Incerti Panegyricus Constantino Augusto

The Panegyric of an Unknown Author to the Emperor Constantine. PREFACE. This speech was delivered in the year of Christ 313, after the defeat of Maxentius, in the month of January, I believe, at Trier, before Constantine departed from there to quell the disturbances in Germany. The author is unknown. However, the learned Claude Dupuy attributes this speech to Nazarius: "This," he says, "I conjecture from the style, and from a passage in the panegyric of Nazarius addressed to Constantine, which begins thus: 'I shall not mention,' he says, 'here the banks covered with continuous slaughter, nor the Tiber filled with heaps of bodies: it is enough to touch upon these things. And these were said to me at greater length yesterday.' Namely, in this very speech in which the battle by which Maxentius was defeated by Constantine is described more fully. Then, from the order in which all the Panegyrics are arranged in the old books: for this Panegyric is followed by that of Nazarius, which begins: 'About to speak of Constantine,' etc." SYNOPSIS OF THE PANEGYRIC. In the exordium. He denies that he would approach the emperor to praise him, were it not a sacrilege that he, who had so often praised him for lesser matters, should not congratulate him for the recovery of the empire.

Division I. How bravely Constantine undertook the war against Maxentius. — II. How successfully he concluded it. Part I. With friends dissuading, with adverse auspices, with his partners in the empire almost despairing, having crossed the Alps with scarcely a quarter of his army, about to march against enemies twice as numerous, cataphracts, and men who, because of their consciousness of their crimes, would never yield, §2. Severus, Galerius, and Maximian had attacked Maxentius with a huge army, all of them unsuccessfully, §3. But justice fought for Constantine. His virtues are compared with the vices of Maxentius, §4. Part II. He captures Segusium, §5, Turin, §6, Milan, §7, Verona, §8, Aquileia, where he puts some of the more stubborn to death and orders others, with their swords changed for fetters, to be bound, §11. Victorious at the seventh milestone from the city, with Maxentius, while fleeing, having collapsed from the Milvian Bridge into the Tiber, §14, he enters the city as victor and triumphant, §19. How unlike Cinna, Marius, and Sulla, §20. How merciful toward citizens, how good toward soldiers, whom he leads with him into Lower Germany as partners in his victories, §21. He surpasses the glory of Constantius, §24. For all these things he is honored with extraordinary honors by the Senate, §25.

Finally, he prays to Jupiter for the eternal safety of the Emperor, section 26. PANEGYRIC BEGINS. I. Whence comes such 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—unless I were to consider it a crime to fear the charge of some sacrilege, if I, who have always been accustomed to proclaim the deeds accomplished by your divine power, should pass over in silence these deeds, so much greater than earlier ones, through which not some part of the state has been preserved, but the entire commonwealth has been restored to itself? For I am not unaware how far inferior our talents are to those of the Romans. For speaking Latin and speaking eloquently is inborn in them, but in us it is labored; and if we happen to say anything apt, our imitation derives from that source and fount of eloquence. But although I am conscious of my innate weakness and of a study that is begun rather than learned, I cannot restrain myself in silence from attempting to utter something myself about the recovery of the City, the Roman Empire, and finally about it, after long convulsion, consolidated—so that among so many sounds of eloquent men, my own slender voice may also seem to have been heard. For if in military matters and in battles themselves, not only trumpets and clarions, but even Spartan pipes are said to have provided some incentive—I believe because great spirits can be sufficiently roused by a small measure—why should I distrust your favor toward me, so that you might measure my speech by my zeal in your service rather than by its own strength?

