and — so that it be not necessary to go through them one by one — He who gave to Constantine the Christian, gave also to the apostate Julian, whose excellent natural gifts a sacrilegious and detestable curiosity, born of the love of ruling, deceived; for he was given over to vain oracles when, trusting in the security of victory, he burned the ships that carried the necessary supplies; then, pressing on hotly with immoderate rashness, and soon slain in enemy territory as the just reward of his temerity, he left the army in want, so that it could not otherwise escape thence unless, against that omen of the god Terminus of whom we spoke in the previous book, the boundaries of the Roman empire were moved. For the god Terminus, who had not yielded to Jupiter, yielded to necessity. Plainly the one true God rules and governs these things as He pleases;
and if by hidden causes, are they therefore unjust? [XXII] So too the very times of wars, just as it lies in His judgment and just decree and mercy either to afflict or to console the human race, so that some end sooner, others later. The war against the pirates was finished by Pompey, the third Punic war by Scipio, with incredible speed and shortness of time. The war of the fugitive gladiators too, although many Roman generals and two consuls were defeated and Italy horribly worn down and laid waste, was nevertheless in the third year, after much had been consumed, itself consumed.
The Picentes, Marsi, and Peligni — nations not foreign but Italian — after a long and most devoted servitude beneath the Roman yoke, attempted to raise their heads to liberty, when already many nations had been subjugated to the Roman empire and Carthage destroyed; in which Italian war, though the Romans were very often defeated, and two consuls and other most noble senators perished, this evil was nevertheless not drawn out over a long time; for the fifth year brought it to an end. But the second Punic war, with the greatest losses and calamity to the republic, wore down and almost consumed the Roman strength through eighteen years; in two battles nearly seventy thousand Romans fell. The first Punic war was carried through over twenty-three years;
the Mithridatic war forty. And lest anyone suppose that the early Romans were stronger for waging wars more swiftly, the Samnite war — in earlier times, much praised for every kind of virtue — was drawn out for nearly fifty years; in which war the Romans were so defeated that they were even sent under the yoke. But because they did not love glory for the sake of justice, but seemed rather to love justice for the sake of glory, they broke the peace that had been made and the treaty.
I recall these things for this reason: because many, ignorant of past events, and some even dissemblers of their own knowledge, if they see some war in Christian times drawn out a little longer, immediately leap most insolently upon our religion, exclaiming that, if it did not exist and the divinities were worshipped in the old rite, then by that Roman valour which, with the help of Mars and Bellona, brought so many wars to a swift conclusion, this one too would be finished most quickly.
Let those, then, who have read recall how long-lasting wars, with how varied outcomes and how mournful disasters, were waged by the ancient Romans — as the whole world is wont, like a most storm-tossed sea, to be flung about by the varied tempest of such evils — and let them at some time confess what they are unwilling to confess, and not destroy themselves and deceive the ignorant with tongues raging against God. [XXIII] Yet what God, in our own memory in most recent time, did marvellously and mercifully, they do not commemorate with thanksgiving, but rather strive, as far as in them lies, to bury it, if it could be done, in the oblivion of all men; which, if it be passed over in silence by us, we shall likewise be ungrateful.
When Radagaisus, king of the Goths, with a huge and monstrous host, already stationed in the vicinity of the City, was threatening the Roman throats, in a single day he was so swiftly conquered that, without so much as one Roman being — I will not say killed — but even wounded, far more than a hundred thousand of his army was laid low, and he himself, soon captured, was put to death by the punishment he deserved. For if that most impious man, with such great and such impious forces, had entered Rome, whom would he have spared? To what places of the martyrs would he have shown honour? In what person would he have feared God? Whose blood would he not have wished to be shed, whose chastity would he have wished left inviolate?
And what cries would these men have raised on behalf of their gods, with what insolence would they have boasted, that he had therefore conquered, therefore had been able to do such great things, because by daily sacrifices he placated and invited the gods — which the Christian religion did not allow the Romans to do? For as he was already drawing near to these regions, where by the nod of the supreme Majesty he was crushed, when his fame was spreading everywhere, it was said among us at Carthage that the pagans believed, spread abroad, and boasted this: that he, protected and aided by friendly gods, to whom he was reported to sacrifice daily, could in no way be conquered by those who neither offered such sacrifices to the Roman gods nor permitted them to be offered by anyone.
