Galerius] had broughten greater forces and he himself, weakened by desertions, seems to have had a fortunate escape.” Finally, he who was believed to be his father, after attempting to tear the purple from his shoulders, perceived that his own destiny had passed over to that abomination.” The riches collected from the entire world over the course of 1,060 years” that monster had given to gangs of men hired to rob citizens. What is more, by indiscriminately granting other men’s wives and the heads of the innocent along with their possessions he bound the murderers in devotion even to death; all who either plotted against him or openly attempted anything for their freedom he afflicted with punishments and subdued with armed force.” And while he enjoyed the majesty of that city which he had taken, he filled all of Italy with thugs hired for every sort of villainy.”
Since you contemplated, you knew, you saw all these things, Emperor, and neither your nature nor your inherited sobriety allowed you to be foolhardy, tell us, 1 beg you, what you had as counsel U not a divine power?” Or did this calculation guide you (for each man’s own prudence is his god),” that in so unequal a contest the better cause could not but win and, though he cast countless forces in your path for his defense, yet Justice was fighting for you?” ‘To omit those things which are unsuitable for comparison, that he was Maximian’s changeling,” you Constantius Pius’ son; he was of a contemptibly small stature, twisted and slack of limb, his very name mutilated by a misapplied appellation,* you (it suffices to say) are in size and form what you are; I repeat, to omit these things, Constantine, you were attended by respect for your father, but he, not to begrudge him his false paternity, by disrespect; you were attended by clemency, he by cruelty; you by virtue devoted to a single spouse, but he by lust befouled with every kind of shameful act; you by divine direction, he by superstitious mischief;” he, finally, by the guilt for the despoiled temples, the slaughtered Senate, the Roman plebs destroyed by famine,” you by the thanks
for the abolition of false accusations, the prohibition of delation,” the avoidance of shedding even murderers’ blood.” In the consideration of causes so disparate, you reckoned by divine inspiration, Emperor (that is, by your own), not the numbers of soldiers but the merits of the two sides. Although Alexander the Great could impose an unlimited levy upon all of Greece and the whole of Illyricum in addition to his own Mace-
donians, he never led out more than forty thousand men,” since he considered that anything in excess of that was unwieldy for the commander and a mob rather than an army. But you with even fewer numbers embarked upon a much greater war, since your own virtue made you as much more powerful as his greater numbers made him better prepared. Alexander, again, accomplished his undertaking by the outcome of a single battle against weak Medes, unwarlike Syrians, the Parthians’ flighty arms and Asians desirous of a change of servitude:” you had to conquer soldiers (for shame!) shortly before Roman, armed with every weapon in the manner of the first rank and because of their consciousness of wrongdoing prepared never to yield except in death.
This was proven by the initial stubbornness of those who held a town beneath the very summit of the Alps,” fortified well enough by its wall and situation, who dared to resist you at your approach and to close the gates. They did not believe, I hear, that you yourself were at hand (for who would believe that an Emperor with an army had flown so quickly from the Rhine to the Alps?), but they ought nevertheless to have yielded not only to the presence of your numen but even to the sound of your name.” Consequently they paid the price for their madness on the spot, when they refused the pardon offered them by your clemency. The siege was not begun with palisades and trench, the walls were not assailed and shaken by digging mines or bringing up machines or battering with the ram, but torches were applied at once to the gates and ladders to the ramparts, and your men fought not only with slings and weapons hurled from a distance, but with spears and swords.* Thus the attack was begun and accomplished at the same time, and for the rebels their attempt coincided with their demise.
C. Caesar destroyed Gomphi, a city in Thessaly, in one day because it refused obedience.” But he attacked Greeklings, you, Subalpine men; he attacked inhabitants only, you, a military contingent as well; he was unable to protect the captured from pillaging, you were allowed to enjoin mercy upon your victorious men. But at least the destruction of the people of Gomphi was an example for the rest; a little later in the area around Turin you fought another battle, since the rebels were not frightened but angered after your victory, and the spirits which Fortune’s judgment ought to have restrained were in a passion for revenge.” The enemy were not widely spread out in a disorganized manner so that they were easily cut down while dispersed,” but their battle line was arrayed in the form of a wedge with their flanks extending downhill to the rear,” and if you had eagerly joined battle with them at the outset, they would have turned* and surrounded your men as they were engaged in fighting. But since you foresaw this you sent men ahead on both sides to obstruct them and at the same time, if there were any lurking in ambush, to drive them out; you yourself, when the stubborn point of the enemy’s formation had been driven back and their whole line turned to flight, advanced and effected a slaughter whose magnitude was proportionate to the numbers which reinforced their battle line.“ They were routed and cut down right up to the walls of Turin, and when they reached the gates already fastened by the inhabitants they closed them off as well by the mass of their own bodies.”
