Review

Reviewed Work(s): Constantine and Eusebius by T. D. Barnes

Review by: H. A. Drake
Source: The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 103, No. 4 (Winter, 1982), pp. 462-466
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/294532
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462 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY

PrincipiaHistoriae.
Principia Historiae. Champlin
Champlin agrees
agrees with with
other other scholars
scholars in condemning
in condemning the the
vapidityof
vapidity ofthethetheories
theories there
there expressed,
expressed, but but he goes
he goes on toon to plead
plead "in Fronto's
"in Fronto's
defense ......that
defense thatwe wedodonotnot actually
actually possess
possess any any of historical
of his his historical
work"work"
(55). (55).
Fortunately,this
Fortunately, thisoccasional
occasional expression
expression of sentimental
of sentimental loyalty
loyalty to Fronto
to Fronto does does
not cloud
not cloudChamplin's
Champlin's clear
clear historical
historical judgment.
judgment. But
But in in place
place on the onconcern
the concern
with the
with theperson
personofof Fronto,
Fronto, thethe book
book wouldwould
profitprofit
fromfrom an expanded
an expanded treatment
treatment
of the
of the political
politicalcontext
context ofof Antonine
Antonine Rome.
Rome.
Appendicesinclude
Appendices includeChamplin's
Champlin's useful
useful chronology
chronology of letters
of the the letters
(essen-(essen-
tially the
tially thesame
sameasasthat
that published
published in JRS
in JRS 64); 64); a convincing
a convincing discussion
discussion of theof the
evidencefor
evidence forFronto's
Fronto's birth
birth which
which is placed
is placed c. 95c.A.D.;
95 A.D.; and another
and another tilt attilt
the at the
long-vexedquestion
long-vexed question ofof Fronto's
Fronto's death.
death. Champlin
Champlin suggests
suggests 167 in
167 A.D. A.D. in opposi-
opposi-
tion to
tion to Bowersock's
Bowersock's recent
recent argument
argument for for
175 175
as a as a terminus
terminus post quem.
post quem. I slightly
I slightly
prefer the
prefer thelater
laterdate,
date, but
but both
both arguments
arguments havehave
somesome merit.
merit. The current
The current state of
state of
the evidence
the evidencedoes
doesnot
not permit
permit anyany more
more certainty
certainty thanthan
whenwhen Mommsen
Mommsen disputed
disputed
the matter.
the matter.I Ido domiss
miss a bibliography
a bibliography in ain a book
book thatthat will become
will become the standard
the standard
treatmentof
treatment ofthe
thesubject;
subject; references
references are are
givengiven to bibliographical
to bibliographical surveyssurveys
on on
Fronto, but
Fronto, butthese
theseconcentrate
concentrate on on
his his literary
literary contributions.
contributions.
Despite Champlin's
Despite Champlin'sadmiration
admiration forforM. M. Cornelius
Cornelius Fronto,
Fronto, this di-
this book book di-
minisheshis
minishes hisimportance
importance in in Antonine
Antonine RomeRomeas weas see
wehisseeimpact
his impact on students
on students
and friends
and friendstotobebeessentially
essentially personal
personal rather
rather thanthan political
political or intellectual.
or intellectual. But But
Champlin'sremarkable
Champlin's remarkable skill
skill in in dealing
dealing withwith
the the textually
textually corrupt
corrupt and politi-
and politi-
cally barren
cally barrencorrespondence
correspondence hashas established
established it asita as a major
major source
source for Antonine
for Antonine
society. The
society. Theauthor's
author's perceptive
perceptive treatment
treatment of monarchs
of monarchs and lawyers,
and lawyers, senators
senators
and teachers,
and teachers,will
willmake
make hishis engaging
engaging study
study required
required reading
reading for allfor all students
students of of
the High
the HighEmpire.
Empire.

RONALD MELLOR
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Los ANGELES

T. D. BARNES. Constantine and Eusebius. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard Univer-

sity Press, 1981. Pp. vi + 458. $35.00.
Over the past decade, a steady stream of articles on the Constantinian
period has flowed from the pen of Toronto's T. D. Barnes. In Constantine and
Eusebius the author now seeks to distill the fruits of these labors into an
"interpretative essay." Of all the major scholars who have devoted books to
Constantine in the past 100 years, Barnes is the first to have chosen to give
equal standing, in title and text, to the emperor's older contemporary, Eusebius
of Caesarea, the celebrated "father of Church history." He does so consciously
to redress a balance: although Eusebius' Life of Constantine inextricably en-
twines him in the controversy surrounding the methods and motives of the first
Christian emperor, the great range of his writings-covering theology, exegesis
and apologetics as well as history and chronology-daunts attempts to under-
stand him on his own terms. To undertake not merely to do this, but to join
such a study to the entirely different but equally massive problems involved in
the study of Constantine's life and career is a Herculean labor-one few scholars
other than Barnes would be either able or willing to undertake.

