Gallienus Shines Again

But there is nothing like hearing how he puts it himself: “That man, then, having betrayed one of his own emperors and attacked the other, was quickly wiped out, root and branch, with his whole family. Gallienus was proclaimed and acknowledged by all, an emperor at once old and new, the first before them and still here after them. [a] For as the word spoken to the prophet Isaiah says, ‘See, the things from the beginning have come, and new things, which will now rise.’ A cloud that runs under the sun’s rays shades it over for a little while, hides it, and shows itself in its place; then, when the cloud has passed by or melted away, the sun that rose before appears again, rising once more. So too Macrianus, who put himself forward and pressed close upon the reigning empire of Gallienus, is not, since he never was; while the other is, just as he was. [c] And his reign, as if it had shed its old age and been cleansed of its former wickedness, now blooms more vigorously, is seen and heard of farther off, and spreads everywhere.” [d]

Then he goes on to show the time at which he was writing this, in these words: “It occurs to me again to look over the days of the emperors’ years. For I see that the most ungodly men, though once famous, have before long become nameless, while the more holy emperor, the greater lover of God, having passed his seventh year, is now completing his ninth, in which we are to keep the feast.” [e]