“For if Constantine should be seen as a new Moses, how should Christian subjects then catch the spirit of their own part? An audience acquainted with Paul’s use of the Israelites as negative examples in 1 Corinthians 10 (where the wayward followers of Moses were destroyed in the wilderness) … would probably not be slow to hear Constantine’s reference to the Moses narratives as a dire warning to themselves concerning internal discord”.
Finn Damgaard
Constantine [I] has, for his part, been compared with Moses - even described as “a new Moses”.
…. Propaganda Against Propaganda: Revisiting Eusebius’ Use of the Figure of Moses in the Life of Constantine
Introduction
In the last two decades there has been an increasing interest in the literary aspects of the Life of Constantine (VC) and a number of recent studies have touched on Eusebius’ use of the figure of Moses in this work. [1] In the introduction and commentary to their translation, Averil Cameron and Stuart G. Hall show a keen interest in the parallels between Constantine and Moses and even call these parallels “the most obvious device used by Eusebius in the Life of Constantine to bring home his ideological message.”[2] In a similar way, Claudia Rapp has called these parallels a Leitmotif in the work. [3] Several recent studies have also sought to explain why Eusebius chose precisely the model of Moses for his term of comparison. According to Cameron and Hall, the comparison between Constantine and Moses “was perfectly suited to the work’s apologetic purpose.”[4] By portraying Constantine as the successor of Moses, Eusebius provided a precise and detailed demonstration of how God’s plan for Christian government on earth was realized. [5] Michael J. Hollerich also stresses the apologetic purpose of Eusebius’ use of Moses. According to Hollerich, however, Eusebius was not only drawn to Moses as a biblical exemplum for Constantine in order to stress his divinely inspired mission and his example of a godly life, he also invoked the figure of Moses in order “to sanction behavior that appeared to contradict traditional Christian views on the taking of life.”[6] Taking a somewhat different approach, Sabrina Inowlocki has suggested that: “Eusebius’ portrayal of Moses also testifies to the ambiguity of the legislator in Christianity.”[7] According to Inowlocki, Eusebius skilfully exploits the ambivalence of Moses in order to achieve apologetic purposes. Thus Eusebius compared Constantine with Moses in order to identify him as a figure de l’entre deux. According to Inowlocki, Moses himself is portrayed as a figure de l’entre deux in Eusebius’ thought as being both a Hebrew and the founder of Judaism. Referring to Eusebius’ apologetic works, the Praeparatio Evangelica and the Demonstratio Evangelica, Inowlocki demonstrates that Moses appears as an ambivalent character whose different facets are exploited according to the context. On the one hand, the figure of Moses is continuously glorified in the pagan-Christian debate described in the Praeparatio Evangelica. On the other hand, the description of Moses is far less enthusiastic in the Jewish-Christian debate described in the Demonstratio Evangelica. According to Inowlocki, Eusebius thus implicitly identifies Constantine as a figure de l’entre deux by choosing Moses as an exemplum for Constantine.
What is common to these suggestions is that they all take for granted that the comparison with Moses was invented by Eusebius himself. In this article, I shall suggest another approach, namely that it was actually Constantine (or his near advisers) who originally fabricated the comparison with Moses as part of his propaganda. As we shall see, Eusebius’ use of the comparison probably reuses much material from Constantine’s Moses propaganda, but he also seems to have reshaped some parts of it in order to promote his own interests. Moreover, I shall argue that Philo’s portrait of Moses as a model ruler in his Life of Moses was an important source for Eusebius’ idealized portrait of Constantine and his revision of Constantine’s Moses propaganda.
Moses in Constantine’s own Political Propaganda
Interestingly, it is in the speech that Eusebius attaches to the Life of Constantine that we come upon Constantine’s own use of Moses. In order to support his paraphrase of Constantine’s speeches (VC 4.29.2–5), Eusebius promises to append to the Life of Constantine an example of one of the emperor’s own speeches which he refers to as “To the Assembly of the Saints” (VC 4.32). [8] The authenticity of the speech was long in doubt, but is now generally considered to be authentic by the majority of scholars. [9] The speech seems to address a Christian audience—most likely bishops—but the date as well as the venue and occasion for the speech are still in question. I shall come back to this issue later.