Let me try, then, as best I can, to whisper, so to speak, into your ears, though they are already filled, without the confidence of rivalry but with the desire to imitate. II. And first I shall seize upon that which I believe no one has yet dared: to speak of the steadfastness of your expedition before praising the victory. For, having passed by the nod of an adverse omen and having been recalled by an offense, I shall use the freedom of our love for you, which we then suspended between fears and the prayers of the state. Tell me, Emperor, how could you have presumed in your mind to be the first to attack a war kindled by such great resources, such great consensus of greed, such great contagion of crimes, such great despair of pardon, while the partners of your empire were then all inactive and hesitating? What god, what so present majesty urged you on, so that, when nearly all your companions and generals were not only silently murmuring but even openly afraid, against the advice of men, against the warnings of the soothsayers, you yourself, by yourself, sensed that the time had come to free the City? You surely have some secret with that divine mind, Constantine, which, having entrusted the care of us to lesser gods, deigns to reveal itself to you alone. Otherwise, most valiant Emperor, now that you have conquered, give an account. You had indeed left the Rhine safe, with armies stationed along its entire frontier; but we undertook even greater fears for you because you were consulting for us rather than for yourself, and you had strengthened our peace more than the war you were about to undertake.

III. But you, Emperor, out of excessive love for us, failed to provide truly for our security, since you did not move all your arms with you, even though your preservation is our safety. And what need was there for the Rhine itself to be equipped with soldiers and fleets, when the terror of your virtue had already blocked it against barbarian nations? Or did you wish to display your diligence, dividing your forces between the guardianship of peace and war? Or even boastfully and gloriously prove that you sufficed to free the City with a few men? For with scarcely a fourth part of your army, you crossed the Alps against one hundred thousand armed enemies, so that it became clear to those considering it more deeply—something that escapes us, trembling in love—that you sought not a doubtful victory, but one promised by the gods. The great Severus had led a large army, and, abandoned by treachery, had armed his enemy. Later, Maximianus had brought up greater forces, and, himself surrounded by deserters, seemed to have fled successfully. Finally, the one who was believed to be his father, having tried to tear the purple torn from his shoulders, had felt that his own fates had passed into that disgrace. That monster had amassed the wealth gathered from the whole world over a thousand and sixty years, and with it had bought hands for civil brigandage. In addition, by giving away others’ marriages, the heads and goods of the innocent far and wide, he had bound parricides to devotion unto death; but all who had plotted against him, or openly attempted something for freedom, he had punished with penalties and crushed with arms.

And amid these things he was enjoying the majesty of that city which he had begun; he had filled all Italy with hirelings ready for every crime. IV. All these things, Emperor, when you considered, knew, and heard, and neither your fatherly dignity nor your own nature allowed you to be reckless; tell me, please, what counsel did you have except divine power? Or was it that reasoning guiding you (for each man’s own prudence is his god), that in such an unequal contest the better cause could not fail to prevail; and that although he might throw countless forces against you, justice would fight for you? For to pass over those things which ought not to be compared: that he was the supposititious son of Maximian, you the son of Constantius Pius; he of the most contemptible depravity, with twisted and disjointed limbs, his very name mutilated by a misapplied appellation; you, what is enough to say, so great and so noble: to pass over these things, I say: you, Constantine, were followed by your father’s piety; him, not to begrudge a false kinship, by impiety; you by clemency, him by cruelty; you by chastity devoted to your only marriage, him by lust defiled by every debauchery; you by divine precepts, him by superstitious sorceries; him, finally, by the guilt of plundered temples, of a butchered senate, of the Roman people starved to death; you by the abolition of false accusations, you by the prohibition of informers, you by the preservation of life, and him by the rejoicing over bloodshed and murder.

