Speaking of Power

Abstract

Abstract It has been eighty years since Norman Baynes called attention to parallels between certain Hellenistic theories of kingship and the ideas and language of Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, one of the most influential writers of the fourth century. Eusebius’ essay on Constantine, De vita Constantini (hereafter VC), shaped our view of the first Christian emperor for centuries, and despite long-overdue hermeneutical studies that have given us a much better understanding of that work’s tendentious nature, it remains the inevitable starting point for any study of this emperor’s reign. Baynes was not thinking of the VC but of another work, the Tricennial Oration that Eusebius delivered in Constantinople in the summer of 336 as part of the closing ceremonies of Constantine’s Thirtieth Jubilee. In this work, Eusebius depicted the empire as a mimesis of the heavenly kingdom and extolled the emperor as an earthly counterpart to the Logos, a “friend of God” (φίλος θεοῦ) whose piety manifests itself in the priority he gives to divine service and to teaching his subjects to recognize God.