What else could you have expected for yourself, unhappy soldier, when you had devoted yourself to a loathsome monster? Now I mean not to taunt you, but to grieve for you. You compelled Constantine to shed so much blood that, because you did not permit him to procure your own salvation, the victory itself was almost distasteful to him. But the same disposition was not found in the people of Turin nor in the rest of Italy’s cities, who joyfully exulted and eagerly called you, Emperor, to themselves.” Embassies were sent by all, supplies were offered from every quarter, so it was clear how long they had desired someone to whom they could so readily commit themselves, while the war was still in progress.”
What a day that was when you entered Milan! What rejoicing there was among the chief men® of the city, what applause of the populace! What security there was for mothers and maidens gazing at you, and what a twofold delight they enjoyed, when they looked upon the form ofa most beautiful*® Emperor and feared no license! They all displayed themselves and danced about without any apprehension about the remainder of the war;” they counted the beginning of your victory as consummation: it
seemed that it was not the Transpadane provinces” which had been recovered, but Rome. Tor who would believe that there would be any obstacle to your considerable success to prevent all armies from surrendering themselves to your clemency, when they had had experience of your might?” You had captured walls by force, you had conquered in open battle; who seemed to be so mad that he would dare either to endure a siege or to fight, especially when by remaining for some days at Milan you had given them all time to consult their own best interests, to have some expectation of you?”
But that miserable town, Verona, already stained by citizens’ blood in our middle age,” was held by a large enemy army, with ferocious commanders and the most stubborn of prefects, obviously so that Pompeianus” might destroy the colony that Cn. Pompeius had once founded.”
pitiable calamity of the people of Verona, oppressed not so much by your siege as by the internal blockade of their supporters!)” ‘The river Adige, rough and stony, full of eddies and whirlpools, with its fierce current prevented assault and rendered all the region behind it safe and secure from the penetration of enemy forces.” Nevertheless by your foresight you prevented the river from aiding the enemy any longer when you sent part of the army ahead into the higher elevations where the stream was calmer and the enemy unaware,” and you forced them, shut in and besieged by danger from two sides, to abandon their expectation of delay and make a trial of arms.”
You cut down all who tried to break out so promptly that the leader himself came forth from the walls with part of his forces to summon aid.“ The wretched man was to lead back a greater army to perish with
more companions in his destruction.” And on that occasion, Emperor, your carefulness as well as your greatness of spirit were especially apparent, since you preferred to engage him with lesser forces upon his return rather than to interrupt the siege, so the men shut in could neither recover their strength nor escape nor threaten your rear.”
At first, I hear, you had drawn up a double battle line; next when you had discerned the number of the enemy” you ordered the ranks to spread out in front and the army to be extended more widely,” estimating of course the spirit of all your men on the basis of your own, that a mass however much heavier could be broken by the attack of fewer men. Do you think, Emperor, that I praise everything that you did in that battle? In fact, I have a second complaint to make.”
You had foreseen everything, you had arranged the whole, you had fulfilled the duty of the supreme commander: why did you enter the fray yourself, why did you thrust yourself into the densest throng of the enemy, why did you send the State’s salvation into such great danger? Or do you think that we are unaware that, while you were seized by excessive ardor, you arrived in the midst of the enemy’s weapons, and if you had not opened a path for yourself by slaughter you had cheated the expectation and prayers of the enture human race? You were carried away entirely by your impulse,” like a river in flood carrying along trees broken off at their roots and rocks torn away from their foundations. What do you have to do, Emperor, with the fate of inferior beings? It is mght for them to fight whose lot it is, each of them, either to conquer or die: are you, upon whose life the fates of all men depend, to approach any danger? Are you to pass among so many missiles and swords? Who demands this of you? Who can endure to have anything left to the hazards of war in your case? Does smiting an enemy become you, Emperor? On the contrary, even exertion does not become you.
Xerxes observed a naval battle from a high mountain; Augustus won at Actium while he was doing something else.” ‘There was even one who was raised up on ladders fastened together and from on high saw the armies clashing, so that he would not be involved in the danger andwould be present at the outcome.” These examples, you will say, are ignoble—but safe, and fear for your danger is weightier than joy for your victory.