In such diverse causes, Emperor, you counted not the multitude of soldiers but the merits of the parties by divine counsel—that is, by your own. V. Alexander the Great, although he could have levied an innumerable conscription from all Greece and the entire Illyricum in addition to his own Macedonians, never led forces larger than forty thousand, deeming anything exceeding that unmanageable for a commander, and a mob rather than an army. But you, with far smaller forces, undertook a much greater war; you were accordingly the stronger by your own valor, as he was the more equipped by numbers. And he indeed waged war against the unwarlike Medes, the feeble Syrians, the fleeting arms of the Parthians, and the Asiatics, who were eager to change their servitude, with the outcome of a single battle; you had to conquer soldiers—alas!—who shortly before were Romans, armed with all weapons in the manner of the first class, and who, because of the consciousness of their crimes, would yield only to death. This was proved by the initial obstinacy of those who, holding a town fortified by both a wall and its position at the very ridges of the Alps, dared to resist and close their gates while you were approaching; they did not believe, as I hear, that you yourself were present—for who would believe that an emperor with an army had flown so quickly from the Rhine to the Alps?—but they nevertheless should have yielded not only to your present divinity but even to your name when announced. They therefore immediately paid the penalty for their madness, when they refused the pardon offered to them by your clemency.

For neither was a siege begun with rampart and ditch, nor by driving mines, nor by moving siege engines, nor were the walls tried and shattered by the stroke of a battering ram, but torches were immediately thrown against the gates, scaling ladders against the battlements; and not only with slings from a distance and with javelins, but with spears and swords. Thus the action was begun and completed at the same time, and for the rebels the attempt and the outcome were joined. VI. Gomphos, a city of Thessaly, because it refused obedience, Gaius Caesar destroyed in a single day. But he attacked Greekling men, you attacked Subalpine men; he attacked only the inhabitants, you also attacked a military garrison: he could not defend the captured from plunder, you were permitted to command clemency to your victors. But for him indeed the disaster of the Gomphians was a lesson to the rest, for you a little later another battle was fought in the Taurinate plains, not with the rebels trembling from your victory, but with spirits enraged and incited to vengeance, which the turn of fortune ought to have restrained: nor indeed were the enemy rashly and here and there scattered, so that they could be easily cut down as they wandered; but drawn up in the form of a wedge, with the flanks descending back into depth; which, when it eagerly joined battle with the front line, would, when repulsed, encircle them entangled in the fight. But you, foreseeing this, having sent men ahead on both sides to go to meet them, and at the same time to shake out whatever ambush might be lurking; you yourself, with that head strengthened, and the line thrown into flight and turned, produced so much greater a slaughter in the advance as it had stood drawn up with larger supports.

Thus, as far as the walls of Taurinium, they were scattered and cut down, and, finding the gates barred by the inhabitants, they even blocked them with the mass of their own bodies. VII. What else could you have hoped for, unhappy soldier, devoted then to that most shameful prodigy? For now I do not insult, but grieve. You forced Constantine to shed so much blood. He, because he could not obtain your safety from you by entreaty, almost became displeased with the victory itself. But the people of Taurinium and the other cities of Italy were not of the same mind; they, Emperor, called you to themselves, exulting with joy and vying with one another. Embassies were sent from all, supplies were offered from everywhere, so that it became clear how long they had longed for you, to whom they so readily entrusted themselves while the war still remained. What a day was that on which you entered Mediolanum! What congratulations from the leading men of the city! What applause from the people! What a sense of security for the mothers and the maidens who beheld you! How they enjoyed a twofold benefit, when they saw the form of the most beautiful emperor and did not fear license! All showed themselves and danced, without any fear of the remnants of war, and they measured the omen of your victory as if it were the consummation. Not the Transpadane province seemed recovered, but Rome itself. For who would believe that after such great successes any obstacle would remain, so that not all armies would surrender themselves to your clemency, once they had learned the test of your valor? You had taken walls by storm, you had conquered openly in battle. Who seemed so mad as to dare either to be besieged or to join battle?