As Mark Edwards has argued in the introduction to his new translation, the speech should probably be read as a “manifesto of ambition.”[10] The speech does not have Christianity per se as its focus; rather Christianity seems a means of persuading the Christian audience of the emperor’s right to rule. Constantine’s appeal to Moses at approximately the middle of the speech is a particularly illustrative example of this. In his attack on the fallen ideologies of Christianity’s enemies, Constantine suddenly hints at his own experience when he claims that he himself has been “an eyewitness of the miserable fortune of the cities [Memphis and Babylon]”[11] (Oration to the Saints 16). By claiming himself to be an eyewitness, Constantine succeeds in drawing a parallel between himself and Moses, since it was Moses who desolated Memphis when he:
[. . .] in accordance with the decree of God shattered the arrogance of Pharaoh, the greatest potentate of the time, and destroyed his army, victor as it was over many of the greatest nations and fenced round with arms—not by shooting arrows or launching javelins, but just by holy prayer and meek adoration.
Oration to the Saints 16, my emphasis
Though Constantine does not explicitly cast himself as a new Moses, he seems to imply this when, later in the oration, he claims that everything has also turned out “according to my prayers—acts of courage, victories, trophies over my enemies” (Oration to the Saints 22, my emphasis) and finally concludes:
Now in my view a ministry is most lovely and excellent when someone, before the attempt, ensures that what is done will be secure. And all human beings know that the most holy devotion of these hands is owed to God with pure faith of the strictest kind, and that all that has been accomplished with advantage is achieved by joining the hands in prayers and litanies, with as much private and public assistance as everyone might pray for on his own behalf and that of those dearest to him. They indeed have witnessed the battles and observed the war in which God’s providence awarded victory to the people, and have seen God co- operating with our prayers. For righteous prayer is an invincible thing, and no-one who pays holy adoration is disappointed of his aim.
Oration to the Saints 26, my emphasis
Constantine could of course hardly claim to have won by conquest without having “shot arrows or launched javelins,” but he might have hoped that his audience would catch the parallel to Moses when he piously claims that his palm of victory was similarly based on prayers and God’s co-operation. Also the fact that Constantine does not dwell on priestly or visionary aspects of the Moses figure, but rather turns the figure into a military and political leader suggests that Constantine constructed Moses as his own model: [12]
What could one say about Moses to match his worth? Leading a disorderly people into good order, having set their souls in order by persuasion and awe, he procured freedom for them in place of captivity, and he made their faces bright instead of blear.
Oration to the Saints 17
As Michael Williams has recently suggested, “It is difficult to read this as anything other than a kind of idealised portrait of the first Christian emperor—that is, as a portrait of Constantine himself.”[13] Williams’ suggestion is, I believe, right on target. There are, however, some rather important political motives for Constantine’s use of Moses that Williams does not examine, probably because he regards the speech as a conventional defense of Christianity. [14] For if Constantine should be seen as a new Moses, how should Christian subjects then catch the spirit of their own part? An audience acquainted with Paul’s use of the Israelites as negative examples in 1 Corinthians 10 (where the wayward followers of Moses were destroyed in the wilderness) [15] would probably not be slow to hear Constantine’s reference to the Moses narratives as a dire warning to themselves concerning internal discord. Thus, Constantine continues his panegyric of his predecessor by describing how the Israelites “became superhumanly boastful” though Moses was their sovereign. If Constantine had only referred to Moses in order to legitimize his own rule, he would probably not have touched on the Israelites’ acts of disobedience in the wilderness. Like Paul, Constantine seems, by contrast, to exploit the Moses narratives in order to control his Christian audience. Thus, when he reminds his audience that “no people would ever or could ever have been more blessed than that one [the Israelites], had they not voluntarily cut off their souls from the Holy Spirit” (Oration to the Saints 17), he makes a convenient agreement between the Holy Spirit and Moses, since it was of course Moses who had set their souls in order in the first place. By appending the Oration to the Saints to his Life of Constantine, Eusebius provides us with a fascinating glimpse of Constantine skilfully making use of the example of Moses in order to advance his own political agenda, namely to control the bishops.
