CONCERNING THE AUGUSTA'S DEATH

69. It is possible that the emperor intended to found an empire for her in the future — at least there was much talk of it. How it was to be done I do not know, but he certainly cherished ambitions in that direction. Whatever his plans, they were cut short, together with her hopes, by a sudden illness which resisted all the skill and attention of the doctors. Sclerena was afflicted with chest pains and suffered terribly from asthma. Despite all their efforts to cure her, she made no progress and death carried her off before her desires could be [140] brought to fruition — she who till then had imagined for herself such a glorious future.**l00

70. It should be superfluous to interrupt the main thread of my history at this point, by dilating on the tremendous effect her death produced on the emperor, his lamentations, and the way he behaved. It would be of no real value to describe how, overcome by his sorrow, he expressed the grief he felt like a child. It is no part of the historian's duty to give a minute account of all that is said or done, nor is he required to write on what are comparative trifles. Where details are of little consequence, they belong to the province of the critic; where they give occasion for praise, it is the panegyrist who must use them. If I have a few times made use of details myself —the sort which I am advising historians to shun — that need cause no surprise, for the province of history has no positive, clearlydefined, boundaries. There may be places where it is even right to indulge in digression or parenthesis. For all that, the historian should waste no time in returning to his narrative. The important thing is to concentrate on the subject, and treat everything else with reserve.

71. So I think I am justified in passing over the details in this case, and as for the chief thing that resulted from his mourning — the tomb which he built to commemorate her — I will not refer to that yet. It shall be dealt with in the proper place, after I have first given an account of all the matters that preceded her death. The fact is, in touching on the matter of Sclerena and in priding myself that her story had been told in its entirety, I have omitted many remarkable things that happened before she died. The reason why I did this was to avoid the necessity of referring to her on separate occasions and so breaking up the continuous narrative. Anyhow, as far as she is concerned, the story ends at the moment when she departed this life. We will return once more to the emperor, the hero of this part of my history.

72. More than once already I have remarked that Constantine was like a man who had fought the waves in a great storm, and then put in to a shore where all was peace, the calm waters of an imperial harbour, and he had no intention of sailing the high seas a second time. In other words, he wanted to rule his empire in peace, and not fight any wars, exactly like most of the emperors before him. Unfortunately, affairs do not usually follow the course we would prefer. A stronger power, beyond our control, presides over human destiny

[141] and guides it according to His plans. Sometimes the path is smooth, often strangely rough. So with Constantine, affairs did not go as he had hoped. Waves of trouble, one after another, descended upon him. At one time the empire was gravely perturbed by civil wars, at another by the incursions of barbaric tribes, who plundered most of our provinces and returned to their own countries laden with useful articles of all kinds and with booty to their hearts' content.

73. It would require much time and many words to describe in detail all these things in order as they occurred, to give an accurate account of the causes and results of every single event, to tell of the armies and camps, the skirmishes and battles, and all the other minutiae in which the careful historian is accustomed to indulge. For the moment I must defer such a plan, for it was your express desire, my dearest friend,**101 that I should produce a history which was more a summary than an elaborate treatise. To meet your wishes I have passed over in this work many facts worthy of mention. The years have not been numbered by Olympiads nor divided into seasons (as Thucydides divided his), but I have simply drawn attention to the most important facts and all the things which I have been able to recollect as I was writing this book. As I say, I am not making any attempt, at the moment, to investigate the special circumstances of each event. My object is rather to pursue a middle course between those who recorded the imperial acts of ancient Rome on the one hand, and our own modern chroniclers on the other. I have neither aspired to the diffuseness of the former, nor sought to imitate the extreme brevity of the latter, for fear lest my own composition should be over-burdened, or else omit what was essential.

74. I will say no more on that subject now. To return to Constantine: I will describe the events of his reign in chronological order, beginning with the very first war in which he was engaged as emperor. But first I will go back a little further still, putting the head, as it were, on the body that I am creating. 'Goodness', say the epigrammatists, 'is scarce'.**102 True enough, but even the few are not immune from the creeping paralysis of envy. It is universally true that wherever the fine bloom of natural fertility, or of stoutheartedness and courage, or of any other good quality, wherever such a bloom appears, there straightway stands the pruner ready with his knife, and that part of the plant is cut off. But the shoots that run to wood [142] and produce no flowers at all, these are encouraged to spread, while the thorns grow apace. It is not surprising that those who are less endowed with admirable qualities should normally envy persons of outstanding character, but I do regard it as strange that emperors also are not exempt from this failing. It is not enough, forsooth, that they should have their diadems and their purple, for unless they are wiser than the wise, cleverer than the experts — in short, if they are not placed on the highest summit of all the virtues — they consider themselves grievously maltreated. Either they must rule over us like gods or they refuse to govern at all. I have seen some of them myself, who would have died, with the greatest of pleasure, rather than accept help from certain individuals, rather than owe their position of power to any assistance these persons might render them. Just when they should have rejoiced that God had raised up for them a helping hand, they chose rather to cut it off, simply because of the quarter from which that help was coming.

75. I have written this long preface with an eye on one who flourished in our time, a man who proved the worth of good generalship, who, no less by his boldness as a soldier than by his great skill, thwarted the hostile expeditions of the barbarians, and who assured for the Romans a liberty that was freed from danger.**103