especially since you, lingering for some days at Mediolanum, gave them time to deliberate for themselves, so that they might hope for something from you. VIII. But indeed, that wretched Verona, already long stained with civil blood in our middle age, was held by the largest enemy army, with the fiercest commanders and the most stubborn prefect; evidently so that the colony once founded by Gnaeus Pompeius might be overthrown by Pompeianus. O the miserable calamity of the Veronans, whom not so much your siege as the internal one of the satellites oppressed! For the Athesis, rough with rocks, swirling with whirlpools, and fierce in its current, prevented an assault, and rendered the entire region behind it safe and defended for transporting supplies. Yet, so that this should no longer aid the enemy, it was accomplished by your foresight: when, in the higher places, where the river was gentler and the enemy unaware, you cast a part of your army across with a double danger, and forced the besieged and blockaded to experience worse by arms, and you cut down so thoroughly all who attempted a sortie, that even the commander himself, with a part of his forces, departed to summon reinforcements—the wretch, alas, about to lead an army only to perish with a greater retinue in disaster. At that time, Emperor, your care and greatness of spirit were especially evident, for you preferred to engage that returning commander with a smaller army rather than interrupt the siege, so that you would not allow the besieged to catch their breath, or to escape, or to threaten your rear.

IX. And first, as I hear, you had drawn up a double battle line, but soon, having foreseen the number of the enemy, you ordered the ranks to be immediately extended into a front and the weapons to be spread more widely, measuring, of course, the courage of all your men by your own spirit, although a heavier weight could thereby be broken by the attack of fewer. Do you think I am praising, Emperor, everything you did in that battle? On the contrary, I complain again. You had foreseen everything, you had arranged everything, you had fulfilled the duties of a supreme commander—why did you yourself fight? Why did you hurl yourself into the densest enemy ranks? Why did you cast the safety of the republic into such great dangers? Or do you think we do not know that, while you were carried away by excessive ardor, you came into the midst of the enemy's weapons, and that unless you had opened a path for yourself by slaughter, you would have deceived the hope and prayers of the whole human race? For you were borne along with full force, like a torrential river, which uprooted forests and rocks torn from their foundations would follow. What business do you have, Emperor, with a lesser fortune? It is right for those to fight whose own fate, each one's own, is either to conquer or to fall; you, on whose life the fates of all depend, do you approach any danger? Do you move among so many weapons and swords? Who demands this of you? Or who could endure that anything in war be permitted to you by chance? Does it befit you, Emperor, to strike an enemy? On the contrary, it does not befit you to toil.

X. Xerxes watched a naval battle from a high mountain. Augustus, while doing something else, conquered at Actium. There was even one who, raised on ladders bound together, saw the armies clashing from afar, so that he neither shared in the danger nor was absent from the outcome. These examples, you will say, are cowardly, but they are safe; and the fear for your danger is greater than the joy of victory. Did not your comrades and tribunes themselves, after the enemy had been cut down and put to flight, and their leader himself killed, seize you weeping, and embracing that panting breast of yours, your bloodstained hands, and whatever had emerged from the blood of the deep slaughter, cry out on all sides: "What have you done, Emperor? Into what fate had you cast us, had not your divine valor avenged you? What is this impatience? Or why do you need our hands, if you fight yourself in turn for us?" I would not say these things, Emperor, nor would I recall them said by others, were it not that, by the benefit of your leniency, our words are safer than your boldness in arms. For by some new variety of nature and a confused mixture of virtues, you are the fiercest in battle and the gentlest once security is achieved.

XI. For when you had granted the besieged time for repentance, and had also received Aquileia through its envoys and suppliants, and all had surrendered themselves to you—whom you had preserved by besieging—you forgave everyone and restored the life they had despaired of. And indeed you ordered them to lay down their arms, so that we might be much more safely sheltered by the victor’s mercy; yet, so that they might feel the consequences of their obstinacy, you ordered them to be seized and bound—not for punishment, but for life; lest they flee from the fear of their conscience and commit grave offenses, and not deserve to be preserved again, had they not been preserved. But from where could so many bonds come for such a multitude, bonds capable of restraining military hands, and those recently armed? The soldiers who had undertaken to bring them out were astounded, refused the task of guarding them, and utterly did not know what to do; even those who were in your council, even the prefect himself, hesitated; when you, prompted by divine instinct, ordered that from their own swords twin clasps be fitted to their hands, so that their own swords—which had not defended them when they resisted—might hold the surrendered men.