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 REVIEWS 463

Underlying the study of these two key figures is the story of the r
Christianity as both a political and an intellectual force in the later
Empire, and it is this theme which unites the three parts into which the
divided. Part I follows the career of Constantine up to the defeat of his c
Licinius in 324. Part II begins anew with Eusebius, studying his intel
roots in the teachings of Origen and subsequent development of his th
In Part III, entitled "The Christian Empire," these two currents merg
study of the emperor's growing involvement in Church affairs during th
third of his reign. The concept is fresh, the treatment predictably bold,
and provocative. But the results are irregular, for Barnes employs a
better suited to the study of an individual who has left a corpus of
writings than it is to one who is known largely through the writings of
To Eusebius, Barnes applies the rare skill, demonstrated so ably
Tertullian (Oxford 1970), for mastering the entire corpus of a prolific
and combining it with detailed knowledge of his life and setting to ach
insight and understanding. Barnes has redated, and re-interpreted, muc
Eusebian corpus. He argues skillfully, through careful study of the te
the first edition of Eusebius' Church History was conceived, and at least
written, before the Great Persecution even began (ch. 8). He also conclude
the first edition of his Chronicle lacked the polemic against Porphyry
editions, and that therefore the work as a whole was not primarily motiv
anything but pure scholarship (p. 113). On the basis of such rethinking
challenges the modern tendency to interpret Eusebius as primarily an apo
"Eusebius began as a scholar," he writes, "made himself into a historian, and
turned to apologetics only under the pressure of circumstances" (p. 104).
Barnes also challenges the traditional tendency to classify Eusebius as
merely a slavish disciple of Origen. "Eusebius was immersed in the Bible and
in biblical ways of historical and quasi-historical thinking to a degree which
Origen would have found alien and unspiritual," he concludes (p. 97). His
study is filled with valuable insights. Of the Church History, he writes (p. 136):
"Eusebius does not present the early Church as a hated and persecuted minority
gradually attaining security and respectability. For him the Christian church
normally enjoyed respect and toleration, even in its earliest days. For him it
was persecution, not (as for moderns) the triumph of Christianity, which
represented an aberration from the predictable course of history and thus
required an explanation." Barnes combines this understanding with a critical
appreciation of his author's defects and limitations, chiding modern scholars
for letting the bishop imply that he was a great confidant of the emperor's (p.
265), and suggesting that one aim of the Life of Constantine was to lead his
readers "to infer that Constantine shared his own Arian views" (p. 271).
Specialists may continue to take issue with Barnes' conclusions about
Eusebius, but the grounds for the argument have at least been clearly laid out.
The same might seem to hold true for Constantine as well, for here Barnes is, if
anything, even more firm in his conclusions. Challenging the currently
fashionable tendency to see the first Christian emperor as a champion of reli-
gious toleration who wished to restore unity to an empire sundered by persecu-
tion, Barnes projects the picture of a revolutionary and a zealot who "regarded
himself as the protector of Christians everywhere" (p. 212), who made Chris-

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464 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY

tianity the "official religion" of the empire (pp. 97, 224), and more: "Constan-
tine's religious policy was coherent and comprehensive," he writes. "He did
not merely suppress paganism and establish Christianity as the official religion
of the state; he set out to ensure that Christianity replaced the cults which it
ousted" (p. 247).
If Barnes himself is to be believed, he arrived at this conclusion solely in
response to overwhelming evidence. "More can be done," he writes in the
Preface, "but further work will require methods different from those employed
here and will necessarily be more speculative. It is advisable to establish the
basic framework first, lest hostile critics seize upon the speculations as casting
doubt upon the underlying facts themselves." (p. v). And again in the conclu-
sion: "The present study . . . has sought to transcend the terms in which 'the
Constantinian question' has traditionally been posed.... A broader and less
subjective approach has here been essayed: to set in their context and exploit to
the full the evidence of contemporary documents and literary works written
during Constantine's lifetime . . . ." (p. 174).
Barnes has, indeed, worked broadly and deeply in the sources, and his
attention to chronological detail-which will be demonstrated even more fully
in a companion volume, The New Empire of Diocletian and Constantine-has
brightened many shadows of the period. But the questions surrounding Con-
stantine do not lend themselves so readily to resolution by Barnes' favored
method of classical textual criticism: there are simply too many gaps and
ambiguities in the evidence. Despite his disclaimers, Barnes himself has had to
rely on speculation. Consider, for instance, the following statements: "Con-
stantine might (for all that is known to the contrary) have studied philosophy
in his youth" (p. 73); Lucian of Antioch "may have taught in the imperial
capital [Nicomedia] for many years .... Constantine and his mother may have
been among those who heard him teach and expound the Scriptures" (p. 194);
Constantine "built a great church in Nicomedia to commemorate the martyrs
of that city (many of whom he must have known)" (p. 248). Such statements
constitute not merely speculation with a vengeance, but speculation so directed
as to indicate Barnes is arguing more of a brief than he is willing to admit. One
detailed example will confirm the point.
Central to his thesis of an aggressively anti-pagan Constantine is Barnes'
conclusion that the emperor outlawed sacrifice to the gods "under any circum-
stances" shortly after taking the East from Licinius in 324. Barnes defines this
act as "a change so sudden, so fundamental, so total" that it "shocked" pagans,
who "probably" responded with complaints and protests (p. 210). The action
and response, had they occurred, certainly would go a long way toward justify-
ing the extremist stance which Barnes assigns Constantine. But did they occur?
Barnes method of dealing with the evidence is instructive. First (p. 210)
he discusses a letter of Constantine's condemning idolatry and polytheism.
This document, he writes, "is not (as commonly supposed) an edict of tolera-
tion" even though it forbids compulsion, because "Constantine uses harsh
language throughout, continually denounces paganism .... and pointedly
refrains from mentioning sacrifices." Whether an omission is pointed or not is,
of course, always questionable. But Barnes continues, "Against the background
of the earlier law, Constantine's silence ineluctably implies that sacrifice