Playing Constantine’s Game
The first time Eusebius himself invokes the Moses narratives in relation to Constantine is in the well-known passage in the ninth book of the Ecclesiastical History (HE) probably composed in 314 or 315. [16] In this passage, Eusebius compares Constantine’s victory over Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge in 312 with the defeat of Pharaoh at the Red Sea (HE 9.9.2–8). Though the passage seems to be Eusebius’ own invention, he could actually have been inspired by Constantine’s Oration to the Saints if we accept an early date of delivery. According to Girardet, the speech was delivered by Constantine in Trier or Rome at Easter 314. [17] With Girardet and Edwards, I take the field “prepared for battle” mentioned in chapter 22 to be the battlefield of the Milvian Bridge, and Constantine’s reference to the tyrant of the most dear city “who was suddenly overtaken in a fitting manner worthy of his atrocities” (Oration to the Saints 22) as referring to Maxentius. [18] Though Constantine does not himself compare the battle at the Milvian Bridge explicitly with the battle at the Red Sea, he refers to the defeat of Pharaoh earlier in the speech and even in a context that, as we have seen, might be viewed as an implicit comparison of Constantine with Moses. As Girardet has argued, the speech was probably also sent out as a circular letter to all bishops in Constantine’s part of the empire and therefore also translated into Greek at the same occasion in order to address congregations in places such as South Italy and Sicily. [19] If the speech had received such a wide distribution, Eusebius could have learned about it as he composed the ninth book of the Ecclesiastical History. [20] Eusebius’ comparison of Constantine’s victory at the Milvian Bridge with the battle at the Red Sea might thus develop a potential in Constantine’s own speech. [21] However, while Constantine would probably approve Eusebius’ comparison in the Ecclesiastical History (and perhaps even regret that he had not developed it himself), I shall argue that not all Eusebius’ parallels between Constantine and Moses in the Life of Constantine would play Constantine’s game. On the contrary, some of Eusebius’ parallels might be read as an attempt to turn Constantine’s own Moses propaganda upside down.
Revisiting the Use of Moses in the Life of Constantine
Eusebius’ portrait of Constantine in the Life of Constantine has often been seen as only an encomiastic portrait of the deceased emperor, and several of his comparisons with Moses in the Life of Constantine are certainly flattering. The comparison known from the Ecclesiastical History between Constantine’s victory over Maxentius and the defeat of Pharaoh is for instance turned into an even more complimentary comparison, since Eusebius now compares Constantine explicitly to Moses (VC 1.39.1). Also Eusebius’ portrait of Constantine’s childhood told in close connection to Moses’ upbringing (VC 1.12.1–2) seems to be written by a servile panegyrist. Thus, Eusebius claims that Moses’ youth resembles the youth of Constantine, since Constantine, like Moses, “sat at the tyrant’s hearth, yet though still young he did not share the same morality as the godless”[22] (VC 1.12.2). Very little is known about Constantine’s involvement at Diocletian’s court and his role in the great persecution. The fact, however, that Constantine was present at Diocletian’s court during the persecution may have given rise to Christian criticism. Thus, Constantine seems to make an effort to dissociate himself from the persecutors when, in a letter against polytheistic worship which Eusebius included in the Life of Constantine, he stresses that he was just a boy (VC 2.51.1) when the persecution began—even though he may have been about thirty. [23] In his comparison of Constantine’s presence at Diocletian’s court to Moses’ stay at the court of Pharaoh, Eusebius also seems to acquit Constantine of blame. Like the Constantinian letter, in his own narrative Eusebius stresses that Constantine was still young when he sat at the tyrants’ hearth like Moses, whom Eusebius claims was still in his infancy (VC 1.12.1). [24] And just as the book of Exodus implicitly describes Moses as being in opposition to Pharaoh’s policy, since Moses observed the Hebrews’ toil and struck down one of the Egyptians who was beating one of the Hebrews, [25] so Constantine, says Eusebius, conducted himself in the same way as Moses (VC 1.19.1). Just as Moses withdrew from Pharaoh’s presence because Pharaoh sought to kill him as a result of his murder of the Egyptian, [26] so Constantine “sought his safety in flight, in this also preserving his likeness to the great prophet Moses” (VC 1.20.2). Constantine’s “flight” was due in part to the circumstance that those in power devised secret plots against him based on envy and fear, [27] since “the young man was fine, sturdy and tall, full of good sense” (VC 1.20.1). [28]
Eusebius does not, however, follow the lead of Constantine in all of his Moses parallels. Thus, for instance, his portrait of Constantine differs from Constantine’s self-portrait in the Oration to the Saints. In his description of Constantine’s miraculous vision before the battle with Maxentius, Eusebius claims that Constantine decided to venerate his father’s God (VC 1.27.3) though Constantine claims that he had not been raised a Christian (Oration to the Saints 11). [29] Eusebius probably changed this, because he wanted to enhance the parallel between Constantine’s vision and Moses’ vision in Exodus 3:6 where God identifies himself to Moses as “the God of your father.”[30] But there may also be another and more important reason for the change, namely Eusebius’ wish to turn Constantine into a convenient model for his own sons. As most scholars agree, the Life of Constantine should probably be read as a “mirror for princes.” Perhaps Eusebius, who had recently hymned Constantine (as he himself notes in the very first lines of the work, cf. VC 1.1.1), might even have planned to take the liberty to present copies of his Life of Constantine to the new Augusti. [31] In presenting to Constantine’s sons a portrait of their father as a Christian emperor, Eusebius was in the privileged position that such a portrait was without precedent. Thus he was in a sense free to claim a particular action as characteristic of a Christian emperor and thereby bring his influence to bear on what did and did not fall within the sphere of Christianity. [32] When Eusebius implicitly claims that Constantine had been raised as a Christian and that he turned to his “father’s God” at a crucial point in his career, Eusebius has probably the three brothers Augusti in mind. Thus, in Eusebius’ version, the scene is laid for Constantine’s sons imitating their father (like Constantine, cf. VC 1.12.3) in order for them to adhere to the God of their father.