When the enemy had been slain and routed and their commander himself killed, did not your officers and tribunes weeping snatch you up, and when they had embraced your heaving breast, your bloody hands, and whatever had come forth from the boundless bloodbath, did they not cry out from this side and that: “What were you doing, Emperor? ‘To what fate had you abandoned us, if your divine valor had not protected you?” What is this impatience? What use to you are our hands, if instead you fight for us?” I would not say these things, Emperor, nor would I relate what was said by others, if our daring in words were not saler, by benefit of your leniency, than your daring in arms. For by some novel kind of natural diversity and confounded mixture of virtues, you, the same man, are most savage in battle and most gentle when salety has been procured.”
When the besieged had been granted an opportunity for repentance and you had received Aquileia as well in accordance with their legates’ entreaties, and all had surrendered themselves to you whom you had saved by besieging them,” you pardoned them all and restored their be lives which they had given up as lost. And then you commanded them to lay down their arms to be protected much more securely by the victor’s compassion; yet, that they suffer the deserts of their obstinacy, you commanded that they be seized and shackled not for punishment but to save their lives, lest they scatter because of the fears of a bad conscience and commit a greater wrong and not merit being preserved a second time, if they had not been saved. But from what source were so many fetters to come which could restrain the hands of so large a number of soldiers recently armed? The soldiers who had undertaken the escort were aghast, and they refused the duty of standing guard and knew not at all what they would do; your very counselors, even the prefect himself, were perplexed, when you, advised by divine inspiration,” commanded that double shackles for their hands be made out of their swords, that their own swords which had not defended them in their resistance might guard them in their surrender.”
O most beautiful triumph which ought to have been exposed to the eyes of the world, the triumph of your might and clemency! For it belonged to his humanity, when it was in his power to wrest arms from the enemy, to bind those who surrendered for freedom from punishment, and to bind them in such a way that they would regret daily that iron which they had carried against you. That very sword, which a dangerous foe had drawn against you, held the hands of its master; what was designed for slaughter became a guardian for salvation. The great poet, when he describes the extent and preparations for wars springing up throughout the world, says: “And curved sickles are being melted down into hardened swords,” That era” was a sad one, when implements manufactured for the care of brutes were turned to the killing of men. But now those hardened and death-dealing swords are curved into the bonds of salvation, and do not destroy but confine disarmed men; their own beaten and blunted swords protect the surrendered enemy, since when whole and sharp they were able to do them no good.
Therefore the functions ofall weapons serve your authority to different effect, Emperor. For you swords conquer, for you they preserve; when you fight they strike, when you forgive they protect. As that god, creator and master of the world,” sends messages now sad, now glad, with his same thunderbolt, so the same shafts under your divine power distinguish
between your enemies or petitioners by destruction or preservation.” You snatched their swords away from your adversaries, Emperor, lest anyone fall upon his sword in a passion of grief; and you returned the same swords harmless to their hands, to satisfy both your clemency and your vengeance: you broke the weapons of those whose blood you spared. For the life of men, long in creation,” is always to be preserved, if it be permitted: iron is easy to find, variable in application. For this reason you melted down what could be repaired, you saved what could not have been restored. What do stories tell that is its like for pleasure? Human bodies have been changed into fountains or beasts or birds: such a transformation is debased and disgusting.” A sword has been changed into manacles: this is what security is after fear, or shade after heat. The change destroyed its sheen, but blunted its point.
Our enthusiasm and your kindness, Emperor, have encouraged us to indulge our exultation thus far with our words; but now let us return to greater things. When all Italy this side* of the Po had been recovered, Rome herself extended suppliant hands to you, Rome, where that monster had squatted, not daring to attempt anything in response to so many announcements of disasters suffered by his forces.” Rather the vilcreature’s very cowardice kept him under siege and, as the saying is, fear revealed the spirit of an ignoble man.”
The stupid, worthless creature never dared to go outside his walls, for thus he was warned either by omens or by the forebodings of his fear. For shame, an Emperor inside the protection of his walls! He would not approach the Field of Mars, would not practice in arms, would not tolerate the dust, not he;” and he was clever at that, lest as he essay a man’s tasks they despise him who watched him as he strode on a promenade™ within that palace of marbled walls, for it was considered a foreign expedition to go to the estate of Sallust.” And in fact these pleasures shielded his disgraceful fearfulness for the whole time that he occupied the city and shut himself in. He wished to appear not unwarlike but blest, not idle but carefree. Whenever he summoned the soldiers” to an assembly h boasted that he alone ruled with them, others waged war at the borders on his behalf. “Enjoy,” he used to say, “waste, squander.” This was the brief and fleeting felicity of wretched men.”