XII. O most beautiful triumph of your virtue and clemency, which ought to have been displayed before the eyes of all! For whose power was it to strip weapons from enemies, whose humanity to bind the surrendered to impunity with their own arms, and to fetter them in such a way that they daily repented of that iron which they had borne against you? That sword which the hostile enemy had drawn against you, itself held the hands of its own master, and, prepared for slaughter, became a guardian for safety. The great poet, when describing the movement and preparation of wars rising throughout the whole world, says: "And curved, rigid sickles are forged into a sword?" That was indeed a sad time, when instruments prepared for the tending of cattle were turned to the slaughter of men. But now those rigid and death-dealing blades are curved into salutary fetters, and do not kill the disarmed man, but restrain him; and the surrendered enemies are protected by their own swords, blunted and dulled, which, when whole and sharp, could avail them nothing.

XIII. Therefore all the instruments of war serve your will for different outcomes. Emperor, swords conquer for you, and for you they spare; while you fight they strike, while you pardon they protect. Just as that creator and lord of the world sends his same thunderbolt now as a bearer of sad tidings, now of joyful ones, so under your divine power the same weapons distinguish your enemies or your suppliants by destruction or preservation. You have snatched the swords from your adversaries, Emperor, so that no one might yield to grief. You have prevailed, and you have rendered them harmless by their own hands. To satisfy both your clemency and your vengeance, you broke the arms of those whose blood you had spared. For human life, once long acquired, must always be preserved, if possible: iron is easily found, easily changed in use. Therefore you melted down what could be remade; you preserved what could not be reborn. What similar tales do the fables tell? That human bodies were turned into springs, or cattle, or birds? Such a transformation is foul and debasing. A sword changed into manacles: this is what security after fear is, what shade after heat is. The change has lost the splendor, but it has dulled the edge.

XIV. Your zeal and humanity, Emperor, have encouraged us thus far to play with words in our exultation. But let us now return to more important matters. After the recovery of all Italy on this side of the Po, Rome herself was already stretching out suppliant hands to you, that monster not daring to attempt anything in response to so many reports of his own disasters. Indeed, she was besieged by the cowardice of that most worthless man, and fear betrayed his degenerate spirit. That stupid and worthless creature never dared to step outside the walls. For he was warned either by portents or by the premonitions of his own fear. For shame! within the protection of walls, Emperor. He did not aspire to the field, did not train with arms, did not endure dust. He was clever, indeed, so as not to attempt the duties of men, walking in that palace with its marble walls. For going to the Gardens of Sallust was considered a journey and an expedition. And these luxuries, throughout that whole time when he had besieged the world, had enclosed him, protecting his most shameful fear. For he did not wish to seem unwarlike, but blessed; not idle, but secure. Whenever he called the soldiers to assembly, he boasted that he alone with them was emperor, that others were fighting for him along the frontiers. "Enjoy," he said, "squander, waste." This was the brief and fleeting happiness of the wretched.

XV. And not even then, when he had learned of so many adverse battles of his own men, did he attempt to come to meet you in resistance, using the boundary of the Po or the ridges of the Apennines; but he suppressed the letters that were the proofs of his calamities, and sometimes even openly wished that you would come as far as the gates; not understanding that the majesty of that City, which had once shaken armies drawn up before it, now disfigured by his own crimes and driven from its abodes, had passed over to your aid; and that no rewards could corrupt those whom, beyond your liberality and the faith of their oath, the glories of so many victories had consecrated to you. For what soldier, who had fought so many times most successfully under your command and auspices, would sell his wounds to that man? Would yield up the sum of a war almost finished? But you, feeling the same thing from the ardor of the whole army, without any hesitation, by the shortest route through those regions, flew with a rapid column, displaying that speed in action of Scipio and Caesar, then most desired by Rome: This is the confidence of an invincible emperor, trusting in the minds of his men, not to doubt, not to drag out war, but to consider each nearest time for battle a victory; for the matter was not for you, as it was for Quintus Maximus with the victorious Hannibal, to seize a place and time after harsh events, but to press your successes and continue your victories, and to come to the aid of the City as soon as possible. For it is the mark of a wise emperor to consult delay in broken affairs, and not to fail fortune in favorable ones.

