Before and After Muhammad The First Millennium Refocused

A NEW PERIODIZATION | 71

composed in 40 BCE, to the birth of a child who will usher in a golden age.^40
And in the inscription on the Arch of Constantine (315) we find allusions
not only to the emperor’s monotheism (“instinctu divinitatis”—unless this is
Constantine himself ), but also to his liberation of the state from a tyrannical
faction, surely an implicit self- comparison to Augustus.^41
As for Bishop Eusebius, through persecution, toleration, and then impe-
rial favor he pondered Rome’s role in the Christian dispensation, in varying
moods and for different audiences.^42 But by 335–36, in his In praise of Con-
stantine, he had come to see Rome as well as the Church as providential and
beneficial. Admittedly he was speaking in Constantine’s presence; but even
so he insists that the empire’s role is still secondary to Christ’s.^43 Eusebius re-
calls how there had once been many states and constant warfare. The root of
these evils was the worship of many gods, polytheism. But Christ came,
undid the demons and proclaimed One God.

At the same time, one single empire flowered for all people, the Roman,

and the eternally implacable and irreconcilable enmity of nations was

completely resolved.... Together, at the same moment, as if at a single

divine sign, two beneficial shoots grew up for mankind: the empire of

the Romans and the pious teaching.... Two great powers—the Roman

Empire, which became a monarchy at that time, and the teaching of

Christ—proceeding as if from a single starting point, and both to-

gether flourishing at the same moment, tamed and reconciled all to

friendship. For while the power of our Saviour destroyed the polyar-

chies (polyarchiai) and polytheisms (polytheïai) of the demons and

heralded the one kingdom of God to all men, Greeks and barbarians,

to the furthest ends of the earth, the Roman Empire, now that the

causes of polyarchy had been abolished, subdued the visible govern-

ments, zealous to combine the entire race into one unity and concord.

Already it has united most of the various peoples, and it is further des-

tined to attain as soon as possible all the others, right up to the very

limits of the inhabited world.^44

40 Constantine, Oration to the saints [ed. I. A. Heikel, Eusebius Werke 1 (Leipzig 1902) 149–92; tr.
M. Edwards, Constantine and Christendom (Liverpool 2003) 1–62] 19–21; cf. S. MacCormack, The
shadows of poetry: Vergil in the mind of Augustine (Berkeley 1998) 22–31.
41 H. Prückner, “Kaiser Konstantins Bilderbogen,” Thetis 15 (2008) 59–75, esp. 63; M. Clauss,
“Instinctu divinitatis”, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 185 (2013) 294–96.
42 H. Inglebert, Les romains chrétiens face à l’histoire de Rome (Paris 1996) 165–68.
43 A. P. Johnson, Ethnicity and argument in Eusebius’ Praeparatio Evangelica (Oxford 2006)
174–97.
44 Eusebius, In praise of Constantine [ed. Heikel [3:40] 193–259; tr. (adjusted) H. A. Drake, In
praise of Constantine (Berkeley 1976)] 16.4–7. Circumstances and date of delivery: P. Maraval, Eusèbe de
Césarée, La théologie politique de l’empire chrétien (Paris 2001) 29–34 (with a better translation).