Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
1| For he saw that the multitudes, like foolish children, were cowering in vain before the bugbears of error, figures molded out of gold and silver, and he judged that these had to be lifted out of the way, like stumbling stones flung down before the feet of those who walk in darkness, so that from then on he might spread open for everyone a royal road, smooth and level.
2| With this in mind, he did not think he needed soldiers and a great army to expose these things; one or two of his own close associates were enough for the service, and with a single nod he sent them out through every nation.
3| Trusting in their piety, these men passed through the midst of peoples and populations numbering in the tens of thousands, and in every city and region they brought to light the long-standing error. They ordered the priests themselves, amid much laughter and to their shame, to bring their own gods out of dark recesses into the light; then they stripped them of their outward show and displayed before the eyes of all the shapelessness that lay inside the painted form. Next they scraped off whatever of the material seemed useful and tested it in the crucible and the fire; whatever was of value, as much as they judged necessary, they kept and put in safe storage, while the rest, superfluous and useless, they left to the superstitious as a memorial of their shame.
4| And here is another thing that the admirable emperor did. When the costly material of the lifeless idols had been stripped off in the way just described, he went after the remaining statues, those made of bronze. These too, gods of aged myths, were led away as captives, bound with cords woven of hair. And besides this the great emperor, as though he had kindled a blazing torch, kept looking all around with an imperial eye, lest some hidden remnant of error should escape notice.
5| Just as a sharp-sighted eagle soaring in the heavens might see from on high things on earth that lie very far off, so he too, while keeping watch over the imperial residence of his own fair city, perceived from afar a terrible snare for souls lurking unnoticed among the nation of the Phoenicians. It was a grove and sacred precinct, not in the middle of cities, nor in marketplaces and broad streets, such as cities for the most part vie to build for the sake of adornment,
6| but out of the way, off the crossroads and highways, set up on a mountain ridge in a part of Lebanon in honor of the shameful demon of Aphrodite. It was a school of wickedness for every dissolute person and for those whose bodies had been ruined by great self-indulgence. Certain effeminate creatures, men who were not men, having renounced the dignity of their nature, propitiated the demoness with a womanish disease; and there were unlawful intercourse with women, adulterous corruptions, and unspeakable and infamous deeds carried out at this temple as in a place without law or ruler. And there was no one to detect what was done, since no person of decent character dared to go there.
7| But the things done there could not escape the notice of the great emperor. Having inspected them for himself with imperial foresight, he judged that such a temple was unworthy of the rays of the sun, and he ordered the whole of it, together with its votive offerings, to be destroyed from its foundations. At once, at the imperial nod, the contrivances of that licentious error were dismantled, a body of soldiers attended to the cleansing of the place, and those who until then had been licentious learned self-control under the emperor's threat,
8| Indeed, having in this way made plain to all the phantoms of the wickedness that leads peoples astray, the emperor proclaimed his own Savior to all; and there was no one to help or defend those who had been caught, not a demon, not a god, not a giver of oracles, not a seer. The souls of men were no longer wallowing in murky darkness; illuminated by the rays of true piety, they blamed their own forefathers for their ignorance and pitied them for their blindness, while they declared themselves blessed, as having been set free from a terrible error.
9| So it was that in a short time, by the counsel of the great God and through the service of the emperor, the whole race of enemies and foes, visible and invisible alike, had been destroyed, and from then on good peace, the nurse of youth, held sway over the dwelling place of all mankind. There were no more wars, since there were no more gods; nor were there battles in the countryside and in the cities, such as there had been before, when the cult of demons flourished; nor was there any longer the shedding of blood among men, as when the madness of many gods was at its height.
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