In Heraclium ex Africa redeuntem

To the Emperor Heraclius, upon his return from Africa and his accession, and against the Emperor Phocas. Speech cannot prevail to express you, since the Word of God Himself has set you above these fluid words. But I see many singing hymns, O master, armed horsemen, accurate beast-hunters, whose all-wise mind is not characterized and whose divine character is not adorned. For us, it is fitting to hymn the inspired wisdom of your psychic movements, which you somehow received from on high, guarding your mind as a full armor with the God-inspired Scriptures. For by memory and speed you hunt them, delighting through them, winged toward God. You always pursue every wrath like untamed beasts from your all-day watch; you wish evil to be hunted down, through which the common race of the sojourn is hunted by treacherous scandals. By your nature, O mightiest one, even wild beasts are often taught to be tamed. The Medes are images of these, and barbarians, who often, boiling with savage manner, were quenched by your gentle word. A horse stands by you, running swiftly, your reason moving everywhere, filling the earth and bearing toward heaven. And you stretch bows from philanthropic inclination, always sending forth honey-dripping words, by which each one is sweetly wounded. You do these things and you compel time, when affairs with so many entanglements flood the earth like streams. But there is hope that the present difficulties will cease from you, the cares everywhere.

For if the commonwealth has often perished, fallen through the negligence of its rulers, so now the commonwealth will be saved by God through the pious successes of its ruler. For even before, when you saw us in misery, when the bitter wounds of the tyrant, taking hold, attacked the limbs, you had the opportunity to remain without toil, as one not responsible for the evils. But you did not hold back, O master, any less than those entangled in countless disasters, through which each was fiercely bitten by the ruling beast of affairs. And gladly running to such great labors, you scorned your own blood, wishing alone to snatch all from bloodshed. For you did not tremble at the long passage of the sea, nor were you then drawn back by pity for your mother. But a certain love, burning for God, held you, so as to quench the storm through which the commonwealth was heading to destruction. Nor were you disappointed in such great hope, but like the faithful Phineas, you had in spirit the faith that was the murderess of murders. For ever since you freed us from the tyrant's harm and hold us as slaves of God, the terrible flow of blood has ceased, from which the stream of evils was born. Holding the memory of these things, O most mighty one, and always casting your hopes upward to God, you will soon see the same God again as the savior of your hope a second time. For He Himself will open for us the doors to peace everywhere through your zealous efforts, showing that peace is enthroned together with your power. For formerly, I think, it was modestly hidden, blushing to see the spurious murders.

But, O giver of beautiful gifts, of those that do not lead to flowing things but introduce to enduring substance, accept the small things and teach greater ones. For the breadth of heart granted to you, as you suffice for all and are in no way constrained, will show how to steer even now the affairs from the storm to the calm which you possess, so that, henceforth bereft of care, we may imprint your spiritual beauty as in an icon in our own hearts, and record an indelible grace, showing what a blessed flower was hidden in the interweavings of thorns. Having praised you with these small words, and having appeared altogether deficient of your worth, I am fittingly taught the "know yourself" and, along with all, long for the noble defeat.