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 REVIEWS 465

remains totally prohibited." Hence the law justifies reading a poin

into the letter.
What is the evidence for this earlier law? Prior to reproducing this letter
in his Life of Constantine, Eusebius makes the claim that Constantine outlawed
idolatry, divination and sacrifice (II.45.1). Against this is the claim later in the
century by Libanius that Constantine left ancestral worship unchanged (Orat.
30.6). Unfortunately, neither statement is documented. How does one, then,
choose between them? Eusebius, as a contemporary, should have preference,
but his tendency to see everything through a pro-Christian filter is too well
known for a statement this broad and general to be taken at face value. Barnes'
method is to banish Libanius to a footnote (n. 11, p. 377), there only to dismiss
him as "totally misleading." But there are other problems not so easily
dispensed with. As n. 15 informs us, Firmicus Maternus' appeal to Constan-
tine's son and successor in the West to suppress sacrifice suggests that the
practice had continued at least in that part of the empire. Barnes deals with this
problem in the text thus: "He [Constantine] would not risk rebellion or civil
disobedience, and in Italy and the West, where he had been emperor long
before 324, he made no serious attempt to enforce the prohibition of sacrifice
which Eusebius attests for the East." The sweeping force of Constantine's total
ban on sacrifice hence now is to be understood as effective only in the East. Yet
in the footnote at this point, which cites another work of Eusebius', his Oration
to Constantine, we find a further concession: "Even in the East, later evidence
suggests that enforcement of the prohibition depended largely on local
initiative"-a delicate way of saying that there is also evidence for the con-
tinuation of sacrifice in the East.
By this point, the alert reader might well be wondering (1) where exactly
sacrifice was outlawed in the posited law, and (2) how a letter of Constantine's
with such pointed silence ever was misread as an edict of toleration. Eusebius'
Oration is no help in answering (1), since the chapter referred to (7.1 ff.) says
nothing about the outlawing of sacrifices in the East or anywhere else (the sole
reference to sacrifice, at 7.6, clearly is to Christians who were "sacrificed" by the
persecutors). Reading Constantine's letter in Life II.48-60, however, sheds some
light on (2). For here one finds, at II.56, the explicit directive, repeated at the
conclusion of the letter, II.60, that no one is to be molested in the pursuit of
holiness and purity or compelled by fear of punishment to worship otherwise.
Harsh words are used, indeed, but one charged with enforcing this edict would
find the operative clauses not in the rhetoric but in what sounds very like orders
to zealous Christians to leave their pagan neighbors alone.
We are left, then, with a posited law which is used to justify reading new
meaning into Constantine's letter, which in turn is used both to dismiss con-
tradictory witnesses such as Libanius and as evidence for the existence of the
law itself. Would it not be more economical to conclude that, if such a law ever
was issued, it was not as sudden, as fundamental, or as total as Barnes depicts
it? But then there is the shock and outrage with which pagans received the law.
This reaction, at least, would certainly seem to justify Barnes' reading. Here,
again, one must go to the footnote. For n. 11 on p. 377 informs us that the
entire reaction is "inferred" from a statement by lamblichus in De Mysteriis on
the importance of performing sacrifice. But since De Mysteriis was written, as

