Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
1| Since two natures are woven together in us, I mean soul and body, the one visible to all and the other hidden, two barbarous and hostile races were drawn up against them, the one in secret, the other in the open. The one set bodies against bodies; the other, with bodiless weaponry, laid siege to the naked human soul itself.
2| Then the visible barbarians, nomads and savages no different from wild beasts, descended on the gentle flocks of humankind, ravaging the countryside and enslaving cities, falling upon the townsfolk from the wilderness like cruel wolves and then destroying whomever they could. The invisible enemies, the soul-destroying demons, who are crueler indeed than all barbarians, flitting about this air of ours, enslaved the whole mortal race by the devices of polytheistic wickedness, so that for them the true God was God no longer, but in his place a vast and godless delusion. For they brought forward, from where I do not know, beings that have no existence anywhere or in any way, and treated him who is, and who alone truly is, as though he were not, a thing of no account.
3| From this came their belief that the coming into being of bodies was a god, and again that another god, opposed to this one, was the corruption and dissolution of those same bodies. The first they honored with the rites of Aphrodite, as the author of generation; the second, as mighty and as prevailing over the mortal race, they named Pluto and Death. For the people of that time, knowing no life other than the life that comes through birth, declared that generation, its cause, was a god; and since they believed they would no longer exist after death, they proclaimed Death the conqueror of all and a great god. Then, as though they were in no way answerable for anything, because death would release them, they spent their lives doing deeds worthy of ten thousand deaths, living a life not worth living. They gave no thought to God, they looked for no courts of divine judgment, they did not rekindle the memory of their own essence as souls; they kept a single dread patron, Death, and having persuaded themselves that the corruption of bodies which he brings is the end of everything, they proclaimed Death a great god and a rich one, which is why they also called him Pluto. Nor was Death their only god; so too were the things they prized before it, the things that contributed to a life of pleasure.
4| So for them the pleasure of the flesh was a god, food was a god, the growth of food was a god, the bearing of fruit on the trees was a god, the luxury of drunkenness was a god, bodily desire was a god, and its pleasure was a god. From this came the mysteries of Demeter and Pherephatta, the rape of Kore by Aidoneus, and again her return. From this came the rites of Dionysus, and Heracles defeated by drunkenness as by a stronger god; from this the adulterous orgies of Eros and Aphrodite. From this came Zeus himself, mad for women and in love with Ganymede, and the licentious fabrications of myths about gods who loved pleasure and were slaves to passion.
5| With so many darts of this God-fighting delusion, then, these fearsome barbarians, enemies of the King of all things, wore down the inhabitants of the earth, and they brought the whole race under their hand, so that monuments of godlessness were raised everywhere on earth, and temples and shrines of a falsely named theology were set up in every corner.
6| Those who were then reckoned to rule were so enslaved to the delusion that they offered the murder of their own countrymen and kinsmen as acceptable sacrifices to their gods, sharpened their swords against the champions of the truth, and raised a truceless war and godless hands, not against foreign and alien enemies, but against those who shared their hearth and their friendship, against brothers and kinsmen and those dearest to them, who had resolved to honor and worship the Divine by the dignity of their lives, by self-control, and by the practices of true piety.
7| So these men, in a frenzy of mind, were slaughtering to their own demons those who had consecrated themselves to the Emperor of the universe. But the noble witnesses of true piety, who had trained themselves to prefer a glorious death for the truth to life itself, counted that whole tyranny as nothing. Like soldiers of God, fenced about with the virtue of endurance, they laughed at every manner of death: fire, sword, and nailings, savage beasts and the sea's depths, the cutting off of limbs and branding irons, the putting out of eyes, the lopping of extremities from the entire body, and hunger besides these, the mines, and chains. All of this they judged sweeter than any good thing and every pleasure, because of their love and longing for their own Emperor. Women's souls, too, were young and vigorous and no less manly than the men's. Some of them underwent the same contests as the men and carried off equal prizes for their courage; others, when they were dragged off to have their bodies defiled, surrendered their lives to death sooner than their bodies to defilement. And countless others, who could not bear for the threat of prostitution even to brush their ears, boldly endured at the hands of the provincial governors every kind of rack and every sentence of death.
8| Thus did the champions of the great Emperor, with a soul strengthened by reason, carry the contests through to victory against the army of the many gods. Meanwhile the enemies of God and foes of human salvation, worse than any savage barbarian, delighted in such libations of human blood; and their servants in turn drank to them toasts of this kind from unjust bloodshed, laying out for them this bitter and impious feast for the destruction of the common race. 9 Things being so, what was God, the Emperor of the oppressed, to do? Was he to pass by the salvation of those dearest to him and look on while his own people were besieged? No helmsman could ever be called wise if he let his ship go down to the depths with all hands, providing nothing on his own part for the safety of those aboard; nor could any general ever become so reckless as to hand over his own men to the enemy and leave them unavenged. Not even a good shepherd would look on unmoved at a stray animal of his flock; he will leave those that are well in a safe place, and for the sake of the stray's safety he would endure anything whatever, even if he had to grapple with wild beasts.
10| But the great Emperor's concern was not for a dumb beast; all his effort was spent for the sake of his own army and of those who were warred against on his account. He accepted their contests and their struggles for piety. Those who had set out on the journey to him he honored with the prizes of victory that are with him and enrolled in the angelic choirs of heaven; the rest he kept on earth, to be living seeds of piety for those born later, and at the same time to become spectators of the justice done to the impious and narrators of the history of what had taken place.
11| Then he stretched out his right hand to defend them against their enemies. With a single nod he made some vanish all at once, punishing them first with blows sent by God, and compelling them, unwilling as they were, to sing with their own lips the recantation of their offenses; and the others he raised from the ground, lifting up those who had long been brought low and given up for lost by everyone.
12| And this the great Emperor accomplished from heaven by setting at the front his own servant as an invincible soldier (for our emperor, in the surpassing greatness of his piety, rejoices to be addressed this way). Him he declared victor over the whole race of his enemies, raising up one against many. For they were countless and numerous, as friends of many demons; or rather they were nobody, which is why they no longer exist. He, on the other hand, is one emperor sprung from one, the image of the one Emperor of all. They, with godless souls, destroyed pious men in bloodstained slaughter; he, imitating his own Savior and knowing only how to save, saved even the godless by teaching them to be pious.
13| Then, as a true victor, he conquered that twofold race of barbarians. The savage tribes of men he tamed by reasoned embassies, compelling them to acknowledge their betters and not remain ignorant of them, and bringing them over from a lawless and bestial life to one of reason and law. The harsh and savage character of the invisible nature of demons he exposed by his very deeds as long since conquered by the Mightier One. For the common Savior of all avenged himself invisibly upon the invisible ones, while the emperor, as the prefect of the great Emperor, went after the conquered, stripping those who were long dead and destroyed and distributing the spoils without stint to the soldiers of the Victor.
Cite a passage by its number: every paragraph here has its own anchor (for example https://openscriptorium.com/read/eusebius/063-in-praise-of-constantine-chapter-7#p1), and the bracketed reference numbers link the same way.
← All of Eusebius of Caesarea: The Works of Eusebius of Caesarea