And not even then, when he had received information of so many conflicts lost by his men, did he attempt to go to meet you to employ the boundary of the Po or the Apennine Mountains for resistance, but he suppressed letters testifying to his own disasters. Meanwhile even in public he kept wishing that an advance would be made all the way to the gates. He did not realize that the City’s majesty, which had once tempted advancing armies,” had gone over to support you now that it was disgraced by his crimes and driven from its seat, and that men whom so many glorious victories, over and above your generosity and their oath of allegiance, had dedicated to you could not be corrupted by any rewards.” What soldier, who had so often fought successfully under your command and auspices, would sell his wounds to that fellow, or concede the outcome of a war nearly won?
But as you had formed this impression of the eagerness inspiring the whole army, without any of indecision’s delay you flew along in hasty march where the shortest road is, through the Veneti, and displayed for Rome then so eager for you that rapidity in action which was Scipio’s” and Caesar’s. This is the faith of an Emperor invincible and trusting in the spirits of his men, not to waver in doubt nor to prolong a war, but to consider each ensuing opportunity for battle an opportunity for victory. Your situation was not that of Quintus Maximus with victorious Hannibal, to seek out a place and an opportunity after calamities,” but it was the right place and time for you to press your successes, to add victory to victory, and to come to the City’s assistance as soon as possible. It is the mark of a wise commander to take account of a critical situation by delaying, but under favorable conditions not to neglect Fortune.”
There was still this one fear, that in absolute terror, gravely smitten by your power and backed into a corner, he might consult his best interests and put off by enduring a siege the penalty owed the republic, since after all of Africa, which he had decided to destroy,” had been exhausted, and all the islands had been emptied, he had amassed provisions for an unlimited length of time. But the divine spirit and the eternal majesty of the City itself robbed the accursed man of good sense, and made him suddenly rush out, after his inveterate sloth and shameful hiding, and after the passing of six indolent years to mark the very day of his accession by his final destruction, that he not violate the sacred and holy number seven” even by commencing upon it.
But how did he arrange his battle line, that little slave who dressed himself in purple for so many years? Precisely in such a way that no one could escape, that no one driven from his position could withdraw and fight anew, as usually happens, since he would be restrained in front by weapons and in the rear by the river Tiber.’” In this he did not b Hercules ponder the necessity of resistance but the proximity of refuge, unless perhaps he sensed already that his fatal day had come and wished to drag as many as possible with him as consolation for his own death, to have as companions in his end all who had been partners in his crimes. For what else ought one to believe he expected, since he had already moved out of the palace two days before and had voluntarily withdrawn with wile and son to a private house, driven in fact by terrifying dreams and expelled by nocturnal Avengers, so that you the long-expected occupant might succeed to that sacred edifice after it had been aired out and purified? He had foreseen the truth and yielded to you who were to come, since by leaving the palace he had already renounced his command, although he advanced armed into battle.
Then at the first sight of your majesty and at the first attack of your army so often victorious, the enemy was terrified, routed, hindered by the narrowness of the Milvian Bridge,’ and with the exception of the first instigators of that usurpation who in despair of pardon covered with their bodies the place which they had chosen for combat,” all the rest went headlong into the river, so that there was at last some abridgment of the slaughter for the weary right hands of your men. After the Tiber had swallowed the impious, the same Tiber also snatched up their leader himself in its whirlpool and devoured him, when he attempted in vain to escape with his horse and distinctive armor by ascending the opposite bank, lest such a misshapen monster should leave behind this fame for his death, that he had fallen by the sword or shaft of some brave man.™ The swirling river rolled along the bodies and arms’ of other enemies and carried them away; that one, however, it held in the same place where it had killed him, lest the Roman people should long be in doubt whether it was to be believed that the man, the confirmation of whose death was sought, had actually escaped.’”