Actually, however, Eusebius’ use of the figure of Moses seems somewhat misplaced in this context, since Christians hitherto had used the figure of Moses to argue against succession through descent. In his homilies on Numbers (22.4.1–2), Origen, for instance, praises Moses because he did not pray to God in order to have his own kin appointed leaders of the people. The interpretation seems to derive from Philo’s Life of Moses, which Eusebius had probably used as an inspiration for some of his comparisons between Constantine and Moses. Thus in the famous passage of the Life of Moses where God requites Moses the kingship of the Hebrews, Philo keenly stresses that Moses subdued his natural affection for his own sons and avoided promoting them as his heirs (Life of Moses 1.150). Eusebius could hardly have failed to notice the telling difference between Constantine’s and Moses’ attitude to dynasties. While Philo seems to reproduce and imitate a Roman aristocratic and senatorial opposition to dynasties probably in polemical contrast to the degeneracy of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, Eusebius, by contrast, flatteringly describes Constantine’s sons as “new lamps” (VC 1.1.3) and “as virtuous and God-beloved sons” (VC 2.19.3) who succeeded Constantine by law of nature (VC 1.9.2). Despite these panegyrical titles, the Life of Constantine reflects a latent sense of unease concerning the continuation of the Roman Empire under the direction of the new Augusti. Thus, for instance, Eusebius took pains to stress that the Augusti had really been instructed in “godly piety” by Constantine himself:
Sometimes he [Constantine] encouraged them [his sons] while they were with him with personal admonitions to copy him and taught them to make themselves imitators of his godly piety. Sometimes when communicating with them in their absence about imperial matters he would express his exhortations in writing, the greatest and most important of these being that they should prize the knowledge of God the King of all and devotion to him above all wealth and even above Empire. By now he had also given them authority to take action for the public good by themselves, and he urged them that one of their prime concerns should be the Church of God, instructing them to be frankly Christian.
VC 4.52.1–2
The agreement between this passage and the introduction to the Life of Constantine is rather significant. At the beginning of the work, Eusebius provided the reader with the basic threads of the work, namely the contrast between Constantine and his rivals and the likeness between the life of Constantine and the lives of the God-beloved men as recorded in Scripture—in particular, the life of Moses. Here Constantine is claimed to be a present “example to all mankind of the life of godliness” (VC 1.3.4) and “a lesson in the pattern of godliness to the human race” (VC 1.4.1). By claiming agreement between how Constantine had presented himself to his sons and the way Eusebius now presents him to “all mankind,” Eusebius probably hoped to oblige the Augusti to comply with his picture of their father. For if they would choose another line of action than suggested in Eusebius’ portrait of Constantine, they would find themselves in conflict with the way they had purportedly been instructed by their own father. From the biblical narratives, Eusebius would know that succession through descent was a difficult undertaking. However, by reusing Constantine’s comparison with Moses, Eusebius was able to stress that good kingship was not based on descent, but on godliness. Ironically, Eusebius pays Constantine back in his own coin, so to speak. For just as Constantine used Moses to control the bishops, so Eusebius uses the same figure to promote his own view of how Constantine’s sons should rule.