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 466 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY

its formal
its formaltitle
titletells
tells us,
us, not
not as as a protest
a protest to Constantine
to Constantine but
but as as a reply
a reply to Porphyry,
to Porphyry,
and since,
and since,moreover,
moreover, Iamblichus
Iamblichus is generally
is generally thought
thought to have
to have died around
died around the the
time Constantine
time Constantineconquered
conquered thethe East,
East, thethe inference
inference may may well well be unnecessary.
be unnecessary.
The example
The examplecan canreadily
readily bebe multiplied.
multiplied. Through
Through usefalse
use of of false inference
inference
(e.g., p.
(e.g., p. 50,
50,a athreat
threattoto raise
raise thethe
taxestaxes of heretical
of heretical priests
priests is taken
is taken as proof as proof
that that
they once
they oncehadhadbeen
beenlowered),
lowered), arbitrary
arbitrary judgment
judgment (e.g.,(e.g.,
p. 48,p.Constantine's
48, Constantine's
continueduse
continued useof ofpagan
pagan imagery
imagery shows
shows nothing
nothing but but
"the "the
dead dead
weight weight of icono-
of icono-
graphic tradition,"
graphic tradition,"unlikeunlike "innovations
"innovations andand deliberate
deliberate actions
actions whichwhichrevealreveal
his his
true beliefs"),
true beliefs"),andandcircular
circular reasoning
reasoning (e.g.,
(e.g., p. 48,p. with
48, with
n. 42,n.a 42,
law aredated
law redated
from from
320 to
320 to 307
307totoprove
provethatthat Constantine's
Constantine's army armywas was officially
officially Christian
Christian after after
312 on312 on
the grounds
the groundsthat, that,since
since thethe army
army waswas officially
officially Christian
Christian afterafter
312, the312,lawthe law
could not
could nothave
havebeen
beenissued
issued in in 320)-all
320)-all reinforced
reinforced at critical
at critical momentsmoments by specu-
by specu-
lative comments
lative comments(a(alaw law which
which may may have have
been been issued,
issued, an outcry
an outcry whichwhich may have
may have
occurred)-Barnesreveals
occurred)-Barnes reveals a clear
a clear indication
indication to read
to read the evidence
the evidence in accordance
in accordance
with aa priori
with prioridecisions.
decisions.
The result,
The result,then,
then,isisa book
a book of of irregular
irregular quality,
quality, to which
to which it is difficult
it is difficult to to
do justice
do justicein ina areview.
review. InIn thethe case
case of of Constantine,
Constantine, BarnesBarnes has adopted
has adopted a magis-
a magis-
terial tone
terial tonewhich
whichdoes does notnotdodo justice
justice to the
to the ambiguities
ambiguities of the ofevidence,
the evidence,
yet yet
which poses
which posesthethethreat
threat ofof misleading
misleading unwary
unwary readers
readers into into believing
believing all problems
all problems
have been
have beenresolved
resolvedbyby scientific
scientific adherence
adherence to theto the
rulesrules of textual
of textual criticism.
criticism.
Where, as
Where, asin
inthe
thecase
case
ofof Eusebius,
Eusebius, such
such rules
rules can can legitimately
legitimately be applied,
be applied,
Barnes shows
Barnes showsgenuine
genuine brilliance
brilliance andand insight
insight which,
which, when when combined
combined with his
with his
unrivalledability
unrivalled abilitytotocoax
coax chronological
chronological references
references outthe
out of of widest
the widest variety
variety of of
texts, indeed
texts, indeedsucceeds
succeedsinin putting
putting study
study of the
of the period
period on a on a firmer
firmer footing.
footing.
Perhaps the
Perhaps thefairest
fairestconclusion
conclusion is that
is that Barnes
Barnes has has claimed
claimed at once
at once too too
much and
much andtoo
toolittle
littlefor
forhishis work.
work. HisHis interpretation
interpretation of Constantine,
of Constantine, while while
vigorous,does
vigorous, doesnot
notrise
risetoto
thethe Olympian
Olympian perspective
perspective at which
at which he aimed.
he aimed. But his
But his
study of
study ofEusebius,
Eusebius,which
which constitutes
constitutes more
more thanthan
halfhalf the book,
the book, is a happy
is a happy
marriageof
marriage ofmethod,
method, matter
matter andand temperament.
temperament. Together
Together with with the companion
the companion
handbook, it constitutes the most substantive contribution to Constantinian
scholarship since the monumental work of Seeck and Schwartz two generations
ago.

H. A. DRAKE
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA

D. A. RUSSELL. Criticism in Antiquity. Berkeley, University of California Press,

1981. Pp. viii + 219. $24.50.
D. A. Russell's brief book (172 pages of text), Criticism in Antiquity, is
organized for a different audience and in a different fashion than its predecessors
in English, such as those by Atkins, Grube, and less directly Harriot or Kennedy.
Russell has in mind the modern literary critic and "the needs of literary students
whose Greek and Latin is perhaps vestigial." The first chapter to some extent
follows, although briefly and sketchily, the author by author chronological
survey of ancient literary criticism adopted by earlier scholars. But the book is
largely devoted to an exploration of certain major problems in ancient literary

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