Sacred Tiber, once adviser of your guest Aeneas,’’ next savior of the exposed Romulus,” you allowed neither the false Romulus’ to live for long nor the City’s murderer to swim away. You who nourished Rome by conveying provisions, you who protected her by encircling the walls, rightly wished to partake of Constantine’s victory, to have him drive the enemy to you, and you slay him. You are not always rapid and turbulent but moderate if the occasion demands it. You were calm when you carried Cocles in armor,’ the maiden Cloelia entrusted herself to your stillness;””* but now violent and turbid you sucked in the enemy of the State and, lest your service go unnoticed, you revealed it by disgorging his corpse. Then, after the body had been found and hacked up, the entire populace of Rome broke out in vengeful rejoicing, and throughout the whole City where it was carried affixed to a spear that sinful head did not cease to suffer disfiguration, and meanwhile, in the customary jests of a triumph, it was mocked by insulting its bearer, since he suffered the deserts of another’s head.”
But why do I dwell so long upon drolleries? ‘The houses themselves, I hear, seemed to move’” and the rooftops seemed to rise higher, wherever the chariot conveyed your deity with slow effort: so numerous a throng of the people, so numerous an entourage of senators carried you along and at the same time detained you. Those who stood at a distance pronounced fortunate those who had a closer look at you; those whom you passed by repented of the place which they had occupied.’” Everyone in turn approached from this side, followed from that; the countless multitude struggled and surged back and forth with varying pressure, and they remarked to themselves that there were so many souls left over after that six years’ slaughter. Some even dared to ask you to tarry and to complainthat you approached the palace so quickly’” and, after you had entered, dared not only to follow you with their eyes but almost to intrude even upon the sacred threshold. Thereafter, crowding through all the roads, they awaited, watched for, wished and hoped for your appearance, so that they seemed to besiege the man by whose siege they had been liberated.”
The greatest of orators may have bragged, and truthfully, that he was carried back to his country on the shoulders of Italy:’” the Senate and people of Rome were in a passion, both on that day and on others, to carry you even with their eyes,’” Constantine, wherever you made your way. Nor could men bring themselves to watch anything else during the days of exhibitions and eternal games’” except you yourself, to see what the flashing of your eyes was like, the majesty encompassing your whole body, the dignity of your countenance. They all rejoiced in the length of the spectacles and applauded the artists familiar to them on account of this one thing, that they contested in your presence.
Now why should I mention your decisions and acts in the curia, by which you restored to the Senate its former authority, refrained from boasting of the salvation which they had received through you, and promised that its memory would rest eternally in your breast?’ I would say more about your divine discourse, about your kindness voluntarily extended rather than procured by entreaty,’ if I did not prefer to let your words remain untold while I am in haste to praise your deeds. However little we know of the substance of what you said in the Senate, yet the fame of your clemency proclaims its spirit.
O Rome, fortunate at last in a civil victory!” Once you were invaded by Cinna in rage and Marius in anger,’” who appeased themselves not only with the head of the consul Octavius but after extinguishing the lights of the City’” they left behind examples of what you have suffered now for six whole years. Before the Colline Gate Suila conquered for you again
fortunate if he had avenged himself more sparingly; in fact he filled the rostra with the heads of many men. Constantine put an end to victory’s license with the end of the battle; he allowed swords to be drawn not even against those whom you demanded for punishment.
The same Sulla had an unarmed legion which had surrendered to him massacred in the Villa Publica, and he advised the Senate, distressed by the groans of dying men, not to fear what he himself had commanded. But this man, victorious over not only the enemy but his own victory,’ preserved for you whatever soldiers survived the war. Now they fight for you, those whom he has stripped of impious weapons and rearmed against barbarian foes. Now forgetful of the delights of the Circus Maximus, the theater of Pompey and famous baths,” they are stationed along the length of the Rhine and the Danube, they keep watch, suppress plundering; lastly, after having been vanquished in the civil war they vie with the victors to be matched with the enemy.”
Yet this cannot be wondered at, since you make any sort of soldier valiant by your example, Emperor. Worn out by battles and sated with victories you did not, as Nature demands, give yourself up to leisure and rest, but on the same march on which you returned to your Gauls you continued to the border of Lower Germany. Of course, after such a ereat interval of time and such a short distance between locations—after a campaign ofa year’s duration—you immediately began operations from the Tiber to the Rhine, or rather (as the omen and similarity of names as well as your greatness of spirit, Emperor, promise) you will extend the Empire from ‘Tuscan Albula to German Alba.”