Constructing a Christian Dynasty
As H. A. Drake reminds us in his Constantine and the Bishops, praise is a means of control, and panegyrics could be an effective “means of indicating the actions that would delegitimize an emperor.”[33] Far from being innocent analogies, Eusebius’ comparison of Constantine and Moses represents a wish to influence the Constantinian dynasty by controlling and defining the imperial role and by presenting an imperial model that the Christian bishops could support. According to Eusebius, a Christian emperor would, for instance, “shut himself at fixed times each day in secret places within his royal palace chambers, and would converse with his God alone with the alone (monos monôi, VC 4.22.1)”[34] and in so doing, he would imitate Moses whom the Lord used to speak with “face to face (enôpios enôpiôi), as if someone should speak to his own friend.”[35] Though Neoplatonists such as Numenius and Plotinus had also used the expression monos monôi in relation to their metaphysics and mystical philosophy, [36] I find it more likely that Eusebius may have alluded to Exodus 33:11, given the fact that Philo also rephrases the same biblical passage in this way (Life of Moses 1.294; 2.163). [37]
Also Eusebius’ emphasis on the close affinity between piety and philanthropy in government seems to construct an imperial portrait characteristic of a Christian emperor. As is well known, Eusebius puts great emphasis on piety in the Life of Constantine. According to Eusebius, Constantine’s physical bearing was indicative of his piety: “his fear and reverence for God [. . .] was shown by his eyes, which were cast down, the blush on his face, his gait, and the rest of his appearance” (VC 3.10.4). His piety led him to write statutes forbidding private sacrifice and favoring the building of churches (VC 2.45.1–2) and to repeal a law that had forbidden childless couples to inherit property (VC 4.26.2). He piously acknowledged God as the author of victory at his adventus into Rome (VC 1.39.3, see also 1.41.1–2, 46; 2.19.2; 3.72; 4.19); and at the end of the work, Eusebius claims that no other Roman emperor could be compared with him in exceeding godly piety (VC 4.75). In close connection with Constantine’s piety, Eusebius also stresses his philanthropy. According to Eusebius, Constantine:
[. . .] traveled every virtuous road and took pride in fruits of piety (eusebeias) of every kind. By the magnanimity of his helpful actions he enslaved those who knew him, and ruled by humane (philanthrôpias) laws, making his government agreeable and much prayed for by the governed.
VC 1.9.1
Similarly, Eusebius later claims that Constantine’s decrees were not only full of philanthropy: they were also a token of his piety towards God (VC 2.20.1). In sum, philanthropy is said to have been Constantine’s most conspicuous quality (VC 4.54.1).
Though both virtues are, of course, stock virtues in encomiastic literature of antiquity, the insistence on the close affinity between them cannot be found in other ancient writers such as, for instance, Plutarch, who is otherwise well known for his extensive reference to philanthropy. [38] In his insistence on the centrality of these virtues in government, Eusebius probably again constructs Constantine as a new Moses. Indeed, Philo had also singled out Moses as the one who has embodied both virtues to the highest degree. [39] According to Philo, piety and philanthropy are the queens of virtue (On the Virtues 95) and Philo stresses time and again how essential they are to the Mosaic legislation (On the Virtues 51–174). [40] Thus, in the Life of Moses, he claims that Moses was the most pious of men ever born (Life of Moses 2.192; see also 1.198; 2.66); and, as for philanthropy, Philo asserts that Moses was the best of all lawgivers in all countries (Life of Moses 2.12) because he acquired all the legislative virtues, among which philanthropy is the one mentioned first (Life of Moses 2.9). In the inquiry devoted to philanthropy in On the Virtues (51–174), which Philo regarded as a supplement to the Life of Moses (On the Virtues 52), he also stresses the connection between philanthropy and piety. Thus Moses:
[. . .] perhaps loved her [philanthropy] more than anyone else has done, since he knew that she was a high road leading to piety, [and he accordingly] used to incite and train all his subjects to fellowship, setting before them the monument of his own life like an original design to be their beautiful model.
Eusebius and Philo also both employ topoi typical of philanthropy, for instance the sparing of the lives of prisoners of war (Life of Constantine 2.10.1, 13.1–2, Life of Moses 1.249). [42] In addition, like Philo, Eusebius adds to the classical definition of philanthropy the idea of the king’s kindness toward widows and orphans. [43] Eusebius’ repeated references to Constantine’s gifts to the poor, widows, and orphans thus resemble Philo’s emphasis on the benefit of Moses’ philanthropic legislation for the needy and unfortunate. For both authors, such generosity is equated with piety and philanthropy (On the Virtues 90–95, Life of Constantine 1.43.1–3; 2.20.1). [44]
In his use of Philo’s figure of Moses as a model for his own portrait of Constantine, Eusebius shows himself to be more like an independent biographer than a servile eulogist. By using Philo’s Life of Moses as an inspiration for his idealized portrait of Constantine as a Christian emperor, Eusebius revises Constantine’s Moses propaganda in order to influence those with influence at court—not least Constantine’s sons themselves.
