Suppose the historian were allowed to return favour for favour, in the case of someone who had been friendly to him in the past, and suppose he were granted the privilege of perverting the truth for that purpose, all because of some act of friendship or generosity, is there any man more entitled than I to eulogize this particular emperor in his writings? Indeed, Constantine never set eyes on me before he ascended his throne, and yet once he had seen me, he was so charmed with my eloquence that he seemed to ‘hang on my lips by his ears’, as the proverb says.
Suspects plausible rather than true
162. My difficulty is this — how am I to preserve the true story, and at the same time give him the credit that he deserves? If I am unduly particular in writing a true history, at least I preserve his great reputation in one respect, for when I make a thorough and candid examination of his career, even where his actions are apparently bad, if we still see the light of virtue shining through his good deeds, and if we find the good scale on the balance, carrying a fairly heavy weight of good deeds, outweighs the bad, then, surely, Constantine will be considered a greater man than all those emperors whose panegyrics appear to be suspects plausible rather than true. Was there ever a man (here I am trying to justify his mistakes), above all, was there ever an emperor, who won the crown of praise for all his deeds, without exception?
163. When we look at the great leaders of men, persons renowned for their characters and their words and deeds, men such as Alexander the Macedonian, the two Caesars,**136 Pyrrhus of Epirus, Epaminondas the Theban, Agesilaus the Spartan, not to speak of others who won brief commendation from their admirers, when we look at these men, we do not find in their lives an equal balance of virtue and vice, as we know from their biographers, but generally they incline somewhat to the worse. What then can one say of those who imitated them, if they seemed inferior to them in some small degree — I do not mean in all aspects of virtue, but in those where these great men have succeeded above all others?
164. When therefore I compare this very great emperor with them, I am aware that he is their inferior in bravery, but he is a finer man than they when one considers the other good qualities — and his superiority here is just as marked as theirs in the first case, where he had to yield them the palm. He was impetuous by nature, gifted with remarkable shrewdness and a most retentive memory, but he exercised such control over this lively temperament that he, more than all the others, seems to have been endowed with kindliness.
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