XVI. Thus, the only fear now was that he, terrified by these forces, severely crushed, and driven into a narrow space, might take good counsel and postpone the penalties he owed to the republic by a siege. Indeed, he had drained all of Africa, which he had resolved to destroy, and emptied all the islands, amassing a supply of grain for an indefinite period. But the divine mind and the eternal majesty of the City itself snatched the plan from that wicked man, so that he suddenly burst forth from that long-standing torpor and most foul hiding places, and, having consumed his old age in idleness, marked his own birthday with his own final slaughter, lest he violate that sacred and religious number seven by beginning it. And how did he draw up the battle line, that purple-clad slave of so many years? In such a way, indeed, that no one could escape, no one, as often happens, could, moved by panic, retreat and renew the battle; for he was pressed from the front by arms, from the rear by the Tiber River. In this, by Hercules, he did not consider the necessity of resistance, but the proximity of flight. Unless, perhaps, already sensing that his fatal day had come, he wished, as a solace for his own death, to drag as many as possible with him, so that all who had been accomplices in his crimes might be companions in his end.

What else is to be believed that he hoped for, who had already left the palace two days before, and had voluntarily withdrawn with his wife and son into a private house, as the case is, driven by terrible omens and impelled by nocturnal avengers; so that you, long expected, might at last succeed to those sacred halls, long since purified by fumigations and expiations? And so truly had he spoken the truth to himself, and yielded to your coming, even though he entered the battle armed, since by leaving the palace he had already abdicated the empire. XVII. At the first sight of your majesty, and the first onset of your entire victorious army, the enemy were terrified and put to flight, and cut off by the narrows of the Milvian Bridge; except for the first authors of that brigandage, who, despairing of pardon, covered with their bodies the place they had taken for battle, all the rest went headlong into the river, so that at last some respite from slaughter might come to the weary right hands of your men, when the Tiber had swallowed up the impious. Even he himself, with his horse and his insignia of arms, vainly attempting to escape over the steep banks of the farther side, was seized by the Tiber's whirlpool and devoured, lest such a monstrous prodigy should leave even this report of his death, that he had fallen by the sword or weapon of some brave man. And indeed the bodies and arms of the other enemies the headlong river rolled and carried away, but him it held in the same place where it had extinguished him, so that the joy of the Roman people might not long be in doubt, if it were thought that he had fled somewhere, whose death required proof.

XVIII. Holy Tiber, once the guide of the guest Aeneas, soon the preserver of the exposed Romulus, you suffered neither a false Romulus to live long, nor a parricide of the City to swim away. You, the nourisher of your Rome by bringing supplies, you, the defender by surrounding it with walls, rightly wished to be a partner in Constantine’s victory, so that he might drive the enemy onto you, and you might drown him. For you are not always swift and torrential, but moderate according to the needs of the times. In your calm you carried back the armed Cocles. To your placid self the virgin Cloelia entrusted herself. But now, violent and turbid, you have swallowed the enemy of the republic, and, lest your compliance be hidden, you have betrayed it by casting up the corpse. Therefore, with the body found and butchered, the whole Roman people blazed up into joy and vengeance; nor did they cease throughout the entire City, wherever that expiatory head was carried fixed on a spear, to defile it; while, as is the custom in triumphal jests, they laughed at the insult to the bearer, as he suffered for the merits of another’s head.

