Prologue

Eusebius Pamphilus, in praise of the Emperor Constantine. Delivered on the thirtieth anniversary of his reign. Prologue to the oration.

I do not come before you with an invented story, or with elegant language to captivate the ear, hoping to charm my hearers, as it were, with a siren’s voice. Nor will I offer the drink of pleasure in golden cups decorated with lovely flowers, I mean the graces of style, to those who are pleased with such things. I would rather follow the teaching of the wise, and urge everyone to turn aside and keep away from the well-worn road, and to keep themselves from contact with the common crowd. So I come prepared to celebrate our emperor’s praises in a new strain. Though countless people would like to join me in my present task, I am determined to shun the common track of men and to follow that untrodden path which no one may lawfully enter with unwashed feet. Let those who admire a common style, full of childish subtleties, and who court a pleasing and popular muse, try to charm people’s ears with an account of merely human merits, since pleasure is what they are after. But those who have been initiated into the universal science, who have gained divine as well as human knowledge and count the choice of the divine the real excellence, will prefer the emperor’s virtues that Heaven itself approves, and his godly actions, to his merely human accomplishments. They will leave it to lesser speakers of praise to celebrate his lesser merits. [c]

For our emperor is gifted both with the sacred wisdom that looks directly to God and with the knowledge that concerns human affairs. So let those who are equal to the task describe his worldly accomplishments to those who stand outside the sacred precincts. Those accomplishments are great and surpassing, and full of benefit to humankind, for everything that marks the emperor is great and noble; and yet they fall below his more divine qualities. But let those who are inside the sanctuary, and have access to its innermost and untrodden recesses, shut the doors against every unholy ear, and unfold, as it were, the secret mysteries of our emperor’s character to the initiated alone. And let those who have purified their ears in the streams of godliness, and lifted their thoughts on the soaring wing of the mind itself, join the company that surrounds the Sovereign Lord of all, and learn the divine mysteries in silence. Meanwhile, let the sacred oracles be our teachers in these mysteries. They were given not by the spirit of divination, or rather, let me say, of madness and folly, but by the inspiration of divine truth. Let them speak to us about sovereignty in general: about him who is the Supreme Sovereign of all, and the heavenly array that surrounds the Lord of all; about the model of imperial power that stands before us, and about the counterfeit coin; and lastly, about what follows from each of them. With these oracles, then, to initiate us into the knowledge of the sacred rites, let us attempt, as follows, the opening of our divine mysteries. [f]