And these wretched men do not give thanks for so great a mercy of God, who — when He had determined to chastise the morals of men, deserving to suffer graver things by a barbarian irruption — tempered His indignation with such great gentleness that He first caused that man to be marvellously conquered, lest glory be given to the demons, to whom it was established he offered supplication, for the overthrow of weak souls; and then that Rome should be taken by those barbarians who, contrary to all the custom of wars waged before, out of reverence for the Christian religion protected those fleeing to the holy places, and so opposed, in the Christian name, the very demons and the rites of impious sacrifices in which that man had presumed, that they seemed to wage a far more atrocious war with them than with men;
thus the true Lord and governor of things both scourged the Romans with mercy, and by the incredible conquest of those who supplicated demons, showed that such sacrifices are not even necessary for the safety of present things, so that by those who do not obstinately contend but prudently attend, the true religion may not be forsaken on account of present necessities, but rather be held with the most faithful expectation of eternal life. [XXIV] For we do not call certain Christian emperors happy for this reason: because they reigned longer, or because, while reigning, they left their sons to succeed them by a peaceful death, or because they subdued the enemies of the republic, or because they were able both to guard against and to crush hostile citizens rising up against them.
These and other rewards or solaces of this toilsome life even certain worshippers of demons have deserved to receive, who do not belong to the kingdom of God, to which these emperors belong; and this too was done by His mercy, lest those who believed in Him should desire these things as though they were the highest goods. But we call them happy if they rule justly; if, amid the tongues of those who exalt them on high and the obsequies of those who salute them too humbly, they are not lifted up, but remember that they are men; if they make their power the handmaid of God's majesty, to extend His worship as widely as possible; if they fear, love, and worship God; if they love more that kingdom where they need not fear to have consorts; if they are slower to punish, readier to pardon;
if they exercise that same punishment for the necessity of ruling and protecting the republic, and not for the sating of the hatreds of enmity; if they grant that same pardon not for the impunity of iniquity, but for the hope of correction; if, when they are compelled for the most part to decree harsh measures, they compensate with the gentleness of mercy and the generosity of benefactions; if their luxury is the more restrained the freer it could have been; if they prefer to rule over depraved desires rather than over any peoples whatever; and if they do all these things not for the ardour of empty glory, but for the love of eternal felicity; if they do not neglect to offer to their true God, for their sins, the sacrifice of humility and compassion and prayer.
Such Christian emperors we call happy: for the present in hope, hereafter in reality itself, when that which we await shall have come. [XXV] For the good God, lest men who believed that He must be worshipped for the sake of eternal life should suppose that no one could attain these lofty heights and earthly kingdoms unless he supplicated demons — because these spirits have great power in such matters — filled the emperor Constantine, who did not supplicate demons but worshipped the true God Himself, with such great earthly gifts as no one would dare to wish for; to whom He also granted to found a city, an ally to the Roman empire, as it were a daughter of Rome herself, but without any temple or image of the demons.
He reigned long, and as sole Augustus held and defended the whole Roman world; in administering and waging wars he was most victorious, in crushing tyrants he prospered in all things, and, full of years, he died of sickness and old age, leaving his sons reigning. But again, lest any emperor should be a Christian in order to deserve the felicity of Constantine — since everyone ought to be a Christian for the sake of eternal life — He took away Jovian far more quickly than Julian; He permitted Gratian to be slain by a tyrant's sword, far more gently indeed than the great Pompey, who worshipped, as it were, the Roman gods. For Pompey could not be avenged by Cato, whom he had left, in a manner of speaking, heir of the civil war;
but the latter, although pious souls do not require such solaces, was avenged by Theodosius, whom he had made a partner in the kingdom, though he had a little brother, being more eager for faithful fellowship than for excessive power. [XXVI] Whence Theodosius not only kept toward him, while living, the faith he owed, but even after his death, when his little brother Valentinian had been driven out by his slayer Maximus, received the orphan into his own share of the empire as a Christian, guarded him with a father's affection — one whom, destitute of all resources, he could have removed with no trouble, if he had burned more with the desire of ruling more widely than with the love of doing good; whence rather, preserving his imperial dignity, he received and consoled him with very humanity and grace.
Then, when that success made Maximus terrible, Theodosius, in the straits of his cares, did not lapse into sacrilegious and unlawful inquiries, but sent to John, established in the desert of Egypt — whom, as fame increasingly spread, he had learned to be a servant of God endowed with the spirit of prophecy — and from him received the most certain announcement of victory.