XIX. But why have I been joking up to this point? The very roofs, as I hear, seemed to be stirred, and the height of the gables appeared to rise, wherever your divine presence was borne on the slow motion of your chariot: such a dense crowd of people, such a packed throng of the Senate, both propelled and pressed you forward at the same time. Fortunate were those who could see you more closely; those placed farther off called out your name; those you had passed by regretted the spot they had occupied. All in turn would depart from one side and follow on the other: an innumerable multitude would compete, and surge with varying momentum, and they recalled that so many human spirits survived after that six-year calamity. Some even dared to demand that you halt, and to complain that you had reached the Palace so quickly, and when you had entered, not only to follow you with their eyes, but almost to burst through the sacred threshold. Then, with everyone crowded around, they would wait, watch, wish, and hope for you to leave that place: so that they seemed to besiege the one by whom they had been freed from siege. Let the greatest orator boast, and truly, that he was carried back to his homeland on the shoulders of Italy; you, Constantine, the Senate and People of Rome, both on that day and on others, wherever you advanced, yearned to carry you on their eyes. Nor could men, during the days of the games and the rites of the Indians, look at anything else but you yourself; what was the brilliance of your eyes, what majesty was diffused throughout your whole body, what dignity in your expression. All rejoiced at the delay of the spectacles, and favored their familiar performers only for this reason, that they were competing 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 claim credit for the safety they had received through you, and promised that the memory of it would be everlasting in your heart? I would say more about your divine speeches, about the kindness offered rather than begged—were I not more inclined to pass over words in silence while I hasten to unveil deeds. However well known your words spoken in the Senate may be to us, yet what they were like, the glory of your clemency has announced. O Rome, at last blessed by a civil victory! Once the mad Cinna and the angry Marius burst in, who not only sated themselves with the head of the consul Octavius, but, with the lights of the city extinguished, left behind examples which you have suffered now for six whole years. Sulla again conquered for you before the Colline Gate—fortunate if he had avenged himself more sparingly, but indeed he filled the Rostra with many heads. Constantine limited the license of victory to the end of the battle: he did not allow swords to be drawn even against the blood of those whom he demanded for punishment.

XXI. Sulla butchered the legion that had surrendered to him and been disarmed, in the Villa Publica, and when the Senate was struck with terror by the groans of the dying, he warned them not to be afraid, because he himself had ordered it. But this victor, not only over his enemies but also over his own victory, preserved for you whatever soldiers survived the war. For those whom, stripped of their arms, the commander rearmed against barbarian enemies, now serve you. Already forgetful of the pleasures of the Circus Maximus, the Theater of Pompey, and the noble baths, they are stationed on the Rhine and the Danube, keep watch, suppress brigandage, and finally strive, as men conquered in civil war, to be compared with the victors against the enemy. Nor can this seem surprising, since you, Emperor, by your example, make any soldier whatsoever most brave. For you, not weary from battles nor sated with victories, did not give yourself over to leisure or rest, as nature would dictate, but with the same momentum with which you had returned to your Gauls, you proceeded to the lower frontier of Germany; that is, after a great interval of time and a short distance of places, immediately after a year-long campaign you began a war, from the Tiber to the Rhine—indeed, so that the omen and similarity of name may hold, and your greatness of spirit, Emperor, promises, you will extend your empire from the Etruscan Albula to the German Albis.

XXII. What is this so unceasing ardor? What divinity is this that moves with perpetual motion? All things have their intervals. The land lies fallow in the fields, rivers are said sometimes to halt, and day itself yields to night; you, Constantine, alone are untiring: you continue wars with wars, you heap victories upon victories. As though the past were obliterated if you should stop, you think you have not conquered unless you conquer. The fickle and slippery race of barbarians had broken faith, and, with the authors of the breakout chosen for their strength and daring, were reported to have pressed upon the Rhine. Immediately you were there to oppose them, and your very presence terrified them from daring the crossing. And you even seemed to have done the opposite of what your soldiers wished, because the blocked breakout left no material for a victory; but, employing an unexpected plan—for by departing, with a feigned report, you offered to those stupid and brutish minds the occasion of a greater tumult on the upper frontier for them to come into our territory, leaving leaders in hiding to attack them when off guard. When they had come, your plan was followed by fortune. With the whole channel of the Rhine filled with ships, you were carried across and laid waste to their lands and their homes, now mournful and filled with mourners, and you inflicted such slaughter and devastation upon the perjured race that it will scarcely have a name after that.