Conclusion
As we have seen, Constantine himself already appeals to Moses and the Exodus narratives in his Oration to the Saints. Eusebius was accordingly not the first to compare Constantine and Moses; on the contrary, the comparison probably came into being in Constantine’s own propaganda machine. Eusebius, however, not only reproduces the propaganda, he also adapts the comparison to his own agenda. Thus, whereas Constantine used the comparison to issue a subtle warning to his audience of bishops concerning their divisive behavior, Eusebius, by contrast, focuses on the similarities between Constantine and Moses in order to control and define the character of the Constantinian dynasty.
In addition to the figure of Moses, the Life of Constantine also offers other comparisons with heroes of myth and history as is typical of the genre of the basilikos logos. Thus, Eusebius contrasts Constantine with Cyrus and Alexander the Great (VC 1.7–9) [45] and later with the rivals from whom he had delivered the empire (VC 3.1–3). [46] Apart from the tetrarchs who as Constantine’s rivals could hardly be ignored, Eusebius did not compare Constantine with Roman emperors before him such as Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius, who all featured in Late Antique panegyric. [47] In this way, Eusebius divorced Constantine “almost entirely from the society which seemed to have produced him.”[48] By consigning the history of imperial Rome to oblivion, Eusebius claims that a new beginning has taken place. Constantine and his dynasty were more on a par with Moses than with their Roman predecessors. Symptomatically, even when Eusebius ends the Life of Constantine with a brief comparison with “all the Roman emperors,” he actually once again compares Constantine with Moses:
He [Constantine] alone of all the Roman emperors has honoured God the All-sovereign with exceeding godly piety [. . .] and surely he alone has deserved in life itself and after death such things as none could say has ever been achieved by any other among either Greeks or barbarians, or even among the ancient Romans, for his like has never been recorded from the beginning of time until our day.
VC 4.75
Compared with the Greeks, the barbarians and even the ancient Romans, Constantine was, so Eusebius flatteringly asserts, without peer; and yet, the message of the Life of Constantine is that Constantine was only second to none, because he actually followed in the footsteps of a figure equal to himself, namely Moses. [49] ….
[End of quote]
Milvian bridge Episode
and defeat of Pharaoh
We find Eusebius’s comparison of these events at, e.g.:
….
[Constantine now devoted himself to the study of Christianity and the Bible,] and he made the priests of God his councilors and deemed it incumbent upon him to honor the God who appeared to him with all devotion. After this, being fortified by well-grounded hopes in Him, he undertook to quench the fury of the fire of tyranny.
[Meantime Maxentius at Rome was giving himself utterly over to deeds of cruelty and lust, and on one occasion caused his guards to massacre a great multitude of the Roman populace.]
In short it is impossible to describe the manifold acts of oppression by which this tyrant of Rome oppressed all his subjects; so that by this time they were reduced to the most extreme penury and want of necessary food, a scarcity such as our contemporaries do not remember ever to have existed before at Rome. Constantine, however, filled with compassion on account of all these miseries, began to arm himself with all warlike preparations against the tyranny, and marched with his forces eager to reinstate the Romans in the freedom they had inherited from their ancestors. . . . The Emperor, accordingly, confiding in the help of God, advanced against the first, second, and third divisions of the tyrant's forces, defeated them all with ease at the first assault, and made his way into the very interior of Italy.
Already he was close to Rome, when to save him from the need of fighting with all the Romans for the tyrant's sake, God Himself drew the tyrant, as it were by secret cords, a long way outside the gates. For once, as in the days of Moses and the Hebrew nation, who were worshipers of God, He cast Pharaoh's chariots and his host into the waves of the Red Sea, and at this time did Maxentius, and the soldiers and guards with him, sink to the bottom as a stone, when in his flight before the divinely aided forces of Constantine, he essayed to cross the river [the Tiber] which lay in his way, over which he had made a strong bridge of boats, and had framed an engine of destruction—really against himself, but in hope of ensnaring thereby him who was beloved by God. [But God brought this engine to be Maxentius's undoing:] for the machine, erected on the bridge with the ambuscade concealed therein, giving way unexpectedly before the appointed time, the passage began to sink down, and the boats with the men in them went bodily to the bottom. And first the wretch himself, then his armed attendants and guards, even as the sacred oracles had before described "sank as lead in the mighty waters." [So Constantine and his men might well have rejoiced, even as did Moses and the Israelites over the fate of Pharaoh's host in the Red Sea.] ….
