Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
1| And he who delights in such an offering, who gladly welcomes the gift and admires the priest who conducts so solemn and so seemly a sacrifice, adds to his reign the further length of long cycles of years, enlarging his benefits in return for the devout service rendered to him. He grants him to celebrate festivals of every kind in the full ease of sole rule, and at each completed cycle of a ten-year festival he advances one of his own sons to a share in the imperial throne, bestowing on him increase of years as on a flourishing plant in its prime.
2| The first, the son who bears his father's name, he declared a partner in the imperial inheritance in the first decade of the reign; the second, next in age, at the second decade; and the third likewise at the third decade, the one marked by the present festival. And now, as a fourth cycle comes round and the years stretch out in length, he enlarges the empire by sharing it generously with his family, and by proclaiming Caesars he fulfills the oracles of the divine prophets, which long, long ago cried out somewhat as follows: "And the holy ones of the Most High shall take over the kingdom."
3| So it is that God himself, the King of all, bestowing on the emperor most dear to God increase of years and of sons together, makes his rule over the nations of the earth flourishing and young, as though it were only now beginning to grow. He himself celebrates the festival with him, setting him up as victor over all his enemies and foes, and displaying him to everyone on earth as a pattern of true piety.
4| And the emperor, like the light of the sun with its flashing rays, illuminates through the radiance of the Caesars even those who dwell in the most distant regions, by the beams he sends out from himself to a great distance. Here, to us who have our lot in the East, he has assigned the fruit worthy of him; one of his sons to one race of men, another to another, and yet another elsewhere, distributing them as lamps and luminaries of the light that streams forth from himself. Then, yoking the four most valiant Caesars like colts beneath a single yoke of the imperial four-horse chariot, and fitting them with the reins of godly harmony and concord, he drives them from high above as their charioteer, riding through the whole extent of what the sun looks down on, himself present to all and surveying all things.
5| And so, adorned with the image of the heavenly kingdom, he looks upward and steers and governs those below according to the archetypal pattern, made strong by imitating the monarchic sovereignty. For this gift the King of all has granted to human nature alone of all things on earth. And this is the law of royal authority: the law that fixes a single rule over all.
6| Monarchy surpasses every other kind of constitution and government, for the rule of many, which sets itself up in opposition on the basis of equal rank, is rather anarchy and faction. That is why God is one, and not two or three, or still more, for strictly speaking polytheism is atheism. There is one King, and one is his Word and royal law: not uttered in words and syllables, nor wasted away by length of time in writings and on monuments, but the living and subsisting God the Word, who administers his Father's kingdom for all who are beneath him and after him. The heavenly armies attend him on every side, myriads of God's ministering angels, multitudes of the host beyond the world, and the unseen spirits within heaven who serve the order of the whole universe; and over all of them the royal Word presides, like a prefect of the great King. The voices of the theologians proclaim him in their oracles as Chief Commander and as the great High Priest, Prophet of the Father and Angel of great counsel, Radiance of the Father's light and only-begotten Son, and by countless other titles besides. Him the Father who begot him gave subsistence as living Word and Law and Wisdom and the fullness of every good, and bestowed him as a gift of the greatest blessings on all who are under his kingdom. And he, pervading all things and passing everywhere, and pouring out the Father's graces ungrudgingly upon all, extended the likeness of the royal sovereignty even to the rational beings on earth, adorning with divine powers the human soul, which had been made in his own image. From this source the soul also has its share in the other virtues, by a divine outflowing. For he alone is wise who alone is God. He alone is good in his essence; he alone is mighty in strength; he is the begetter of justice itself, the Father of Word and Wisdom, the source of light and life, the steward of truth and virtue, and indeed the sovereign leader of kingship itself and of all rule and authority.
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