Soon, having destroyed the tyrant Maximus, he restored the boy Valentinian, with most merciful reverence, to those parts of his empire from which he had been driven; and when Valentinian was shortly afterward destroyed, whether by treachery or by some other means or mishap, Theodosius — having again received a prophetic response and being certain in faith — overthrew another tyrant, Eugenius, who had been unlawfully substituted in place of that emperor, fighting against his most robust army more by praying than by striking.
Soldiers who were present reported to us that whatever they hurled was wrenched from their hands, when a vehement wind went from the side of Theodosius against the adversaries and not only most violently snatched away whatever was thrown at them, but even turned their own weapons back upon their bodies. Whence the poet Claudian too, although a stranger to the name of Christ, said in his praises: 'O too beloved of God, for whom the heaven wages war, and the winds, sworn in league, come at the trumpet-call!'
But the victor, just as he had believed and foretold, cast down the images of Jupiter which had been, as it were, consecrated against him by I know not what rites and set up in the Alps; and their thunderbolts, because they were of gold, he cheerfully and kindly bestowed upon the couriers who jested (as that joy permitted) and said they wished to be struck by them. The sons of his enemies, whom the onslaught of war — not by his own command — had carried off, though not yet Christians, when they fled to the church, he willed to become Christians on this occasion, and loved them with Christian charity, nor deprived them of their goods, but increased their honours. In no one after victory did he allow private enmities to prevail.
Civil wars he did not, like Cinna and Marius and Sulla and others such, wish to end even when they were ended, but rather grieved that they had arisen than wished, once they were ended, to harm anyone. Amid all these things, from the very beginning of his reign, he did not cease to come to the aid, with most just and merciful laws, of the Church laboring against the impious, which Valens the heretic, favoring the Arians, had grievously afflicted; he rejoiced to be a member of that Church more than to reign on earth. He commanded the images of the heathen to be everywhere overthrown, well understanding that earthly gifts too lie not in the power of demons, but of the true God.
But what was more admirable than his religious humility, when, in the case of the most grievous crime of the Thessalonians — for which, at the intercession of the bishops, he had already promised pardon — he was compelled by the tumult of certain men who clung to him to take vengeance, and, restrained by ecclesiastical discipline, did penance in such a way that the people, praying for him, wept more to see the imperial highness prostrate than they had feared it, wrathful, when they sinned? These and any similar good works, which it would be long to recount, that man bore away out of this temporal vapor of any lofty summit and human eminence; of which works the reward is eternal felicity, whose giver is God to the truly pious alone.
But the other summits or supports of this life — like the very world, light, air, lands, waters, fruits, and man's own soul, body, senses, mind, life — He lavishes upon both good and evil; among which is also any greatness of empire whatever, which He dispenses for the governance of the times. Accordingly I now see that answer must also be made to those who, refuted and convicted by the most manifest proofs — by which it is shown that the multitude of false gods is of no profit for those temporal things which alone the foolish long to possess — attempt to assert that the gods are to be worshipped not for the sake of the utility of this present life, but for the sake of that which is to be after death.
For to those who, for the sake of the friendships of this world, wish to worship vain things, and complain that they are not permitted their childish notions, I think a sufficient answer has been made in these five books. Three of the earlier of which, when I had published them and they had begun to be in the hands of many, I heard that certain men were preparing to write some sort of reply against them. Then it was brought to me that they had already written, but were seeking a time when they could publish without danger. Whom I admonish not to wish for what is not expedient for them. For it is easy for anyone to seem to have replied, who has been unwilling to keep silent. Or what is more loquacious than vanity? which, though it cannot do what truth can, yet, if it wishes, can even shout more than truth.
But let them consider all things diligently, and if perchance, judging without party bias, they perceive that such things are of a kind that can rather be stirred up than shaken loose by most shameless garrulity and by a levity that is, as it were, satyric or mimic, let them restrain their trifles and choose rather to be corrected by the prudent than praised by the shameless. For if they await a time not for the liberty of speaking truth, but for the license of speaking evil, God forbid that there befall them what Tullius says of a certain man who was called happy by the license of sinning: 'O wretched man, to whom it was permitted to sin!'
Whence whoever he is who thinks himself happy by the license of speaking evil, will be much happier if this be not at all permitted to him; since, laying aside the emptiness of boastfulness, even at this time he could, as though from a zeal for giving counsel, contradict whatever he wished, and, as far as they are able, hear from those whom he consults, in friendly discussion, what he ought to hear — honourably, gravely, freely.