If one took the liberty of rebuking him for this laxity, Constantine was not vexed about it, but he dismissed the reproach as unnecessary. It was due, he said, to wrong ideas about God. What he meant by this, was that he occupied the throne by the grace of God and by Him alone he was protected. Being defended by the Perfect Guard, he saw no need of human sentinels who fell short of perfection.
133. On several occasions I tried myself to convince him of the danger. I quoted the case of builders and helmsmen, and finally of captains and generals. ‘Not one of these men,’ I argued, ‘undertakes his particular task without placing his trust in God. Yet the one levels off his building with a rule, the other guides his ship with a rudder, and everyone who goes to war carries a shield and sword.
The soldier’s head is protected by a helmet, while a breastplate covers the rest of his body.’ Having got so far, I developed the argument by pointing out that these safeguards were even more appropriate in the case of an emperor, but for all my efforts I failed to persuade him. It does credit to the man’s noble character, but his obstinacy made things easy for would-be assassins.
The Plot Against the Emperor’s Life
134. There is no doubt that it brought about a host of calamities. One or two of them I will describe, and leave my readers to deduce from them the nature of the rest. Here I will deviate somewhat from the main narrative for one moment. In well-governed cities there are inscribed on the citizen-rolls the names not only of the best persons and men of noble birth, but also of people whose origin is obscure, and military authorities observe this custom no less than civil magistrates. That, at all events, was the system followed by the Athenians and in all those cities which emulated their form of democracy. In our polity, however, this excellent practice has been contemptuously abandoned, and nobility counts for nothing.
The process of corruption has been going on in the Senate for a long time: it is, in fact, a heritage of the past, for Romulus**127 was the first to encourage the kind of confusion we see now. Today the citizenship is open to all. No doubt you would find not a few wearing civilized clothes, who formerly covered themselves in a goat’s-hair cloak. Many of our government are, I am sure, ex-slaves whom we bought from barbarians, and our great offices of state are entrusted not to men of the stamp of Pericles, or Themistocles, but to worthless scamps like Spartacus.**128
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