Now what is this constant impatience of yours? What is this divinity thriving on perpetual motion? All things have interruptions: the earth rests in fallow lands,” rivers are said to stand still now and then,’” the sun itself reposes at night. You alone, Constantine, tirelessly follow one war with another, heap one victory upon another. As if the past is blotted out if you cease, you think you have not conquered unless you are conquering. The fickle and flighty nation of savages’ broke its promise, and having chosen leaders of the invasion for their strength and daring, was reported to be threatening the Rhine. You were instantly there to meet them and by your presence you frightened them from daring the crossing. And then you appeared to have achieved the opposite of what you prayed for, because if the invasion were prevented there would be no source of victory;’ but you employed the unexpected plan of departing with a pretended announcement of a greater disturbance on the border of Upper Germany, you offered their dull and savage intellects an opportunity to come into our territory, and left behind in concealment generals who would attack them when they least expected it. When they had crossed over, Fortune attended your plan. With the whole bed of the Rhine filled with ships you descended and devastated their lands and mourning and sorrowful homes, and you inflicted destruction and desolation so extensive on the perjured nation that in time to come it will possess scarcely any name.”
Go now, if it please you, all barbarian nations, and set in motion enterprises fatal to yourselves: you have an example. For although our Emperor accepts the submission of friendly kings and the very fact of his being feared and cultivated by the noblest kings counts the same as praise for victory, yet he is glad that the fame ofhis valor is increased as often as it is challenged. What is lovelier than this triumphal celebration in which he employs the slaughter of enemies for the pleasure of us all, and enlarges the procession of the games out of the survivors of the massacre of the barbarians?’ He threw so great a multitude of captives to the beasts that the ungrateful and faithless men experienced no less suffering from the sport made of them than from death itself.”
This is the reason why, although they might defer their end, they rush to their ruin and offer themselves to lethal wounds and to death. It is apparent from this very fact how great a thing it is to have conquered men so wasteful of themselves.
It is easy to conquer timid creatures unfit for war, such as the pleasant regions of Greece and the charms of the Orient produce, who can barely tolerate a light cloak and silken garments to keep off the sun, and who if they ever get into danger forget freedom and beg to be slaves.” But a Roman soldier, whom training disposes and the sanctity of his oath confirms to be who and what he is, or the grim Frank filled only by the flesh of wild beasts, who despises life because of the meanness of his sustenance, how much trouble it is to overcome or capture these!” And you, Emperor, have done this both lately in Italy and not long ago in the very sight of barbarian lands.
‘Thus without any distinction every kind of war, weapon, and enemy yields to you alone, the memorials of valor preserved in writing from the memory of every age yield to you as well. Indeed you have surpassed not merely those ancient acts of dictators and consuls and great Emperors thereafter, but even the very recent and very glorious deeds of your divine father (it seems base to compare other men [rom the recent past);’ you have, I repeat, overwhelmed divine Constantius himself already during the first term of your imperial office by your praiseworthy accomplishments.
You may be unwilling to hear this, Emperor, but while we are speaking he rejoices from heaven, and although summoned long since to the stars he grows still more in his son and ascends by the steps of your renown.”’ He cleared Batavia’ and expelled the foreign enemy; peoples native to the farthest reaches of barbarian soil have surrendered themselves to you. He crossed the Ocean with his fleet;”* you seized the Alps on foot and the ports of Italy by ship.” He recovered Britain, you the most famous islands of the African sea,’* which were the provinces of the Roman people. May divine Constantius himself, I say, forgive me: what do I have to compare to Italy, Africa, Rome?’ Tor just cause, Constantine, the Senate has recently dedicated to you a statue of a god and Italy shortly before that a shield and crown, all of gold, to lessen in some part the debt of their conscience.” ‘There is and often will be due a likeness to divinity, a shield to valor, and a crown to patriotism.
For this reason, you, supreme creator of things,” whose names you wished to be as many as the tongues of the nations (for what you yourself wish to be called we cannot know), whether you are some kind of force and divine mind spread over the whole world’ and mingled with all the elernents and move of your own accord without the influence of any outside force acting upon you,” or whether you are some power above all heaven which look down upon this work of yours from a higher pinnacle of Nature: you, I say, we beg and beseech to preserve this prince for all ages.’’ For it is a small thing to wish that such great valor and such great piety should have the longest possible course that life offers. And surely there is supreme goodness and power in you, and for that reason you ought to want what is right, and there is no reason for refusal since you have the power; for if there is anything which is denied by you to the well deserving, either your power has given way, or your goodness. Therefore make the best thing which you have given to the human race last eternally, and let Constantine spend all the ages on earth. Although, invincible Emperor, your divine offspring has already come forward in accordance with the republic’s prayers and more to come are still expected, yet that future will truly be blest if when you have installed your sons at the helm of the world you are the greatest Emperor of all.