XXIII. Go now, all of you, if you will, barbarian nations, and stir up your deadly endeavors: you have an example. For although our emperor admits the homage of friendly kings, and that very fact serves to enhance the glory of his victory, in that he is feared and worshipped by the most noble kings, yet he rejoices that the glory of his valor is increased whenever he is provoked. For what is more beautiful than this triumph, that he uses the slaughter of enemies even for our universal pleasure, and piles up the pomp of his shows from the remnants of barbarian carnage, throwing such a multitude of captives to the beasts, so that the ungrateful and treacherous suffer no less pain from the mockery of themselves than from death itself? Hence it is that, although they might delay their end, they hasten to perish, and offer themselves to deadly wounds and deaths. From this very fact it is clear how great a thing it is to have conquered men so prodigal of themselves. XXIV. It is easy to conquer the timid and unwarlike, such as pleasant Greece and the delights of the East produce, men who can scarcely bear a light cloak and silken folds, avoiding the sun, and if ever they come into danger, forgetful of liberty, begging to be allowed to serve. But a Roman soldier, such as discipline of any kind ordains and the religion of the oath confirms, or a fierce Frank, distended with wild meat alone, who despises life for the cheapness of his sustenance—how great an effort it is to overcome or capture such men! This you, Emperor, did both recently in Italy, and a little while ago in the very sight of barbaria.

Thus, without any distinction, all types of wars, weapons, and enemies yield to you alone; even all the monuments of virtues preserved in literature from every age yield to you. And indeed, you have surpassed not only those ancient deeds of Dictators, Consuls, and subsequently of great emperors, but also the most righteous and beautiful achievements of your deified father; for it is distasteful to compare others from a more recent time—I mean the deified Constantius himself, whom you, in the first five-year periods of your reign, have already heaped with praise for your accomplishments. XXV. Perhaps you receive this unwillingly, Emperor, but he, while we speak, rejoices in heaven, and long since summoned to the stars, he still grows in his son and ascends by the steps of your glories. He purged Batavia, with the enemy driven out as a newcomer; to you, peoples from the farthest barbarian lands have surrendered themselves. He crossed the Ocean with a fleet; you have occupied both the Alps on foot and the Italian harbors with fleets. He recovered Britain; you have recovered the most noble islands of the African Sea, which were provinces of the Roman people. Let the deified Constantius himself forgive me, I say. What do I have that I can compare to Italy, Africa, Rome? Rightly, therefore, Constantine, did the Senate recently give you the emblem of a god, and shortly before did Italy dedicate a shield and a crown, all of gold, to relieve in some part the debt of their conscience. For a golden image is owed to divinity, a shield to valor, and a crown to piety.

Therefore, I beseech you, supreme sower of all things, whose names are as many as the tongues of the nations you have willed to exist—for we cannot know by what name you wish to be called yourself—whether in you there is some divine mind and power, by which, infused throughout the whole world, you mingle with all elements and move yourself without any external impulse of force; or whether you are some power above the entire heaven, who gazes down upon this work of yours from a higher citadel of nature: you, I say, I pray and entreat, that you preserve this emperor for all ages. For it is not enough to wish for such great virtue and such great piety the longest possible progress of life. Certainly, there is in you the highest goodness, there is also piety, and therefore you ought to will what is just, nor is there any reason to refuse, since you have the power. For if there is anything that is denied to the well-deserving by you, either the power has ceased, or the goodness. Therefore, act so that what you have given as the best to the human race may remain eternal, and that Constantine may live all his ages on earth. For although, invincible Emperor, your divine offspring has already succeeded to the prayers of the state, and a more numerous one is still hoped for in the future, yet that posterity will be truly blessed when, after you have brought your children to the helm of the world, you are the greatest emperor of all.